Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. has existed as a business for more than 80 years and is publicly traded under the RS ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange. The company has a market capitalization of more than $19 billion USD. The company just announced a small but important rebrand. It is now known as Reliance.
In an earnings call covered by Investing.com, the company announced the rebrand along with a change to its website domain name. Reliance is now operating on its new brand matching Reliance.com domain name. The company had been operating its website under the RSAC.com acronym domain name.
According to its filing with the SEC, “[T]he name change reflects the Company’s evolution to ‘More than Metal.‘” Beyond this neat tagline, this domain name upgrade reflects the ability of a generic domain name like Reliance.com to be used more broadly. Karla Lewis, President and Chief Executive Officer of Reliance expanded on this:
“I’m excited to introduce our new company identity as Reliance, Inc. Over the years, retaining ‘Steel & Aluminum’ in our corporate name has limited the perception of our company because Reliance is so much more than metal. We are a family of companies committed to providing diversified metals solutions and increasing levels of value to our customers, opportunities to our employees and returns to our stockholders. Reliance has historically made investments in our business far in excess of our peers while consistently generating industry-leading results. We have become stronger and more diversified, collaborative and focused as we further differentiate Reliance as a best in class company. We believe these developments, as well as our longstanding reputation for credibility with all of our stakeholders, have made ‘Reliance’ a name that stands alone.”
From what I can tell, it appears the domain name was acquired within the last month or so. Using the Whois History tool from DomainTools, I can see Reliance.com had been owned by ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd. as recently as January of this year. The domain name appears to have transferred from corporate domain registrar CSC to corporate law firm Hogan Lovells’ domain registrar in mid January of this year. It is registered under Whois privacy there.
I tried to acquire Reliance.com for my own investment portfolio, but my offers were rebuffed. I don’t know what Reliance paid to acquire Reliance.com, but perhaps the acquisition price will be shared in a future SEC filing. In the meantime, Reliance.com has been added to the Embrace.com list of corporate domain name upgrades.
