Tucows acquires wholesale domain registrar Ascio Technologies

Tucows Inc. (NASDAQ:TCX, TSX:TC) announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire wholesale domain name registrar Ascio Technologies from CSC®. The transaction closed yesterday.

Tucows will pay $29.44 million and the transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to operating cash flow. The purchase price will be funded through Tucows’ existing credit facility.

The acquisition of Ascio adds approximately 1.8 million domains under management and approximately 500 active resellers. The Ascio reseller base consists of ISPs, web hosting companies and website builders.

Tucows also operates 3 other wholesale and retail registrars: OpenSRS, Enom and Hover.

Ascio also expands Tucows’ product portfolio with one of the most complete offerings of country code TLDs (ccTLDs) and generic TLDs (gTLDs).

Jørgen Christensen, Managing Director of Ascio commented, “This deal is all about focus. We wanted to find a buyer who would focus on our resellers so that CSC can focus on managing brands for the biggest and best companies around the world.”

“This acquisition makes perfect sense for Ascio’s resellers, our business and our shareholders,” added David Woroch, Tucows’ Executive Vice President of Domains. “Ascio’s resellers get a customer-focused provider that is investing in its wholesale channel. Tucows gets an excellent business with a deeply experienced team, additional domain products, including more than 50 ccTLDs, and a high-quality customer base that strengthens our European presence.  And our shareholders get the benefit of Tucows’ even greater scale and efficiency as the world’s largest wholesale domain registrar.”

Ascio Technologies was founded in 1999, and is an accredited domain registrar under the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers with approximately 1.8 million domains under management. Ascio is a part of the family of brands under CSC. Pre-acquisition, the Ascio business generated approximately $4 million of annual EBITDA.

CSC provides business, legal, tax, and digital brand services to companies around the globe. It is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, USA, since 1899, and has offices throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.