17th Jun 2014 11:11
LONDON (Alliance News) - CentralNic Group PLC Tuesday said it has acquired the business and some assets of Internet.BS Corp, a domain name retailer registered in The Bahamas, for up to USD7.5 million, in a move it said will boost earnings excluding the costs of the deal.
In a statement, CentralNic said it will pay USD5.2 million when the deal closes, with USD2.7 million due in cash and USD2.5 million to be paid in the form of 2.1 million new CentralNic shares. An additional USD1.8 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 USD2.3 million.
The move is part of CentralNic's strategy to offer domain names at retail as well as wholesale levels, which was outlined as a key objective when the company was admitted to AIM in September 2013.
"As well as being a cash generative business with a large international client base, this acquisition provides us with the multilingual technical platform we need to offer domains for sale to the public in developing markets worldwide, where we have identified several opportunities in domain name retail," Chief Executive Ben Crawford said in a statement.
"This deal allows us to accelerate the strategy we announced to the market when we listed, and which we have since progressed with the launch of other TRS retail websites such as buydomains.london, domain.luxury, domain.build and buy.menu," Crawford added.
CentralNic said that Internet.BS is one of the world's top 30 domain name retailers, with a customer base from 199 countries. It has been trading for eleven years, and it is accredited by regulator The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, as well as the numerous operators of country codes including .eu for Europe and .in for India.
Internet.BS reported a USD730,000 profit in 2013.
CentralNic shares were Tuesday quoted at 71.95 pence, up 2.1%.
By Samuel Agini; [email protected]; @samuelagini
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