Web services giant GoDaddy files for $100m IPO

By Trevor Mogg June 10, 2014

godaddy files 100m ipo — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Domain registration and Web services firm GoDaddy filed IPO papers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, revealing it hopes to raise $100 million in the process.

Those with long memories will recall that the Scottsdale, Arizona company first filed for an IPO back in 2006, though scrapped the plan several months later due to adverse market conditions.

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In the last year or so there’s been increasing talk around the idea of a second attempt, with GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving telling Bloomberg in an interview last year, “The growth we are seeing positions us very well to be a public company. We could go public today, but I want to demonstrate that execution against my strategy is happening.”

Since joining GoDaddy from Yahoo in January 2013, Irving has been active in making significant changes to the company’s business plan, hiring talent from big hitters such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, as well as pushing its operations into more European countries, including Spain, Portugal, France and Germany.

Despite a rise in revenue in the last few years, GoDaddy, which launched in 1997, is still having to deal with sizable net losses. In 2012, for example, it generated revenue of $910 million with a net loss of $279 million. Last year was better, with revenue coming in at just over $1 billion alongside $200 million in net losses.

The company, which hasn’t turned a profit in five years, was bought by a number of private equity firms in 2011 for somewhere in the region of $2 billion.

Despite the less-than-stellar financial figures, the company is at least expanding its customer base, which, according to its IPO filing, currently stands at over 12 million.

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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