Web.com issued a press release this morning announcing that it’s board of directors approved an agreement to be acquired for $25.00 per share, which amounts to approximately $2 billion USD. The buyer is an affiliate of a private equity firm called Siris Capital Group, LLC. Web.com is a publicly traded company and the deal will need to be approved by shareholders.
Web.com is permitted to seek out a better offer. From the press release:
“Web.com may solicit alternative acquisition proposals from third parties during a “go-shop” period from the date of the agreement until August 5, 2018. There is no guarantee that this process will result in a superior proposal, and the agreement provides Siris with a customary right to match a superior proposal. Web.com does not intend to disclose developments with respect to the solicitation process unless and until the company determines such disclosure is appropriate.”
While Web.com is primarily consumer facing, the company has a major domain investor presence. The company either owns or has an ownership stake in the following companies:
- Network Solutions
- Register.com
- NameJet
- SnapNames
You can have a look at the press release for more information about this deal. It would be interesting to see if other companies in the domain space (or their backers) submit a superior offer.
Good luck with that giant MESS aka Network Solutions…
Perhaps change will be good in this case.
Highly doubtful. Need a miracle to fix that train wreck.
Burnt too many bridges along the way as well.
OMG the scourge of the internet also known as Network Solutions or NetSol
I absolutely despise web.com and have written a few articles about them.
https://www.namepros.com/threads/network-solutions-a-hijacker.1064371/
Single handedly one of the most despised companies for domainers.
That’s a big acquisition. It will be most interesting to see how the new owners manage the Web.com companies going forward. I’ve been on both sides of the acquisition thing before, and from my experience the first 6-12 months is business-as-usual. After that, things get either better or worse for both the employees and customers. This has the potential of being very good for all stakeholders, but wait and see.
Now this is interesting. It could be the beginning of the end for smaller domainers but we’ll see, perhaps not. Snapnames has been and is a very mercurial company throughout the domain days.