The popular internet domain extensions.xxx, .porn, .sex and .adult have a new home starting Friday, after the Santa Monica, California, internet marketing firm Minds and Machines — also known as MMX – announced that it bought out the previous owner of those top level domains, ICM Registry.
According a report on the internet business news site Domain Name Wire, MMX paid $10 million in cash plus another $31 million in stock shares to acquire ICM, which reported sales $7.27 million last year.
MMX also owns 28 other top level domains, with over 1.4 million registrations, the company says.
The founder of ICM Registry, Stuart Lawley, now becomes the single largest shareholder in MMX, controlling 15 percent of the companies shares, Domain Name Wire reported on Friday morning. Five other top ICM executives will also become “meaningful” shareholders, according to a statement issued by MMX.
“Having successfully built and sold several technology businesses throughout my career in other consolidating markets, it became clear over the last few years that ICM’s business, shareholders and employees would be best served as part of a larger group with the corresponding resources, vision, opportunities and obvious cost savings that would bring,” Lawley said, explaining the decision to sell the company.
After a lengthy legal battle and an investment of more than $3 million, Lawley and ICM were finally able to register the .xxx top level domain in 2011, according to a report in the Palm Beach Post. ICM is based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
The business of adult domains has been a good one for ICM, which turned about $3,5 million in profit last year, according to the MMX statement issued Friday.
“We don’t run any of the sites,” Lawley told the Palm Beach newspaper. “The customers who register the names build and run the sites like they do in .com. We supply the names only.” He had earlier described the .xxx top level domain as “a clean space for dirty content.”
Lawley praised the domain’s new owners, MMX, on Friday.
“We believe they are the ideal stewards for the ICM properties going forwards,” he said. “With our specialty top level domains, there goes great reward but also great responsibility, so we had to be very careful about who we chose to carry that torch going forward. I am delighted it will be Minds and Machines.”
Image: MMX.co
