Was Lending.com Sold for $5.4 Million?

George Kirikos is quite the sleuth when it comes to quietly reported domain name sales and acquisition. George has a keen eye for detecting domain name transactions passively reported by companies in SEC reports and filings.

Over the weekend, George questioned whether Lending.com was sold for $5,422,000 in October 2015. He made the discovery after reviewing the SEC filings of Finance of America. George laid out his observations and thoughts in a series of tweets:

[1/6] Was the Lending(.)com domain name acquired for $5,422,000 in October 2015? ⁉️⁉️

Here’s my research, and you can decide for yourselves.

Page F-67 of Finance of America’s SEC filing:https://t.co/uQVoBgIn7q

shows a domain name with a cost of $5,422,000.

(cont’d)

— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) January 31, 2021

[2/6] That was as of Dec 31, 2018, so obviously took place before then (and is carried in the balance sheet for future years, starting from the acquisition date). Using @DomainTools reverse search, I found only 1 “great” domain name owned by them, namely Lending(.)com.

(cont’d)

— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) January 31, 2021

[3/6] Lending(.)com was acquired by Blackstone in October 2015, as per @thedomains reporting, see:https://t.co/2aBIrzQ8xZ

Immediately prior to that, the Archive(.)org captures of the homepage didn’t show much going on.https://t.co/35yEGGw8IB

(cont’d)

— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) January 31, 2021

[4/6] Importantly, Finance of America is owned by Blackstone!https://t.co/DQztAZNSQa

Thus, the chain of ownership makes sense given the 2015 deal.

The financials are now public, due to its upcoming IPO. (cont’d)

— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) January 31, 2021

[5/6] In 2013, the domain appears to have been listed for sale for around $6MM, along with other assets.

Obviously there’s a gap of a couple of years, where the price may have changed, but that puts the $5,422,000 number in the right range.https://t.co/dcRykhc67T

(cont’d)

— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) January 31, 2021

[6/6] Blackstone has great taste in domain names — they also own the elite 2-letter dot-com domain name BX(.)com.

That’s all the research for this Sunday afternoon. Are you convinced, or do you need more proof? Vote in the poll in the first tweet of this thread.

— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) January 31, 2021

So far, more than 75% of those who responded to George’s poll are convinced that Lending.com was sold for $5.4 million based on the evidence George shared. Ordinarily, I would email the company’s investor relations department to ask if Lending.com was the domain name that was acquired, but George has already reached out. Should George receive confirmation from the company, I will share an update.