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Valuation of Public Hosting Companies - November 17, 2014

Summarized below are estimates of the relative valuations of some public companies that have significant hosting operations. Please be aware that a number of these companies have other businesses that may also affect their valuations. (All data was taken from publicly available financial statements and please see this post for how we calculate Enterprise Value.)

 * - The financial data for most of the above companies is as of 9/30/2014. United Internet and Melbourne are as of 6/30/14. Iomart is as of 3/31/2014.

As always, please feel free to contact us if you have any comments, or questions.

Cheval Capital, Inc.

Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes and is not meant to be taken as financial advice, a recommendation to buy or sell the stocks mentioned above, a comprehensive discussion of valuation or how to do the calculations discussed. Please be sure to consult your financial advisors when valuing your company, considering the sale of your business or making other financial decisions.

Author: Hillary Stiff is Managing Director of Cheval Capital. She has been an investment banker and CFO, completing M&A transactions and arranging financing for a number of companies including NTT/Verio, The Endurance International Group and Web.Com among many others. She has helped complete over 270 successful web hosting, ISP and related transactions and distributes a list of hosting and related companies that are for sale.

Hillary Stiff Speaking At HostingCon Europe

Hillary Stiff will be speaking at HostingCon Europe in Amsterdam on October 15.  The panel will look at Hosting Metrics and how they can help a hoster run their business, raise capital or get a better valuation when it comes time to sell.  The panel will also look at how a hoster can go about tracking the numbers necessary for such metrics.

Other panelists include Tenko Nikolov, CEO of Siteground and Erik Logtenberg, CEO of Vevida Services bv.

Please let us know if you will be attending as we'd be happy to get together.

Related articles

Valuation of HostEurope's Third Offer for Iomart

It looks like the third time was the charm as Iomart, after rejecting HostEurope's first two offers, has entered into acquisition discussions based on HostEurope's third offer of 300 pence per share. In an earlier post we looked at the valuation of HostEurope's first two offers.  The current offer of 300 pence, by our figures, puts the Enterprise Value of Iomart at approximately GBP 350mm, approximately 15x 2014 fiscal EBITDA.  (Note that Iomart's fiscal year ended March 31, 2014 which likely makes the 15x EBITDA multiple higher than if it were based on current EBITDA.)

Please feel free to contact us with any questions. 

Author: Hillary Stiff is Managing Director of Cheval Capital. She has been an investment banker and CFO, completing M&A transactions and arranging financing for a number of companies including NTT/Verio, The Endurance International Group and Web.Com among many others. She has helped complete over 250 successful web hosting, ISP and related transactions and distributes a list of hosting and related companies that are for sale.

DISCLAIMER: This summary is for general information purposes and is not meant to be taken as financial advice, a recommendation to buy or sell companies or a comprehensive discussion of the risks involved in buying or selling a company. Please be sure to consult your legal and financial advisors when considering the purchase or sale of a business or completing other financial transactions. Cheval Capital assumes no responsibility or liability for any of the information contained herein.

Valuation of HostEurope Offers To Buy Iomart

Last week Iomart PLC (IOM.L) announced that it has rejected two purchase offers from Host Europe Holdings Ltd. 

The offers were at 275 pence and 285 pence or about 14x trailing EBITDA. For context, here is our most recent set of valuation estimates for other publicly traded hosters.

UK law gives HostEurope until August 21 to increase its offer or walk away.

Author: Hillary Stiff is Managing Director of Cheval Capital. She has been an investment banker and CFO, completing M&A transactions and arranging financing for a number of companies including NTT/Verio, The Endurance International Group and Web.Com among many others.  She has helped complete over 250 successful web hosting, ISP and related transactions and distributes a list of hosting and related companies that are for sale.

DISCLAIMER: This summary is for general information purposes and is not meant to be taken as financial advice, a recommendation to buy or sell companies or a comprehensive discussion of the risks involved in buying or selling a company.  Please be sure to consult your legal and financial advisors when considering the purchase or sale of a business or completing other financial transactions.  Cheval Capital assumes no responsibility or liability for any of the information contained herein.

Valuation of Public Hosting Companies - June 10, 2014

Summarized below are estimates of the relative valuations of some public companies that have significant hosting operations. Please be aware that a number of these companies have other businesses that may also affect their valuations. (All data was taken from publicly available financial statements and please see this post for how we calculate Enterprise Value.)

* - Melbourne IT's large cash balance may distort the Enterprise Value calculation.

** - GoDaddy's recent S1 filing does not include valuation information.

As always, please feel free to contact us if you have any comments, or questions.

Cheval Capital, Inc.

Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes and is not meant to be taken as financial advice, a recommendation to buy or sell the stocks mentioned above, a comprehensive discussion of valuation or how to do the calculations discussed. Please be sure to consult your financial advisors when valuing your company, considering the sale of your business or making other financial decisions.

Hillary Stiff Speaking at HostingCon 2014

Hillary will be speaking at HostingCon 2014 in Miami.  

Her panel, "Understanding Valuation - How the Big Guys Do It", is on Monday, June 16th at 2:15pm.

Also on the panel is Greg Wong, SVP of Corporate Development for Web.com, Jeff King, General Manager of Hosting, Commerce and Security at Go Daddy and Eric Cooney, President and CEO of Internap.

Valuation of Public Hosting Companies - March 19, 2014

Summarized below are estimates of the relative valuations of some public companies that have significant hosting operations. Please be aware that a number of these companies have other businesses that may also affect their valuations. (All data was taken from publicly available financial statements and please see this post for how we calculate Enterprise Value.)

Note - Melbourne IT's large cash balance may distort its valuation ratios.

As always, please feel free to contact us if you have any comments, or questions.

Cheval Capital, Inc.

Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes and is not meant to be taken as financial advice, a recommendation to buy or sell the stocks mentioned above, a comprehensive discussion of valuation or how to do the calculations discussed. Please be sure to consult your financial advisors when valuing your company, considering the sale of your business or making other financial decisions.

Valuation of Public Hosting Companies - February 21, 2014

 

Summarized below are estimates of the relative valuations of some public companies that have significant hosting operations. Please be aware that a number of these companies have other businesses that may also affect their valuations. (All data was taken from publicly available financial statements and please see this post for how we calculate Enterprise Value.)

As always, please feel free to contact us if you have any comments, or questions.

Cheval Capital, Inc.

Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes and is not meant to be taken as financial advice, a recommendation to buy or sell the stocks mentioned above, a comprehensive discussion of valuation or how to do the calculations discussed. Please be sure to consult your financial advisors when valuing your company, considering the sale of your business or making other financial decisions.

WIX IPO Valuation - Final

Congratulations to the folks at WIX on the completion of their IPO.  It was priced Wednesday at $16.50/share and closed yesterday at $16.56/share.  Our estimated valuation (assuming no exercise of the underwriters overallotment option) is an Enterprise Value of approximately $680 million, approximately 8x annualized revenues (based on the Q3 2013.) Their EBITDA is too low to produce a meaningful EBITDA multiple.

Wix is in the category of new shared hosters that have emerged over the last few years that feature an easy to use but advanced website design tool much like Weebly, SquareSpace, etc. These hosters offer use of their design tool for free and while some offer free basic hosting, all offer paid shared hosting services.  These services have been growing rapidly and represent one of the few strong growth sectors in shared hosting.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any comments, or questions.

Cheval Capital, Inc.

Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes and is not meant to be taken as financial advice, a recommendation to buy or sell the stocks mentioned above, a comprehensive discussion of valuation or how to do the calculations discussed. Please be sure to consult your financial advisors when valuing your company, considering the sale of your business or making other financial decisions.

 

Endurance IPO Valuation - Final

A final note on the valuation of Endurance (EIGI) on its IPO.  Based on its trading price this morning of $11.20/share, it looks like their IPO valuation came out at approximtely $2.3bn, or 10.5x trailing, annualized EBITDA and 4.5x trailing, annualized revenues. 

Please note that this calculation does not include any impact from (1) their pending $100-$100 million DirectI acquisition; or (2) any exercise of the underwriters overallotment (Greenshoe) option.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any comments, or questions.

Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes and is not meant to be taken as financial advice, a recommendation to buy or sell the stocks mentioned above, a comprehensive discussion of valuation or how to do the calculations discussed. Please be sure to consult your financial advisors when valuing your company, considering the sale of your business or making other financial decisions.

Endurance IPO priced at $12/share - EIGI

The Endurance IPO was priced last night at $12/share (below the $14.00-$16.00 range estimated in their SEC filings) and the deal size was lowered to 21.05M shares from 23.39M shares.  This reduces my earlier estimate of their valuation to roughly $2.4bn or 11x EBITDA.  I will update this with a more precise figure once the final SEC docs are released.

Trading will likely start mid-morning today under the ticker EIGI.

Please treat this as a preliminary estimate as there are a number of assumptions in this calculation that can have a meaningful impact on the final valuation. (In particular, the valuation does not include exercise of the underwriters 15% overallotment option, the Directi acquisition or the impact of outstanding Employee options.)  

Please feel free to contact us if you have any comments, or questions.

Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes and is not meant to be taken as financial advice, a recommendation to buy or sell the stocks mentioned above, a comprehensive discussion of valuation or how to do the calculations discussed. Please be sure to consult your financial advisors when valuing your company, considering the sale of your business or making other financial decisions.

 

Wix - Estimated IPO Valuation - REVISED

REVISED: The values below have been adjusted to include the impact of outstanding in-the-money options and warrants.

The offering is expected during the week of 11/4/13.

Wix, an Israeli company that offers a free website design tool together with shared hosting, updated its IPO documents to include an estimated offering price range.  At the midpoint of this range, their Enterprise Value would be approximately $630 million or more than 7x annualized revenues (based on the Q3 2013.) (Their EBITDA is too low to produce a meaningful valuation.)

Wix is in the category of new shared hosters that have emerged over the last few years that feature an easy to use but advanced website design tool much like Weebly, SquareSpace, etc. These hosters offer use of their design tool for free and while some offer free basic hosting, all offer paid shared hosting services.  These services have been growing rapidly and represent one of the few strong growth sectors in shared hosting.

Please treat this as a very preliminary estimate as there are a number of assumptions in this calculation that can have a meaningful impact on the final valuation. (In particular, the valuation does not include exercise of the underwriters 15% overallotment option or the impact of outstanding Employee options.)  As we get more information we will update our estimates.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any comments, or questions.

Cheval Capital, Inc.

Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes and is not meant to be taken as financial advice, a recommendation to buy or sell the stocks mentioned above, a comprehensive discussion of valuation or how to do the calculations discussed. Please be sure to consult your financial advisors when valuing your company, considering the sale of your business or making other financial decisions.

 

Cheval Capital is a registered Broker-Dealer and member of FINRA (www.finra.org) and SIPC (www.sipc.org.)