GoDaddy Interviews Underwriters as it Prepares for IPO: WSJ

This post originally appeared on The WHIR.

GoDaddy is in the process of selecting underwriters for its IPO, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

If the rumors are true, it won’t be the first time GoDaddy has filed to go public. In 2006, GoDaddy filed for an IPO, dropping out due to poor performance of tech IPOs at the time. Years later, in 2011, GoDaddy was acquired by private investment firm Silver Lake Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures and KKR & Co for $2.25 billion.

Now, the landscape for tech IPOs is much different, with several hosting and cloud providers having gone public over the past few years. In October, Endurance International Group – the parent company of several popular hosting brands like HostGator and BlueHost – went public, raising only $250 million of an anticipated $400 million in its IPO. But since then its shares are up 18 percent, the WSJ reports.

This year has been a transformative year for GoDaddy, and it has made several moves indicative of a major shift at the company, trading in racy GoDaddy girls and its one-size-fits-all approach to focus more on the needs of the small business customer. Under its new CEO, Blake Irving, GoDaddy has grown through acquisitions, adding a number of new capabilities to its small business hosting offerings, and its acquisition of Media Temple helped it reach a new kind of hosting customer.

Beyond that, on the technology side, GoDaddy has been overhauling its hosting, recently rolling out upgrades to its Windows hosting, and Parallels Plesk support.

GoDaddy is not commenting on the report.

This post originally appeared at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/godaddy-interviews-underwriters-prepares-ipo-wsj.