Ancestry.com to be sold for $1.6 billion

[Gerry]

Please keep in mind that this is the entire business being purchased, not just a domain name.

Many people view this mistakenly that someone is paying 1.6B for a domain name. No, they are buying a company for 1.6 billion.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/22/news/companies/ancestry-dot-com/index.html?hpt=hp_t3


Ancestry.com is a 15-year old company that went public in 2009. It has more than 2 million paying subscribers who can use the site to search more than 10 billion records. It has been profitable since going public.


However, these metrics show that the company is absolutely doing something right:

Based on recorded statements Ancestry.com Inc. is currently employing 994 people. This is 94.04% lower than that of Technology sector, and 65.3% lower than that of Internet Information Providers industry, The Number of Employees for all stocks is 91.42% higher than the company.


Essentially, those numbers are telling us how profitable this company is for its size which is very lean compared to other similar internet companies.

Ancestry.com is on pace to make $470 million this year (before adjusted earnings) with about $165m after adjusted earnings. So 1.6b looks like a very good purchase.

 

[Biggie]

dat's a lotta data being sold

 

[stewie]

interesting...... made me look at the charts... very interesting if anyone here follows the stock market check out the charts... 3month/year/3year chart.

http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=ACOM&iid=QB_MKTDATA


thanks for sharing this news

 

[Gerry]

interesting...... made me look at the charts... very interesting if anyone here follows the stock market check out the charts... 3month/year/3year chart.

http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=ACOM&iid=QB_MKTDATA


thanks for sharing this news

I do follow the charts. Sure, there's been ups and downs like anyone else but they seem to be on firm footing and rebound well.

The one year chart is pretty solid.

Take a look at this 12 month forecast:

http://markets.money.cnn.com/cgi-bin/upload.dll/file.png?z058a0f0az7114613f46254c5b9f71eafe64e1eece

 

[stewie]

seems strange they sold it for the price they did. Looks like a great buy without knowing all the details of the sale.

 

[Gerry]

seems strange they sold it for the price they did. Looks like a great buy without knowing all the details of the sale.

I guess over the years when you go from zero to 1.6 billion miles per hour...

At some point, I guess you are tempted to sell. 1.6 billion is very tempting. Plus, we're talking a company that went from nowhere to an IPO and nearly 2 million paying subscribers.

Quite impressive and obviously a very solid company. Like Amazon, we're talking about an internet based company that was at one time a mere start-up and is now its own brand.

Great story reading about the founding and success over the years. And appears to be a very, very stable company with several consecutive quarters of growth over the past few years all the while showing profit during recession.

 

[Poker]

Please keep in mind that this is the entire business being purchased, not just a domain name.

They do own many other ancestry extensions however all of which must be part of the sale.