The Clearlake Capital Group rollups keep rolling up. The announced acquisition of Endurance International Group (EIG) was completed February 10, 2021 for $3 billion. The interesting news is the creation of Newfold Digital, PR Newswire, Clearlake Completes Acquisition of Endurance International Group and Strategic Investment Transactions With Web.com and Affiliates of Siris; Announces Formation of Newfold Digital:”In partnership with Siris Capital Group, LLC (“Siris”), Clearlake also announced the formation of Newfold Digital through the combination of Endurance Web Presence and Web.com Group, Inc. (“Web”). Newfold Digital will be led by Web CEO and President Sharon Rowlands and Web CFO Christina Clohecy.”

This is going to be a monster of a hosting company. I see one and only one competitor in Newfold’s sights, and that would be GoDaddy (market cap of $14 billion). On a tangent, looking up today’s market cap showed some an interesting 52-week factoid. GoDaddy actually hit a 52-wk low of $40.25/share but is now trading near its all time highs ~$83/share. On another tangent, this is going to put increasing pressure on Automattic and WP Engine to go public. If we take into account significant increases in ARR for both of these companies in 2020, there could be IPOs in the $10 billion range. I’m really throwing numbers around here but with valuation estimates in 2019/2020 of $3 billion for Automattic and $1 billion for WP Engine these will be enormous offerings.