Donuts, Rightside Group Merge in a $213M Acquisition Deal

Home / News

Donuts, Rightside Group Merge in a $213M Acquisition Deal

By CircleID Reporter
June 14, 2017, 12:59 pm PDT Views: 8,409 Add Comment

Donuts Inc., a leading domain name registry for new top-level domains and Rightside Group today announced a merger agreement; Donuts has agreed to acquire Rightside for $10.60 per share in an all-cash tender offer, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $213MM. According to the release, the Merger Agreement was “unanimously approved by Rightside’s Board of Directors following a comprehensive review of strategic and financial alternatives that Rightside announced in the first quarter of 2017.” Bruce Jaffe, Donuts chief executive officer: “We believe that the combined company will be well positioned to serve our registrar customers and the millions of businesses and individuals who are embracing new ways to brand their online identities.”

— “The deal will give Donuts an additional 40 top level domain names, Rightside’s technical registry system (that currently powers Donuts’ domains), domain name registrar Name.com, and a portfolio of about 300,000 (mostly .com) domain names.” –Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire / Jun 14

— “There was talk of a split last year, with Donuts apparent endorsement of Google’s Nomulus platform, but the two companies reaffirmed their relationship earlier this year. ... [Rightside] faced criticism from shareholders over the last year or so over their relatively poor performance. Activist investor J Carlo Cannell, who owns almost 9% of Rightside, has been pressuring the company’s board to take radical action for the last 15 months.” Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite / Jun 14

By CircleID Reporter

CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.

Visit Page

Filed Under

Comments

The Weekly Wrap

More and more professionals are choosing to publish critical posts on CircleID from all corners of the Internet industry. If you find it hard to keep up daily, consider subscribing to our weekly digest. We will provide you a convenient summary report once a week sent directly to your inbox. It's a quick and easy read.

I make a point of reading CircleID. There is no getting around the utility of knowing what thoughtful people are thinking and saying about our industry.

VINTON CERF
Co-designer of the TCP/IP Protocols & the Architecture of the Internet