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

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

By CircleID Reporter
June 14, 2017, 12:59 pm PDT Views: 8,551 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

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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.
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