Cannell is ready to step up his fight against Rightside.
So Rightside (NASDAQ: NAME) sold eNom to Tucows. What does investor J. Carlo Cannell think?
As you might expect, he’s kind of pissed. But his rationale is a bit odd.
You might recall that Cannell (who owns about 9% of the company through his funds) wrote a nastygram to the company about a year ago. In that letter, he said Rightside should stop focusing so much on subpar new top level domain names. Instead, it should focus on its registrar business and pull everything in under the eNom brand.
Now that eNom has been sold, Cannell is stuck holding a company that’s even more focused on new top level domains than before. Yet, in a press release he issued this week, he writes:
“NAME’s January 20, 2017 decision to sell eNom to Tucows (“TCX”) for net proceeds of $76.7 million marks a step in the right direction – but little more than a band-aid.”
Wait–so he’s happy they sold off eNom?
Well, he does say he’s not happy with the price nor the advisory fees the company paid.
Cannell is starting a group called “Save NAME Group” as part of his activist investor campaign.
If you want to contact Cannell, just go to this domain name:
concernedrightsidegroupshareholders.com
That’s quite a domain name.
Perhaps Rightside.gripe is a better selection. .Gripe is a new top level domain name that runs on Rightside’s registry platform.
Mark Thorpe says
Maybe he should own Verisign stock instead, seeing his website is .com. 😉 Lol
THCNames says
Lol, agreed! 🙂
Nick says
poor guy is stuck with the worst investment ever and can’t talk about how crappy it is, or it will go down even further
Sean says
Registered at GoDaddy no less. Way to support his own investment.
https://who.is/whois/concernedrightsidegroupshareholders.com
Richard Funden says
With the sale to Tucows the registrar does not matter anymore though, only the TLD.
rubensk says
They still own Name.com …
Adam says
He’s upset because he’s stuck selling turd NTLD’s. Gotcha’ sucker!
Dan says
We sold at end of December, I would consider buying back about 1 percent, if we can rally other shareholders to turn this around, otherwise the money will be burned quickly with nothing to show for it.
FYI GTLDs are sucking it bad right now, they can’t give them away with. We financing and dollar promotions, just go much inventory against lack lustre demand.
Let’s face it, domainers can’t hold $25-$500 renewals.
THCNames says
Mike Berkens sold his shares.
https://twitter.com/thedomains/status/822546237538844673
michael berkens says
Well since my name was mentioned i did sell my shares the day enom sale was announced. Generally speaking Rightside stock has the same problem it always has which is lack of volume. 3 Month average is up but still under 50K shares a day.
How is someone who owns over 1 million shares like Mr. Canneell going to sell his shares without deflating his remaining shares.
As a pure play new gTLD registry I look at Minds + Machines and don’t see a great performance
As a warning, like everyone else who plays the stock market I have picked some great winners and horrible losers.
Snoopy says
Why do people bother with this? Sell your shares! The stock is a dog and management will take it all the way to the bottom Marchex style.
DNPric.es says
Wow, now .gripe existed as well! Learnt another interesting thing from your blog.
Garth says
Would have merged Name and Enom into one awesome platform, reducing staff to one cost. Enom is dated/broken. Name is not brand-able enough, to generic. Raised a support ticket with Enom 6 days ago, silence.