Monday, September 13, 2010

GoDaddy wants to sell itself for a billion dollars


It has been peddling internet domains  for 13 years but now GoDaddy.com is peddling itself. It's now soliciting offers for a buyout, with an asking price of $1 billion.
A privately held company, GoDaddy is the #1 provider of online domain name registration in the US. It raked in around $800 million in sales last year. Rumors about it going public have gone around numerous times but it has remained a very big, private corporation. Its owner is Bob Parsons.
As for buyers, may we suggest Nascar driver and noted provocatively-clad GoDaddy spokesperson Danica Patrick? Without her TV spots that leave a lot of questions about what she's actually peddling, the company would clearly be nothing.
The company behind the deal is Qatalyst Partners, which gained notoriety recently when it advised 3Par during that whole Dell/HP bidding war thing. And that ended up turning out very handsomely for 3Par.
Getting $1 billion is a tall order, but GoDaddy has the assets to make it worth someone's while. If a new owner were to take it public, it could spell out even more growth for the company.

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