Loading ...Greg Platz hasn’t yet ‘fessed up. But the CEO of ASX listed domain name company – Dark Blue Sea – will surely soon be announcing that the company now owns a valuable Australian domain name registrar license.
After all, there can be no doubt that Dark Blue Sea (DBS) has bought “a company in the emerging Australian expired domain name industry”. DBS revealed that itself last week in an official announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange.
DBS didn’t name the company it had bought, but George Pongas’ Domain8 is the only specialist service selling expired com.au and net.au domain names in the Australian market.
Indeed, a story in the Australian newspaper last Friday identified Domain8 as the company that DBS has bought.
Details of the deal announced to the ASX reveal that DBS has issued 2 million shares to the seller, and earnings incentives that could make the deal worth as much as $1.5million or more.
Platz cited regulatory concerns as the reason for not specifically naming Domain8.
“It’s got to be careful how it’s worded as their [are] rules and regulations related to the space and if it’s not done right, then there’s all sorts of regulatory questions that can come popping out.”
The rules and regulations to which Platz is referring are believed to be those of the Au Domain Administration Ltd. (auDA)
There are only 28 auDA licensed domain name registrars servicing the $100million local industry, and Domain8 is one of them.
When an auDA licensed registrar gets bought out the new owners have to jump through various of auDA’s legal and administrative hoops to take over the license.
Presumably that is why Platz hasn’t yet specifically named Domain8 as the company DBS has bought.
Of course, it is also possible that DBS has other reasons for not naming Domain8. The most obvious would be the fact that DBS perennial suitor, Photon Ltd, has announced another takeover bid.
The Sydney based advertising and marketing group owns about 30% of DBS shares and has been trying for some years to get control.
Indeed its latest failed attempt was only two months ago, in August this year, when none of the resolutions Photon put to an extraordinary general meeting of DBS were approved by shareholders.
Announced on the 2nd of October, Photon is offering 30c per share. The offer is conditional on Photon’s getting enough acceptances to increase its current 30% holding in DBS to a controlling 50.1% stake.
For more information go to
www.darkbluesea.com
www.photongroup.com
www.domain8.com.au
www.auda.org.au
www.theaustralian.news.com.au
Update: Monday 12th October
Dark Blue Sea CEO Greg Platz has confirmed that the business it has bought is indeed Domain 8′s expired domains business. But it hasn’t bought the entire company, nor all of its assets.
In response to our specific enquiry, Platz made it quite clear that DBS has not bought Domain8′s Australian dot.com regsitrar license.
“No, we haven’t bought the registrar license – only the expired domains business” he said.
However he confirmed that the purchase price could indeed be worth as much as $1.5million in total, if the business proves as profitable as hoped in the next year or two.
