Endurance International Said to Mull Strategic Options
Endurance International Said to Consider Options Including Sale
(Bloomberg) -- Internet hosting company Endurance International Group Holdings Inc. is considering strategic options, including a possible sale, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The company has held talks with potential advisers about options after peer Web.com Group Inc. was sold to Siris Capital Group in June, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Warburg Pincus and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which took the company public in 2013, remain Endurance’s largest shareholders, according to filings.
A final decision hasn’t been made and Endurance could elect to remain publicly traded, the people said.
Endurance’s stock rose as much as 7.3 percent to $10.30 in New York Monday, the first trading session since the plans were reported. Shares were up 4.1 percent to $10 at 11:15 a.m., valuing the company at $1.4 billion.
Representatives for Endurance, based in Burlington, Massachusetts, and Warburg Pincus and Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
Warburg Pincus and GS Capital Partners, the merchant banking arm of Goldman, agreed to buy a majority stake in Endurance from Accel-KKR in November 2011 for an undisclosed sum. The transaction was valued at $975 million, a person familiar with it said at the time. The firms raised $252 million from the initial public offering, at $12 a share, below its initial $400 million target. The stock fell 0.5 percent to $9.60 in New York trading Friday.
Endurance, founded in 1997 as Innovative Marketing Technologies, offers technology to help small and midsize businesses with email marketing, building a web presence and connecting with customers on social media, according to its website. Its brands include Bluehost and Domain.com.
To contact the reporters on this story: Kiel Porter in New York at kporter17@bloomberg.net;Alex Barinka in San Francisco at abarinka2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Fournier at efournier5@bloomberg.net, Michael Hytha, Matthew Monks
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