Company paid about $500 per domain to acquire Michael Berkens’ domain name portfolio.
GoDaddy filed its annual report with the SEC today, and it confirms (or re-confirms) that the company paid $35.5 million to acquire Michael Berkens’ domain name portfolio.
After GoDaddy released its Q4 earnings, I wrote about how the cashflow reconciliation showed that the company used $35.5 million cash in Q4 on acquisitions.
George Kirikos talked with GoDaddy’s investor relations department, which said that the only acquisition in Q4 was Berkens’ portfolio.
That still left a small amount up in the air, given that Berkens could have accepted equity or deferred payments.
The 10-K puts that to rest: it was absolutely, positively $35.5 million.
The annual report discloses that the company spent $64.7 million on four acquisitions last year. The third quarter report discloses that the company spent $29.2 million on three acquisitions in the first nine months of the year.
$64.7 minus $29.2 is $35.5.
That comes out to about $500 per domain name acquired.
Andrew, any way to figure out how much of that $29.2 was used for the DomainSource portfolio GD acquired just prior to Berkens?
I suppose you could figure out the other acquisitions and when they took place, then look at the 10-Qs. It’s possible that it was so small it will be hard to determine.
It’s all who you know. This portfolio was not worth 35.5 million. Take the top 5,000 domains from the Marchex portfolio and put it up against the top 5,000 domains from Berkens portfolio. The competition would not even be close.
Did you see all of the three letter domains in Berkens’ portfolio?
Yes I did. 100 3Ls at wholesale of 23-25 grand is only a couple million. Forget about comparing shorts and numerics. If you put a couple thousand one word or keyword domains from Marchex up against a couple thousand similiar names of Berkens it’s no contest. Why hasn’t anyone gone through Berkens portfolio and picked out the best of the best and wrote a story about it like they did with the Marchex portfolio?
So Todd, why haven’t you since you seem to know enough to make the statement “no contest”. Share the fast please, curious 🙂
I looked at the names about 18 months ago so my comment is based on what I remember from the list.
Michael owes us a celebration party. 😉
Perhaps Marchex sold to low? I think so.
I agree with that, they had some real category killers that were aged well.
Yeah, I agree Berkens sold out WAY too cheap. $500 /domain? WTF!