DCA Registry Partner CentralNic acquires Internet.BS for $7.5 Million deal
CentralNic plc,(AIM:CNIC) acquired Internet.BS, a top 30 domain name registrar for a maximum consideration of USD 7.5 million. CentralNic says it will pay $5.2 million when the deal closes, with $2.7 million due in cash and $2.5 million to be paid in the form of 2.1 million new CentralNic shares.
An additional $1.8 million payment is deferred.
It is to be paid over 12 months and can be adjusted higher or lower depending on the acquisition’s performance.
The maximum amount that can be paid is $2.3 million
CentralNic shares were Tuesday quoted at 71.95 pence, up 2.1%
You might remember that Demand Media, Inc. paid $18 Million for Name.com.
The company put out a press release early this morning
Internet.BS is a profitable, cash generative business delivering unaudited operating profits and profits after tax of USD $730,000 for the year ending 31 December 2013.
CentralNic gave some talking points on how the acquisition will affect their company going forward:
Impact of the Acquisition
“The acquisition of Internet.BS is a strategic step for CentralNic, which will position the Company as a vertically integrated platform offering domain names at retail as well as wholesale – one of the key objectives announced at admission to AIM in September 2013.”
“Key strategic drivers for the acquisition include:
– Gaining a proven retail platform already supporting 28,000 users in eight languages, including sophisticated administrative tools for domain portfolio owners;
– Enhancing the revenues and profits of CentralNic with an additional cash generative business retailing domains to consumers and other domain name retailers; and
– Optimizing the earnings opportunity for CentralNic presented by the new Top-Level Domains by giving it access to the retail margin for sales of these domains.
The Board believes that the deal terms are attractive, at under 10x EBITDA, with 35% of the consideration settled in shares.”
CentralNIC, agreed in 2012 to provide DCA with registry software, consulting and training services, and to work closely with DCA to ensure that the Kenya-based registry to be established will satisfy all the stringent technical and operational requirements of the ICANN new gTLD programme. Moreover, CentralNIC’s authoritative DNS technology already includes AnyCast instances in 40 locations around the globe including Nairobi, Kenya, Lagos, Nigeria and Johannesburg, South Africa, with this great geographic diversity ensuring 100% availability at all times for .africa domain names.
