Ancestry.com is bought for $1.6B

A group of investment funds under the direction of Permira European private managed fund has agreed to buy the Ancestry.com project, which provides its customers with services to find ancestors - compiling a genealogical tree. The amount of the transaction is $1.6B, that is $32 per share.

Ancestry.com, the popular Western genealogical website, was founded in 1983 (the company then was called Provo). In the mid 90's the company switched over to the Internet space specializing in various kinds of digital archives - from the data on the elections in some country to the U.S. military records and data on ordinary people.

However, success and popularity came to the project when Ancestry invited people to search for their ancestors, relatives, friends, as well as became involved in the collection of genealogical data. Working in a very niche market leaves its mark - when searching for new users, apparent complexities appear within the resource, and therefore, the growth prospects are not too large. The only obvious step for the project development is its international expansion. Now the project focuses mainly on users from the United States and Canada.

According to the Western press, citing sources close to the deal, investors estimated the project on top of the offer, so it is possible to say that the previous Ancestry.com owners sold it at the highest price. In fact, Ancestry.com is purchased with a 40% premium to the market value of the company’s shares. Thus, the talks about the sale, which appeared in the early summer of 2012, were confirmed.

Ancestry.com now makes money providing paid access to its data.