The world’s largest domain registrar, GoDaddy.com has put itself on the market for $1 billion. The company currently has more than 40 million domain names generated under its management.
The company founded by Bob Parsons in 1997, will be auctioned to the highest bidder. GoDaddy, still privately held, reported revenue of $800 million on last year, but did not disclose profits, if any. Financial analysts believe the company has a net worth of well over $1 billion.
Qatalyst Partners was hired by GoDaddy to seek out a buyer for the company. With companies like Google, Amazon, and Yahoo looking to secure more of a presence on the web, writers at the Wall Street Journal do not foresee any of the really large companies vying to purchase the company. Instead, the journal expects bidding to be dominated by private equity firms. Firms are attracted to companies with reliably large cash flows, which GoDaddy engagingly generates.
Although GoDaddy is the largest website registrar in the world, it has never reached the notoriety it has earned. Many believe the company’s lack of attention in the technology industry is because of its home base, which is in Scottsdale, Arizona, rather than Silicon Valley like most of the other technology giants. Nevertheless, the company using media outlets has become famous not for its great achievements, but for the infamous Super Bowl commercial and the GoDaddy Girls.
GoDaddy was set to go public in 2006, however, the company canceled their IPO in the eleventh-hour citing “market uncertainty”. Since Parsons’ is choosing to sell the company rather than take it public, suggests that Parsons’ is ready to move on to other things.