GoDaddy is on a shopping spree. Yesterday we reported that the domain and hosting company had bought WP Curve, a WordPress services startup to expand its WordPress support team.
And today the company has just announced a much bigger deal. GoDaddy has acquired European rival Host Europe Group (HEG) for $1.8 billion — including €605 million paid to existing Host Europe shareholders, and €1.08 billion in assumed debt.
HEG has 1.7 million customers throughout Europe, with more than 7 million domains under management. For comparison, GoDaddy’s most recently reported quarter ended with about 14.5 million customers and manages more than 63 million domains.
While this acquisition will obviously speed GoDaddy’s expansion throughout Europe, it’s already been in the process of expanding internationally. Prior to the acquisition, the company recently registered its one millionth .UK domain in the UK, and says that 25 percent of Britain’s domains are now registered through GoDaddy.
As a whole, last quarter GoDaddy reported $129.2 million in international revenue, which was up 21 percent year-over-year.
GoDaddy prides itself on generating revenue outside of traditional revenue streams like domain registration and hosting. This additional revenue mainly comes from “presence and business applications,” which are additional services they offer to small businesses — think SEO optimization, online marketing and even online bookkeeping.
If GoDaddy starts to offer these additional services to HEG’s customer base, they may have a shot at expanding both their revenue and presence in Europe much faster than originally planned.
