Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

GoDaddy Files For $100 Million IPO

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed dept.

mpicpp (3454017) writes with news that GoDaddy has filed to make an initial public offering "This is the second time GoDaddy has tried to go public. It went this route back in 2006, but then backed out when it didn't get the pricing it wanted." The SEC Filing indicates that they are not in the greatest financial condition. Quoting CNN: "GoDaddy hasn't made a profit since 2009. The company lost $279 million in 2012. It bled another $200 million last year. This year doesn't look much better, with another $51 million lost in the first quarter." Founder Bob Parsons, currently executive chairman, will be stepping down but remaining on the board of directors.

6 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. sounds dire by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    An IPO that, even if successful, would cover only 6 months of their burn rate?

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    1. Re:sounds dire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I assure you, it's a real site. You may want to check for malware. Anyways, they're a bad registrar and they supported SOPA.

      https://medium.com/cyber-security/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-24eb09e026dd

  2. Another bubble by rodrigoandrade · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is going to make top Go Daddy execs millionaires, and every other stockholder gets screwed after the execs flip and the stock tumbles down in the months following said IPO.

    Protip: NEVER enter an IPO, no matter how awesome you think the company is. Wait and see how the stock performs over an extended period.

  3. Not profitable by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The SEC Filing indicates that they are not in the greatest financial condition.

    Shocking. They sell an aggressively priced commodity product and spend a ton on stupid sexist advertising to people who aren't their customers. Their customer service sucks and their website (last I checked) is a hot mess. While I haven't read their prospectus I don't really see them ever being more than modestly profitable at best. They seem to be taking an Amazon business model - growing now and worrying about profits down the road. But unlike Amazon the economic barriers to competition are quite a bit lower.

    1. Re:Not profitable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree except that you left out one minor point. They do not actually offer any product other than serving web pages on an emasculated platform.

      They do have one thing going for them. If they go belly up then the number of "websites" being served by MS server software will plummet precipitously. I suspect some folks in Redmond are looking at this and doing some back of the envelope calculations to figure out how much it is worth in advertising to be able to say they serve more "websites" than apache.

    2. Re:Not profitable by HangingChad · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Their customer service sucks and their website (last I checked) is a hot mess.

      Slashdot moderation needs an Understatement rating. GoDaddy is to domain registrars what Comcast is to the cable industry.

      --
      That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage