6 ms·

GoDaddy is Going Public

41 points by bhartzer 12y ago

bhartzer 12y ago
I think they have a few things to fix before they go public, like the insane amount of money they've been spending on marketing.
- Stormcaller 12y ago
  Does it not work though? They are known for being shitty yet they are one most popular(if not the most[1]) With this bad reputation and even some boycotts like "leave godaddy, they support sopa" it is obvious they don't have a good reputation and their service is "good enough to not bother switching" I don't think they'd grow without massive marketing. [1] I dont know how accurate this data is, although it doesn't look too far from truth http://www.webhosting.info/registrars/top-registrars/global/?pi=1 http://www.webhosting.info/registrars/top-registrars/global/...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
adwf 12y ago
Surely it's a little late for an IPO from GoDaddy. They've been around for a long time, they're already established as a market leader, there'll be little to no hype. Forbearing a massive success with the new TLDs that seem to be given out like candy, I can't see any huge growth areas for them to move into. Maybe China, but that's always going to suffer from preferential treatment to incumbent local competition. (If the Chinese allow free DNS registration at all?) The only way I'm seeing this is that the owners want to sell, but the financials are so bad they couldn't find a private buyer. I'll give it a pass unless anyone knows different?
- bhartzer 12y ago
  Bob Parsons pulled the IPO back in 2006 because of market conditions: http://www.bobparsons.me/archive_article.php?entry_id=121 http://www.bobparsons.me/archive_article.php?entry_id=121
  - adwf 12y ago
    Thanks, that at least explains why they're IPO'ing so late. Still not enough to convince me it's a good buy though :)
- josu 12y ago
  >On July 1, 2011, Go Daddy confirmed that KKR, Silver Lake Partners, and Technology Crossover Ventures had closed the deal. Although the purchase price was not officially announced it was reported to be $2.25 billion, for 65% of the company. [1] That my shed some light on your doubts. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Daddy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Daddy
- thefreeman 12y ago
  Definitely not a good purchase. Though they may be a market leader, they are grudgingly so, and most people with experience stay away from them.
gerbal 12y ago
I had assumed GoDaddy was already public. Seems like the sort of company that would have gone public ages ago when it was still growing aggressively.
RexRollman 12y ago
GoDaddy's advertising is horrible and their policies are questionable. I personally find myself hoping that the IPO doesn't go well.
- justizin 12y ago
  if they go public, you can always just make a billion dollars doing something else, then keep buying their shares and selling them for less, constantly driving the price down, until they don't exist.
  - gibybo 12y ago
    This would have no net effect on the supply of shares, so it would not decrease their share price (aside from temporary fluctuations while you are doing the buying/selling).
- circa 12y ago
  I could not agree more. I have moved all of my services to hover.com over the years. They've been great, straight forward and simple.
  - STRiDEX 12y ago
    They rope you in with those 2 dollar domain coupons. I'll give them my $2 + tax but that's it.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  I guess I need to learn to take offense easier, however with two personal sites maintained for family members both registered through GoDaddy I honestly never had a single issue. So what am I missing?
  - rtx 12y ago
    Conscience, I guess.
  - deleted 12y ago
sayemm 12y ago
Bob Parsons has an interesting life story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Parsons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Parsons - Grew up poor, flunked high school, enlisted in the Marines during the Vietnam War - Graduated from college, self-taught programmer at age 25 - Started Parsons Technology at 34 - Grew it to 1,000 employees and sold it for $64M at 44 - Started GoDaddy at 47 - Exited Godaddy in 2011 for $930M at age 61 (http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/blog/techflash/2014/06/godaddy-files-for-100-million-ipo-bob-parsons.html http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/blog/techflash/2014/06/go...) Great entrepreneurs never develop overnight, this game only gets better with age.
- larrys 12y ago
  God knows I can't find it now but I remember a story line about Bob betting the ranch and almost running out of money when he started godaddy and using the money from his previous company to fund it. And almost didn't make it (almost like a Fred Smith Fedex type story). Can't find the link right now. Another thing about Parsons (that I remember but can't link to) is that he insisted on building all his systems in house and not licensing technology or software from others which seems to have worked to his advantage.
  - gmays 12y ago
    Interesting you mention Fred Smith of Fed Ex. He and Parsons were both Marines, served in Vietnam, started companies, and are now billionaires.
- uptown 12y ago
  You skipped the chapter where he killed the elephant.
  - duaneb 12y ago
    I'm no fan of poachers, but it's pretty irrelevant to his business career. In fact I'd put money down that there's a positive correlation between successful entrepreneurs and psychopaths.
itchyouch 12y ago
I remember reading about how private equity takes companies and leverages them for a handsome payout, only to dump them in an IPO to let the public assume an untenable balance sheet. 1B in revenue on 1B in debt...its right at the limit for healthy.
seancoleman 12y ago
Direct link to GoDaddy's S-1: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1609711/000119312514230425/d728713ds1.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1609711/000119312514...
Theodores 12y ago
Why are companies like GoDaddy allowed to just lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year? I don't get it! The cheap domain thing is not a capital intensive industry, there are thousands of IT companies that can sell you a domain out there, it is not as if you need a factory or hundreds of thousands of staff to get into the business, so cheap isn't necessarily going to get you into a monopoly position - e.g. de Beers - so that they can have the market to themselves. If they were making cars instead of domains and selling everything at what amounts to a loss year in, year out, some EU type of organisation would come along with an anti-dumping tariff to put an end to it. Why is it with tech companies that GoDaddy style business models are allowed to persist? Sure some of those losses are due to acquisitions, but, again, why can companies that don't make money allowed to buy up companies that do make money?
- djloche 12y ago
  In case you are serious about not getting it: you can operate at a loss in a number of situations: if you have profits in reserve, if you have available credit to float the difference in revenue, or a combination therein. You cannot bleed forever, only as long as you have capital to push onward. If you have access to a ton of credit, or have a ton of money in the bank, you can take losses for quite some time. I haven't looked too deeply at their internals, but some companies choose to (properly) mark down existing assets or investments on their books to current market value at certain times for strategic tax purposes. Eg. if you have a warehouse full of stuff you can't sell, but profit from other divisions the right thing to do is to write down those assets to market value (sometimes that is zero, but not always)
- larrys 12y ago
  "Why are companies like GoDaddy allowed to just lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year? " What do you mean "allowed"? You mean "allowed" by the government or "allowed" by investors who perhaps may know something that you don't? Investors make mistakes for sure and bet on the wrong horse. But if they are they are making a calculated risk by using information that you are not privy to or knowledge that you don't have. (And I can see from some of the comments on this post that is not unusual.)
jacquesm 12y ago
For some companies an IPO is the final frontier just before they really start to cook. For others it is the final round in a game of pass-the-buck. My hope is that it is the former, my fear is that it is the latter. Even Facebook eventually ended up above their IPO price so maybe GoDaddy won't do so bad. Give it a few years.
jhonovich 12y ago
They are losing money... and lots of it. Wow. GoDaddy has been around a long time, one would think they would be profitable (at least barely) by now. And they are going public with this?
- onewaystreet 12y ago
  Being a domain registrar is a terrible business. This is why GoDaddy has all those upsells.
  - larrys 12y ago
    Nope. They were profitable prior to the buyout. Besides they don't make money on the domain registration they make it on selling other things (that you don't need in many cases) the domains are just an acquisition tool on that. A loss leader. They also have a domain buy service. A domain sale I just handled which came by that service netted them a $6000 fee for essentially contacting the other party (who I worked for) by email. (Don't use them would be my very strong suggestion.)
    - onewaystreet 12y ago
      >Besides they don't make money on the domain registration they make it on selling other things (that you don't need in many cases) the domains are just an acquisition tool on that. A loss leader. Those are the upsells I'm talking about.
- beambot 12y ago
  How did they get into a situation where they're losing >$200M per year -- and with only $100M cash in bank and $1B revenue? Even more perplexing... they recently took on $1B+ in debt, of which they immediately paid out 30% as a dividend to investors?! I'm not an expert or anything... but their "growth" story stinks; it looks like they're just trying to milk a dying cow. That, or I'm just way off base...
  - gerbal 12y ago
larrys 12y ago
"The self-described “outspoken” executive called the quiet period “suffocating” and didn’t want to give up his weekly radio show, or other planned radio and TV appearances." Oh sure, right. As if he didn't know that when he got involved in the process and hired investment bankers.
sturmeh 12y ago
How do I purchase put options for an IPO?
- gibybo 12y ago
  The regulatory body that governs options restricts them for IPOs. There is a period of time (I believe it's 2 weeks) after IPO that options are not allowed to be traded in public markets, so you have to wait until then. At that point, you can buy puts from any full service brokerage (and many discount brokerages). If you are a sufficiently high net-worth individual or investing on behalf of a sufficiently large fund, you may be able to make a private deal with one of the investment banks participating in the IPO, but I don't know much about that.
marincounty 12y ago
I found there S-1 Registration statement insiteful--especially about competition, and how domain names are not as important as they used to be. I'm a customer of Godaddy because I'm a sucker for a bargain(99 cent names). I think the company would benefit if they stoped trying to outwit their customers; like stop changing the renew automatically, and don't assume I want to spend more than 1 year with you. Oh yea, we all know Godaddy is the big daddy in domain names--you don't need to spend countless millions on eye candy. I understand spending a lot on advertising in emerging markets, but not in the U.S.--pass those saving on to your customers. Yes--I know the Super Bowl ad put you in the game, but we know the system now--we know what you do, and when we are being gouged. My final thought is this, if you want repeat customers--stop playing tricks like pricey privacy options, holding domains hostage because they are a day late in payment, and constantly changing automatic billing settings. Bye--
dillon_easyeda 12y ago
I changed from GoDaddy to domainsite 5 years ago.
- atm32s4 12y ago
  Me too, it seems domainsite is acquired.
steve_benjamins 12y ago
We have 50 reader reviews of GoDaddys website builder at Site Builder Report. Of the 50 reviews, 48 have received the lowest possible rating (1 star out of 5). http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/reviews/godaddy/user-reviews http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/reviews/godaddy/user-review... No other website builder we cover is the target of as much outrage from readers.
hacknat 12y ago
Given who owns the company now, I'm pretty sure that they'll be looking for acquisitions to tack onto their upsell activity. Pretty sure that's what this IPO will do. GoDaddy will be buying some companies in a year.
zacharycohn 12y ago
Does that mean they have to stop being awful at PR (shooting elephants, objectification of women, etc)?

41 points by bhartzer 12y ago

I think they have a few things to fix before they go public, like the insane amount of money they've been spending on marketing.

Stormcaller 12y ago
Does it not work though? They are known for being shitty yet they are one most popular(if not the most[1]) With this bad reputation and even some boycotts like "leave godaddy, they support sopa" it is obvious they don't have a good reputation and their service is "good enough to not bother switching" I don't think they'd grow without massive marketing. [1] I dont know how accurate this data is, although it doesn't look too far from truth http://www.webhosting.info/registrars/top-registrars/global/?pi=1 http://www.webhosting.info/registrars/top-registrars/global/...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

adwf 12y ago

Surely it's a little late for an IPO from GoDaddy. They've been around for a long time, they're already established as a market leader, there'll be little to no hype. Forbearing a massive success with the new TLDs that seem to be given out like candy, I can't see any huge growth areas for them to move into. Maybe China, but that's always going to suffer from preferential treatment to incumbent local competition. (If the Chinese allow free DNS registration at all?) The only way I'm seeing this is that the owners want to sell, but the financials are so bad they couldn't find a private buyer. I'll give it a pass unless anyone knows different?

bhartzer 12y ago
Bob Parsons pulled the IPO back in 2006 because of market conditions: http://www.bobparsons.me/archive_article.php?entry_id=121 http://www.bobparsons.me/archive_article.php?entry_id=121
- adwf 12y ago
  Thanks, that at least explains why they're IPO'ing so late. Still not enough to convince me it's a good buy though :)
josu 12y ago
>On July 1, 2011, Go Daddy confirmed that KKR, Silver Lake Partners, and Technology Crossover Ventures had closed the deal. Although the purchase price was not officially announced it was reported to be $2.25 billion, for 65% of the company. [1] That my shed some light on your doubts. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Daddy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Daddy
thefreeman 12y ago
Definitely not a good purchase. Though they may be a market leader, they are grudgingly so, and most people with experience stay away from them.

gerbal 12y ago

I had assumed GoDaddy was already public. Seems like the sort of company that would have gone public ages ago when it was still growing aggressively.

RexRollman 12y ago

GoDaddy's advertising is horrible and their policies are questionable. I personally find myself hoping that the IPO doesn't go well.

justizin 12y ago
if they go public, you can always just make a billion dollars doing something else, then keep buying their shares and selling them for less, constantly driving the price down, until they don't exist.
- gibybo 12y ago
  This would have no net effect on the supply of shares, so it would not decrease their share price (aside from temporary fluctuations while you are doing the buying/selling).
circa 12y ago
I could not agree more. I have moved all of my services to hover.com over the years. They've been great, straight forward and simple.
- STRiDEX 12y ago
  They rope you in with those 2 dollar domain coupons. I'll give them my $2 + tax but that's it.
Shivetya 12y ago
I guess I need to learn to take offense easier, however with two personal sites maintained for family members both registered through GoDaddy I honestly never had a single issue. So what am I missing?
- rtx 12y ago
  Conscience, I guess.
- deleted 12y ago

sayemm 12y ago

Bob Parsons has an interesting life story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Parsons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Parsons - Grew up poor, flunked high school, enlisted in the Marines during the Vietnam War - Graduated from college, self-taught programmer at age 25 - Started Parsons Technology at 34 - Grew it to 1,000 employees and sold it for $64M at 44 - Started GoDaddy at 47 - Exited Godaddy in 2011 for $930M at age 61 (http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/blog/techflash/2014/06/godaddy-files-for-100-million-ipo-bob-parsons.html http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/blog/techflash/2014/06/go...) Great entrepreneurs never develop overnight, this game only gets better with age.

larrys 12y ago
God knows I can't find it now but I remember a story line about Bob betting the ranch and almost running out of money when he started godaddy and using the money from his previous company to fund it. And almost didn't make it (almost like a Fred Smith Fedex type story). Can't find the link right now. Another thing about Parsons (that I remember but can't link to) is that he insisted on building all his systems in house and not licensing technology or software from others which seems to have worked to his advantage.
- gmays 12y ago
  Interesting you mention Fred Smith of Fed Ex. He and Parsons were both Marines, served in Vietnam, started companies, and are now billionaires.
uptown 12y ago
You skipped the chapter where he killed the elephant.
- duaneb 12y ago
  I'm no fan of poachers, but it's pretty irrelevant to his business career. In fact I'd put money down that there's a positive correlation between successful entrepreneurs and psychopaths.

itchyouch 12y ago

I remember reading about how private equity takes companies and leverages them for a handsome payout, only to dump them in an IPO to let the public assume an untenable balance sheet. 1B in revenue on 1B in debt...its right at the limit for healthy.

seancoleman 12y ago

Direct link to GoDaddy's S-1: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1609711/000119312514230425/d728713ds1.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1609711/000119312514...

Theodores 12y ago

Why are companies like GoDaddy allowed to just lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year? I don't get it! The cheap domain thing is not a capital intensive industry, there are thousands of IT companies that can sell you a domain out there, it is not as if you need a factory or hundreds of thousands of staff to get into the business, so cheap isn't necessarily going to get you into a monopoly position - e.g. de Beers - so that they can have the market to themselves. If they were making cars instead of domains and selling everything at what amounts to a loss year in, year out, some EU type of organisation would come along with an anti-dumping tariff to put an end to it. Why is it with tech companies that GoDaddy style business models are allowed to persist? Sure some of those losses are due to acquisitions, but, again, why can companies that don't make money allowed to buy up companies that do make money?

djloche 12y ago
In case you are serious about not getting it: you can operate at a loss in a number of situations: if you have profits in reserve, if you have available credit to float the difference in revenue, or a combination therein. You cannot bleed forever, only as long as you have capital to push onward. If you have access to a ton of credit, or have a ton of money in the bank, you can take losses for quite some time. I haven't looked too deeply at their internals, but some companies choose to (properly) mark down existing assets or investments on their books to current market value at certain times for strategic tax purposes. Eg. if you have a warehouse full of stuff you can't sell, but profit from other divisions the right thing to do is to write down those assets to market value (sometimes that is zero, but not always)
larrys 12y ago
"Why are companies like GoDaddy allowed to just lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year? " What do you mean "allowed"? You mean "allowed" by the government or "allowed" by investors who perhaps may know something that you don't? Investors make mistakes for sure and bet on the wrong horse. But if they are they are making a calculated risk by using information that you are not privy to or knowledge that you don't have. (And I can see from some of the comments on this post that is not unusual.)

jacquesm 12y ago

For some companies an IPO is the final frontier just before they really start to cook. For others it is the final round in a game of pass-the-buck. My hope is that it is the former, my fear is that it is the latter. Even Facebook eventually ended up above their IPO price so maybe GoDaddy won't do so bad. Give it a few years.

jhonovich 12y ago

They are losing money... and lots of it. Wow. GoDaddy has been around a long time, one would think they would be profitable (at least barely) by now. And they are going public with this?

onewaystreet 12y ago
Being a domain registrar is a terrible business. This is why GoDaddy has all those upsells.
- larrys 12y ago
  Nope. They were profitable prior to the buyout. Besides they don't make money on the domain registration they make it on selling other things (that you don't need in many cases) the domains are just an acquisition tool on that. A loss leader. They also have a domain buy service. A domain sale I just handled which came by that service netted them a $6000 fee for essentially contacting the other party (who I worked for) by email. (Don't use them would be my very strong suggestion.)
  - onewaystreet 12y ago
    >Besides they don't make money on the domain registration they make it on selling other things (that you don't need in many cases) the domains are just an acquisition tool on that. A loss leader. Those are the upsells I'm talking about.
beambot 12y ago
How did they get into a situation where they're losing >$200M per year -- and with only $100M cash in bank and $1B revenue? Even more perplexing... they recently took on $1B+ in debt, of which they immediately paid out 30% as a dividend to investors?! I'm not an expert or anything... but their "growth" story stinks; it looks like they're just trying to milk a dying cow. That, or I'm just way off base...
- gerbal 12y ago

larrys 12y ago

"The self-described “outspoken” executive called the quiet period “suffocating” and didn’t want to give up his weekly radio show, or other planned radio and TV appearances." Oh sure, right. As if he didn't know that when he got involved in the process and hired investment bankers.

sturmeh 12y ago

How do I purchase put options for an IPO?

gibybo 12y ago
The regulatory body that governs options restricts them for IPOs. There is a period of time (I believe it's 2 weeks) after IPO that options are not allowed to be traded in public markets, so you have to wait until then. At that point, you can buy puts from any full service brokerage (and many discount brokerages). If you are a sufficiently high net-worth individual or investing on behalf of a sufficiently large fund, you may be able to make a private deal with one of the investment banks participating in the IPO, but I don't know much about that.

marincounty 12y ago

I found there S-1 Registration statement insiteful--especially about competition, and how domain names are not as important as they used to be. I'm a customer of Godaddy because I'm a sucker for a bargain(99 cent names). I think the company would benefit if they stoped trying to outwit their customers; like stop changing the renew automatically, and don't assume I want to spend more than 1 year with you. Oh yea, we all know Godaddy is the big daddy in domain names--you don't need to spend countless millions on eye candy. I understand spending a lot on advertising in emerging markets, but not in the U.S.--pass those saving on to your customers. Yes--I know the Super Bowl ad put you in the game, but we know the system now--we know what you do, and when we are being gouged. My final thought is this, if you want repeat customers--stop playing tricks like pricey privacy options, holding domains hostage because they are a day late in payment, and constantly changing automatic billing settings. Bye--

dillon_easyeda 12y ago

I changed from GoDaddy to domainsite 5 years ago.

atm32s4 12y ago
Me too, it seems domainsite is acquired.

steve_benjamins 12y ago

We have 50 reader reviews of GoDaddys website builder at Site Builder Report. Of the 50 reviews, 48 have received the lowest possible rating (1 star out of 5). http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/reviews/godaddy/user-reviews http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/reviews/godaddy/user-review... No other website builder we cover is the target of as much outrage from readers.

hacknat 12y ago

Given who owns the company now, I'm pretty sure that they'll be looking for acquisitions to tack onto their upsell activity. Pretty sure that's what this IPO will do. GoDaddy will be buying some companies in a year.

zacharycohn 12y ago

Does that mean they have to stop being awful at PR (shooting elephants, objectification of women, etc)?