Top Level Domain Holdings (TLDH) is a publicly traded company on the London AIM, the company came out with a press release today which details a lot of things going on for the company. It placed shares at 12pence and surprisingly traded up after the placement. Elliot Noss the CEO of Tucows will join the board, and they are doing a name change to Minds + Machines Limited
Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (“TLDH”, the “Company” or “Group”) announced today they raised £21 million (approximately US$33.6 million) conditionally raised from institutional and other investors
· Cash balances on completion in excess of approximately US$48 million with an additional US$15 million available to compete in a single private auction
· Elliot Noss, President and CEO of Tucows, Inc (NASDAQ:TCX) to join Board as a non-executive director
· Company to be re-named Minds + Machines Limited to reflect transition to a full operating business
The Board of Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (AIM:TLDH.L), is delighted to announce that the Company has today conditionally placed 175,000,000 new ordinary shares (the “Ordinary Shares”) through N+1 Singer as broker to the Company at a placing price of 12p per Ordinary Share (the “Placing Price”) with institutional and other investors to raise £21 million before expenses (equivalent to approximately US$33.6 million at current exchange rates) subject to admission (the “Placing”).
The Company intends to use the Placing proceeds to continue developing its registry and registrar operations, Minds + Machines LLC and Minds + Machines Registrar Limited, as well as to provide additional funding for participation in the relevant private auction rounds for the 43 contested generic top-level domain (“gTLD”) applications in which TLDH has an interest.
The Company believes private auctions provide a significant opportunity for the Company both to increase the number of high-value gTLDs within its portfolio and to generate cash from those gTLDs which it chooses to relinquish. Under the private auction process, the winning bid is divided equally and paid to the losing applicants net of the auctioneer’s fees.
The new Ordinary Shares being issued pursuant to the Placing will, on issue, rank pari passu with the existing Ordinary Shares in issue and application will be made for the new Ordinary Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM. Trading in the new Ordinary Shares on AIM is expected to commence on or around 5 February 2014.
Status of operations and available cash
TLDH was the fourth largest new gTLD programme applicant after Donuts, Inc., Google, Inc., and Amazon, Inc. having submitted 92 new gTLD applications on behalf of itself and its clients in 2012. TLDH has subsequently established itself as one of the major participants in the Internet governing body’s new gTLD programme and currently has interests in 24 uncontested gTLD applications, which it is progressing to operational launch through its wholly-owned registry services business, Minds + Machines Limited. TLDH is also developing its global network of registrars through which names in the new domains can be sold to the public. The Company is further extending its sales channel reach through the recent launch of its wholly-owned registrar business, Minds + Machines Registrar Limited, and priority reservation service, OPENdb. Launched in November 2013, the industry and consumer interest in priority reservations continues to be strong.
TLDH also has a further 43 wholly-owned new gTLD applications which are in contention with one or more applicants for the following strings:
| .app | .art | .baby | .beauty |
| .blog | .book | .cloud | .coupon |
| .cpa | .cricket | .data | .dds |
| .deals | .design | .dog | .eco |
| .fashion | .flowers | .garden | .gay |
| .green | .home | .hotel | .immo |
| .inc | .latino | .law | .llc |
| .love | .pizza | .property | .realestate |
| .restaurant | .school | .site | .soccer |
| .store | .style | .tech | .video |
| .vip | .wedding | .yoga |
As indicated above, the Company intends to use the Placing proceeds to provide additional funding for participation in the relevant private auction rounds for the contested generic top-level domain (“gTLD”) applications in which TLDH has an interest.
On completion of the Placing, the Company’s cash balances will increase to in excess of US$48 million (approximately £30 million). In addition, as previously announced, the Company also has a funding facility in place for up to US$15 million (equivalent to approximately £9.4 million) to support its participation in a single prospective auction for one contested gTLD. The Directors therefore believe the Company is now very well positioned to participate fully in the auctions and maximise the value of the contested gTLD applications in which the Company is interested.
In addition, the Company has an interest in a further 10 contested applications listed below, seven of which are third party client applications and three of which are joint venture applications with the Federation Internationale de Basketball (.basketball), the International Rugby Board (.rugby) and Tucows, Inc. (.group).
| .basketball | .broadway | .casino |
| .group | .music | .poker |
| .radio | .rugby | .tickets |
| .tube |
Board Changes
As part of the Company’s impending transition from an investment company to a full operating business, the Board is also delighted to announce that, subject to the satisfactory completion of standard regulatory checks in compliance with the AIM Rules, Mr Elliot Noss has agreed to join the Board of TLDH as a non-executive director. Mr Noss is President and CEO of Tucows, Inc (NASDAQ:TCX), one of the largest domain registrars.
Mr Guy Elliott will at the same time step down from the Board. Mr Elliott was a founding director of the Company and has played a key role in the development of the Company’s portfolio of gTLD investments.
The Company is now fully focused on commercialising its gTLD assets through its registry, registrar and registry service provider operations.
As a result, the Board intends to implement fully a number of changes to the way in which TLDH is managed which will have the effect of changing the status of the Company from an investing company under the AIM Rules to an operating company with a material trading activity.
As part of this transition, the Directors intend to change the name of the Company to Minds + Machines Limited, the same name as the Company’s 100 per cent. owned subsidiaries, operating in Ireland and the United Kingdom. The Directors believe the change of name will benefit stakeholder communications and branding significantly.
The change to an operating company with a material trading activity would be classified as reverse takeover of the Company under the AIM Rules and therefore would be conditional, inter alia, upon the approval of Shareholders at the Meeting of Shareholders. The Company is at an advanced stage of preparation of a circular to shareholders and a further announcement is expected to be made during February.
Following the issue of the new Ordinary Shares, the Company’s issued share capital will consist of 825,558,522 Ordinary Shares, with voting rights. This figure may be used by shareholders in the Company as the denominator for the calculation by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the Financial Conduct Authority’s Disclosure and Transparency Rules.
Are these the same people that last month stated:
“Dot Com is Dead” ?
Thanks in advance.
Yes, Fred Krueger
Fred actually said in 10 Years .com will be dead.
Hello Mhb,
The Traffic Markets have a very disturbing trend gaining momentum domestically and Globally.
Strategic .COM URL Centric Marketing or direct Navigation to .COM Profit Centers continues to grab Market Share.
Emerging Market .COM business Models are increasingly bypassing Search Engines for their Traffic, in China, Russia, and India, an unerving development to all Search Engine Centric Marketing. Much more unabridged coverage on this unfolding phenomenon shortly, on Domain Kings Joint Venture Group/LinkedIn .
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
No1 Dot Com
“The Traffic Markets have a very disturbing trend gaining momentum domestically and Globally.”
Translation from mambo-jumbo: We are getting nervous about the loss of traffic to traditional and outdated destinations online.
“Strategic .COM URL Centric Marketing or direct Navigation to .COM Profit Centers continues to grab Market Share.”
Translation in plain English: We continue to eulogize the same old, same old without paying attention to the oncoming tsunami.
“Emerging Market .COM business Models are increasingly bypassing Search Engines for their Traffic, in China, Russia, and India, an unerving development to all Search Engine Centric Marketing.”
Translation for the non-gifted folks: We don’t need Google, and we will hold our breath underwater – however long it takes.
TGIF.
Michael:
The title says ” is dead” not “it will be”
as reported by Elliot’s DomianInvesting DOT COM
on December 8th, 2013, on regards to their Facebook page Ad…
sounds and smells like backpedaling…
heh
.COM could go up 10x in value overall and probably 90% of the people cheerleading on the blogs with comments like “yay .com #1” it would have no effect on… they only wish they could ride that coat tail.
most “domainers” own shitty domains like USeBiz.com (ok, probably as crappy as usebiz)
and SOME of the people that DO own good .COM domains – that like to talk a lot – and used to be really interesting to read their blogs – these day sound WAY too defensive to take seriously. (im not referring to this blog)
cause lemme ask you all something:
if you’re 6’5″ and 250lbs of pure muscle – when there’s a random little kid in your face telling you he can kick your ass – do you respond to that in a defensive manner? probably not, because its not a threat right?
the thing is, if you AREN’T admitting you’re at least unsure of whats going to happen this time around with THIS MANY gTLD you’re being naive or you’re full of poop. go ahead and reference .MOBI, .BIZ, and .INFO all day long pretending that has anything to do with the SCALE of whats happening now.
go ahead guys, make fun of the niche, limited, specific nature of the keywords some of these gTLD operators applied for, pretending their failure will somehow mean your .COM portfolio’s success. it doesn’t. thats like thinking some newbie domainer that registers 5,000 worthless domains and then drops them all 1 year later means ANYTHING towards your success.
its pretty ironic people that try to get hundreds of thousands of dollars (or 1+million) for every .COM sale and have only sold a handful in 15 years would criticize gTLD operators trying to get $12,000 during a 24 hour period. yeah, the nerve of those guys trying to maximize profit.
this all sounds and smells like a bit of uncertainty and underlying worry to me.
.tube .video and .tv (already established), interesting. Google would probably give .tube domains away.
@interwebs: yes there is a lot of uncertainty, but I am patient and realize there’s plenty of time to see how things unfold.
I can understand thinking: more (gtlds)=more attention=success. I can ‘understand’ that thinking; I just believe differently, based on parallels in other life experiences. I’ve seen this movie before and we haven’t gotten past the opening credits yet. There are lots of legitimate concerns on many levels. So yes a lot of people, including myself, are critical and rightfully so. Critical, not threatened.
@Ramahn
thats fair.
but it seems like more of a “threat” than domainers registering crap domains in .COM or .NET, in weird niches, and trying to claim they are gold on the forums… and that stuff has been going on all along.
yet when people are allowed to create unlimited TLD’s (which was completely unexpected to almost everyone) that gets responded to by nearly everyone in the industry and also getting outside publication by mainstream outlets well beyond the level .MOBI, .INFO, .BIZ ever received. it may be a timing thing mostly or it may be just the “large scale” aspect of it.. probably some of both.
yeah, a lot is hype. but so is demanding $1,000,000 for a great .COM domain that never had anything developed on it. if you can convince the buyer its worth that, cool. dotCOM dominate and familiar to nearly everyone, so its sort of a take it or leave it sort of thing. pay it or do without it.
its a monopoly and some domainers thrived on that strategy, cool… power to everyone that was online back then and took the calculated risk to register even a few generics… even if they dropped them later because they doubted themselves. it takes a certain personality to push that aside… that doesn’t mean that personality is maintained throughout the years.
people become arrogant/complacent and thats a lot of what we’re seeing now i think.
Michael Berkens wrote:
“Fred actually said in 10 Years .com will be dead.”
While saying “in 10 Years .com will be dead” at least gives one time to not have to provide any proof for that statement, if .COM does indeed die, then it’s safe to say that the Internet as a whole will die as well.
What will more than likely really happen though is what is already happening. Large sites (like Facebook, for example) will attract more and more of the Internet population, while medium and smaller sites will see their traffic shrink to inconsequential amounts.
The same happens in any industry. Lots of choices in the beginning, with fewer but larger consolidated choices as an industry matures.
What’s interesting about the gTLDs is that they’re attempting to buck this trend and do what isn’t common in the evolution of any industry… to all at once bring a lot of choices into the mix while that industry is already maturing.
While of course it’s possible to attempt to do that, especially in an industry that deals with intangibles, what you end up with is a lot of sites, (if they are indeed developed), that will never find any amount of success. So this illusion that people need more choices through the gTLDs will prove false.
But in the end at least ICANN and the registrars will profit nicely. So if that happens, mission accomplished.
yeah but, it doesn’t really matter if people NEED more choices.
they’re here and available now. are half of them going to fail and disappear and be removed from the root? is that really likely? that still leaves 500 more.. .aero and .museum still exists guys…
the debate whether we need them and whether they’re going to get noticed is weird at this point in time. its like debating whether we need a massive tornado while its happening. too late!
@ontheinterweb
I didn’t say half or even 1% would fail. I guess you didn’t quite understand my post.
Comparing the gTLDs to a natural disaster is an interesting thought, though.
Grim,
i guess i didnt. what did your post mean?
a tornado gets noticed, a few .mobi .biz rain drops dont.
@ontheinterweb
Most people don’t mind a few rain drops. But pretty much everyone hates tornadoes. For that reason, good job, the analogy seems to work.
Although it would be wrong of me to say that I hate the gTLDs. I just don’t see much reason for them… other than as a cash machine for ICANN and a hopefully plentiful return on their investment for the registrars.
Most other wise and sensible people should stay away, unless they want to suffer the same loss and consequences that a tornado would offer. (I’m really starting to like that analogy.)
i see them as completely different angles though… like if 1,000 shops opened at once in a small town… is that a smart business decision? probably not but why would i care about that or put any thought into it..
regular people arnt thinking, gee… “i bet a lot of these will fail or not do very well.”
choice/options to them are only a benefit. even if only 1 person decides to use that option it exist now and people will see it exists just from the scale of things this time…
.mobi, .biz, .tel, .travel, .pro, .museum, … at least to me those are not a few extensions and tries to push the segmentation of internet content. sure the scale this time is huge. which means that at least more money will be burnt and at a faster rate than ever before…
ontheinterweb wrote:
“…but why would i care about that or put any thought into it.”
I finally get it. You don’t care about the gTLDs or whether they will fail or not. But what you do care about is showing everyone how much you don’t care. Thanks for clearing that up, it makes perfect sense now.
huh?
im saying whether there are 100 or 1,000 gTLD the first barrier has always been trying to not seem so .weird and that wasnt going to happen with 1 or 2 or 5 outsiders (.mobi, .biz, .pro, .travel, etc..)
almost everyone’s argument up until now is using a .biz or .info you’re the weird kid on the block… when .this .that and .anything exists all together at once it breaks that particular barrier. are people actually still arguing about that part? why?
the tornado analogy was only used for the “getting noticed” portion. it doesnt actually destroy anything for the consumer.
people talking about more money burnt are mostly jealous that money isnt going in their pocket. domainers pretending they care what someone does with the domain after they sell it for 6 figures – hilarious.
theres a great blog post entitled:
“Memo To Domainers – Stay Away From New gTLDs…They’re Not For You”
that sums things up pretty good.
ontheinterweb has a hate on for domainers since his venture into it failed. i’m sure he’d love nothing more than to see domainer portfolios lose some of their worth, knock them down an inch or two. at least this is how he often comes off. he is the energizer bunny cheerleader for gtlds on this blog.
pfffffff
wake up, pay attention to whats actually happening, what im saying is meaningless sideline chatter. im a person with less than 30 domains. lots more people with LOTS more to lose than i have..
its fun being able to talk about something you’ve observed for a long time and have people put their emotions out in the open. some people can speak more freely than others.
you’re right tho, maybe i should just dominate the comments on all the blogs like super user Metal Tiger… from now on ill copy and paste and never post a thought of my own again.
suckas
metal tiger is mentally afflicted and really should seek help, you’re not though. most people have reasons for their bias. if i was not highly invested in domain names i couldn’t care less about what happens with gtlds. so what is your reason for caring so much? i’m not trying to say you shouldn’t comment or shouldn’t have a certain point of view. i’m simply wondering as i have before why you have chosen to become such a defender for gtlds.
i bought lots of .mobi early on during landrush. i no longer have but like 10 of those… didnt lose money but didnt make much.
i see why .mobi or any other single TLD didnt work out.
i will say tho, nobody would or should recommend to get “new TLD” off the ground that 100 different companies should apply for their own… but thats what happened so thats why i mention “its not my money so whatever”
seems like plenty of money will be wasted and i dont really mean it in such a selfish way… domaining in new gTLD is uncertain. they’ll get noticed this time though, may not be worth the $$$ the registries had to pay for this whole PR machine.