Newfold Digital is at it again. The ever-expanding website services giant continues its M&A power play with the acquisition of MarkMonitor. This week it announced it completed the purchase of the domain management company from Clarivate Plc – a deal first announced in September for $305.2 million.
As a domain management services provider, MarkMonitor deepens Newfold Digital’s bench as a holistic provider of website services. Following a string of M&A moves that have achieved similar, MarkMonitor brings greater capabilities as a domain registrar, thus covering more of the website IP lifecycle.
“Our mission at Newfold Digital is to help customers of all sizes thrive online,” Newfold CEO Sharon Rowlands tells Localogy Insider. “We do that by providing the world’s best web presence solutions. With our acquisition of MarkMonitor finalized, we have new products, services and talent to meet the needs of our enterprise and emerging large customers.”
Economies of Scale
Backing up, and returning to our power-play analogy, Newfold Digital continues to assemble capabilities as a web services powerhouse. That’s been its corporate development playbook from the starting gate. Besides gaining customers and capability it’s all about integrations and economies of scale.
MarkMonitor achieves this by expanding Newfold’s capabilities further upstream. In plainer terms, businesses need domains before they can start building websites. An ICANN-accredited registrar in its family of brands brings more of that capability in-house and buttresses Newfold’s offerings.
In addition to capabilities, this is also about gaining access to broader market segments. Newfold’s target market is already broad, but with an emphasis on SMBs. Having MarkMonitor officially in the mix now extends Newfold’s addressable market, given its focus and competency with Fortune 500 clients.
Best of Breed
Speaking of MarkMonitor’s strengths as a registrar, it was reported at the time the acquisition was announced that it was on pace to generate $80 million in revenue and $35 million in EBITDA this year. In terms of its go-to-market focus and customer base, it works with more than 2,000 clients globally.
Altogether, MarkMonitor joins several other players in Newfold’s portfolio, including Network Solutions, Web.com, Bluehost, Register.com and Domain.com. It represents the latest in Newfold’s playbook to ratchet up as a web-services market share leader, and its best-of-breed status emboldens that result.
“MarkMonitor is a brand with a reputation known for excellence, serving some of the biggest companies in the world and living up to that high standard every day,” said Rowlands. “We proudly welcome their team and customers to our roster of industry-leading brands.”
