JD.com: Was it Acquired for $5 Million USD?

jd.comAccording to a SEC filing shared with me and highlighted by George Kirikos, the JD.com domain name may have been acquired for around $5 million US Dollars in 2012. JD.com is one of the largest Chinese online retailers, and the company is in the midst of prepping for a very large initial public offering.

George Kirikos shared the following information about why he believes the JD.com domain name may have been acquired by the company, which is also known as Jingdong Mall but is now JD.com, Inc.

According to Kirikos:

“I was browsing through EDGAR, and noticed that JD.com’s SEC filing had a section for their balance sheet on page F-37 [of the SEC filing] that referenced domain names. As of December 31, 2011, they recorded 2,621,000 RMB for domain names, but that rose to 36,032,000 RMB as of December 31, 2012.

If you look at the WHOIS history, Alexander Lerman owned the JD.com domain name on December 31, 2011, but by the end of 2012, it was owned by the Chinese company (the actual WHOIS change took place on 2012-06-12).

Thus, one can infer that the change in the Chinese company’s balance sheet allocated to domain names between the end of 2011 and the end of 2012 was mostly due to the acquisition of the JD.com domain name. The difference between the two years of 33,411,000 RMB, using a rate of 0.15695 to the US dollar via the chart at XE.com for the exact date of June 12, 2012, would equal USD $5,243,856.

Of course, there might have been other domain name acquisitions to account for the change in the balance sheet, but I’d bet that USD $5 million is a good estimate for the transaction value of the JD.com domain name.”

Obviously there is a bit on conjecture here because we don’t know if the company acquired other domain names during the year, but it seems plausible, especially given the comparable 7 figure sales of FB.com and IG.com. If this figure is close to being accurate, it would have been the top domain name sale of 2012 by a wide margin, with the sale of Investing.com currently the highest sale at $2.45 million.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

13 COMMENTS

  1. No surprise at all. Most of LL.com sales are private sales with unknown price due to NDA. As two characters names are blocked with new gTLD, LL.com names rise on value even more. Congratulations to seller and buyer.

  2. Several days ago I read at http://www.domainholdings.com/the-almost-ultimate-guide-to-value-investing-in-lll-com/ a post from Giuseppe Graziano, Director of Business Development, Europe at Domain Holdings Group. where it stays that letter “J” belongs to 2nd tier letters. I tried to comment this post with information pointing to fact, that “J” is a premium letter, but comment never been published (Mr. Graziano is serious censure lover!). This sale is another proof that “J” is a premium letter. You cannot go by English directory and do stats based on keywords. In Chinese, letter “J” is one of the most frequent letters. And Chinese are big buyers…

  3. we’ve had some chinese buyers after yj.com on/off for the last 12-18 months as well… the last high offer i turned down was pushing mid six-figures range.
    the last ll.com we sold was in 2010 for 3mil …
    we have about a dozen good one left and happy to sit on them and wait it out

    supply and demand 🙂

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