Was Tile.com Acquired for $1.1 Million?

Towards the end of 2017, I noticed the Tile.com domain name changed hands. The Tile app upgraded to Tile.com, and the domain name continues to forward to the company’s website, TheTileApp.com. The Tile.com domain name had long been owned by Digimedia, and the company has a policy of not reporting sales or commenting about sale prices.

This afternoon, I was looking through some SEC filings, and I may have come across the sale price for the Tile.com domain name. The filing was a SEC Form 10 registration statement from Life360, Inc. Life360 acquired the Tile brand in 2021. The Form 10 filing was made in April of 2022. Notably, a large domain name acquisition was mentioned:

“During the year ended March 31, 2018, the Company acquired a domain name for cash and shares of the Company’s common stock. The domain name is amortized over its useful life of five years. The gross carrying amount of the intangible asset was $1.1 million, and accumulated amortization was $0.7 million and $0.5 million, for the years ended March 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. Amortization expense was $0.2 million for both years ended March 31, 2021 and 2020.”

While I can’t be sure this domain name acquisition is Tile.com, the timing lines up. I noticed that Tile.com changed hands in late 2017, and that would fall in line with the company’s fiscal year ending March 31, 2018.

There are two reasons why this sale probably won’t be recorded by NameBio and DNJournal. For one thing, Digimedia doesn’t confirm its sales prices, so unless Life360 confirms it was Tile.com that was acquired for $1.1m, it is just speculation. A bigger issue is the fact that the domain name was acquired for cash and stock. I believe DNJournal only records all-cash deals.

If the $1.1 million domain name acquisition wasn’t Tile.com, I am not sure what it could have been. Should I learn more about the acquisition, I will post an update.