Top Level Domain Holdings Limited raises US$10 million
03 June 2013
Kerman & Co LLP advised long-standing client Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (TLDH), on the placement of 110,375,276 new ordinary shares at a placing price of 6p per Ordinary Share raising US$10 million before expenses (equivalent to approximately £6.6 million million at current exchange rates).
TLDH intends to use the Placing proceeds to provide additional working capital and in particular, to provide additional funds to resolve contention sets, including participation in private or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) sponsored auctions of contested strings, where another applicant has also applied for the same gTLD as TLDH. ICANN has indicated that its auctions, which will occur if applicants cannot resolve contentions on their own, will begin in November 2013. TLDH also intends to use the Placing proceeds to support the launch and marketing of the .london domain, which TLDH currently expects will be in Q1 of 2014. TLDH is well underway in setting up core registry operations in Dublin, with additional operations being managed out of London.
TLDH has also arranged a conditional funding facility for one of its contested gTLD string application of up to US$15 million and is progressing discussions on similar non-recourse debt funding facilities for other contested gTLD applications.
TLDH is the only publicly traded company focused exclusively on acquiring and operating new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). TLDH has the largest portfolio of valuable non-contested geographic names with an aggregate population of over 50 million, comprising .london, .miami, .bayern, .nrw and .budapest. Of the 88 gTLDs applications for which TLDH either wholly owns or is serving as a registry service provider, 22 are uncontested (16 wholly owned by TLDH and 6 on behalf of its clients), 11 are currently in contention with a single other application, 17 are under contention with two other applicants and 38 are in contention with 3 or more applicants.
Fred Krueger, Chairman of TLDH, commented:
"Given the size of our portfolio of contended applications, today’s funding together with our other resources, places us in a strong position to participate in auctions and to significantly enhance the value of our portfolio of uncontested gTLDs which we expect will produce early revenues in the Sunrise Period – the inaugural event in each launch.”
Michael Corcoran, Partner and Asad Qayyum, Associate, from the Corporate & Capital Markets department advised Top Level Domain Holdings Limited on this transaction.