I received an email from Clark Landry, a person who I had a nice conversation with at Ad:Tech. Clark is the CEO of Hecta Media, which just went public on the London AIM exchange. Hecta Media is a company whose purpose is to acquire and make investments in profitable niche content websites and domain portfolios.
According to Landry, the founders, (Clark Landry and Fred Krueger), are serial entrepreneurs who have founded or provided seed investment for a variety of internet content companies and advertising networks including TagWorld, Adconion, Traffic Marketplace, and iwin.com, among others. Said Landry, “Hecta Media is interested in acquiring premium domain portfolios and niche developed content websites.”
From the press release following their first day of trading provided via email:
“The directors of Hecta Media Inc (AIM: HCTA), a web consolidator, are pleased to announce that all of the Company’s 162,266,456 Ordinary Shares have today been admitted for trading on AIM valuing the Company at £6.5 million.
Hecta Media is a British Virgin Islands (”BVI”) registered company whose purpose is to make broadly distributed investments in niche content web sites and vertically targeted, branded domains. Using a combination of Ordinary Shares and cash to make targeted acquisitions, the Company intends to build a portfolio of high-traffic websites monetized through search and display advertising. Hecta Media will focus its efforts on active investment in websites and domains established in the UK, continental Europe, and the United States. The websites in which Hecta Media intends to invest will typically be simple, profitable businesses with few employees and positive cash flow. Hecta Media aims to consolidate a number of such websites across a few specific verticals, with the purpose of creating advantages of scale in each vertical market. The Directors intend that Hecta Media will acquire sites by offering a combination of cash and Ordinary Shares to the owners of the sites, providing fungible assets to owners looking for a suitable exit strategy by which to realize the value of the businesses they have created. The Directors consider that current market conditions provide good opportunities for investment in a wide variety of suitable websites which can meet Hecta Media’s strategic objectives – the Company having recently raised GBP4.67 mill ion.”
Congratulations to Clark and the rest of his management team. The domain industry is full of opportunity!
More information about Hecta Media can be found in an article in The Independent.
