PROVO, Utah, April 25, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ancestry.com
Inc. (Nasdaq:ACOM) announced today it has entered into a
definitive agreement to acquire Archives.com, a family
history website, for approximately $100 million in cash and
assumed liabilities.
This transaction will enable Ancestry.com to add a
differentiated service targeted to a complementary segment of
the growing family history category. In addition,
Ancestry.com will welcome a team of talented engineers,
digital marketers, and family history innovators into the
Ancestry.com fold and also gain access to a proprietary
technology platform that has supported Archives.com's
rapid growth.
Archives.com is owned and operated by Inflection LLC, a
Silicon Valley-based technology company. Since
Archives.com's launch in January 2010, the site has
rapidly grown to more than 380,000 paying subscribers who pay
approximately $39.95 a year. Archives.com offers access to
over 2.1 billion historical records, including birth records,
obituaries, immigration and passenger lists, historical
newspapers, and U.S. and U.K. Censuses.
"Archives.com has built a fantastic and fast-growing
business that we think is highly complementary to
Ancestry.com's online family history offering,"
said Tim Sullivan, President and Chief Executive Officer of
Ancestry.com. "We love their focus on making family
history simple and affordable, and we are excited to help the
talented Archives.com team continue to grow alongside
Ancestry.com, Fold3.com, and Family Tree Maker."
"Family history remains a dynamic and growing online
category," added Sullivan. "Archives.com's
focus is consistent with our mission to help everyone
discover, preserve and share their family history, which will
help continue our efforts in delivering amazing discoveries
to an even broader audience."
Over the past two years, Archives.com has partnered with
multiple well-known family history organizations that have
helped build out Archives.com robust collection of family
history records. Most recently, Archives.com partnered with
the U.S. National Archives to provide free digital access to
the recently released 1940 U.S. Federal Census.
"We are proud of the experience we've built with
Archives.com and believe strongly in its future
potential," said Matthew Monahan, CEO and Co-Founder of
Inflection. "Combining with Ancestry.com positions
Archives.com to best capitalize on that potential, pairing
complementary visions of the marketplace and the opportunity.
We've long admired Ancestry.com's content and
technology and the innovations that the Ancestry.com team
continues to bring to market. We're excited to see how
this transaction expands the reach of family history to an
even larger audience."
Upon completion of the transaction, which is subject to
customary closing conditions, including expiration of the HSR
waiting period, Ancestry.com will continue to operate
Archives.com separately retaining its brand and website.
Multiple Inflection employees, including key product and
engineering executives are expected to join the Ancestry.com
team.
Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq:ACOM) is the world's largest online family history resource, with more than 1.8 million paying subscribers. More than 9 billion records have been added to the site in the past 15 years. Ancestry users have created more than 34 million family treescontaining approximately 4 billion profiles. In addition to its flagship site, Ancestry.com offers several localized Web sites designed to empower people to discover, preserve and share their family history.
About Archives.comArchives.com is a leading family history website that makes discovering family history simple and affordable. The company has assembled more than 2.1 billion historical records all in a single location. Archives also partners with other leading family history websites to provide a comprehensive resource for researching your family history. Archives.com is free to try for seven days, allowing anyone to explore the benefits of membership without risk or obligation. For more information and to start discovering your family history, please visit http://www.archives.com/.
About InflectionInflectionis a Big Data and e-commerce startup headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley. Leveraging its proprietary technology platform, the company has built innovative data services like Archives.com, PeopleSmart.com, and Identity.com. Inflection was founded in 2006 and is backed by tier-one venture capitalists Matrix Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures.
Forward-looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. These
statements relate to future events or to future financial
performance and involve known and unknown risks,
uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual
results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to
be materially different from those anticipated in these
forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify
forward-looking statements by the use of words such as
"appears," "may," "designed,"
"expect," "intend," "focus,"
"seek," "anticipate,"
"believe," "estimate,"
"predict," "potential,"
"should," "continue" or "work"
or the negative
of these terms or other comparable terminology. These
statements include statements concerning among other things,
the proposed transaction between Ancestry.com and
Archives.com, including the consummation and anticipated
timing of the transaction as well as the expected benefits of
the proposed transaction, and the effects of the proposed
transaction on Ancestry.com, our subscriber base or reach.
These forwar-dlooking statements are based on information
available to us as of the date of this press release.
Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and
uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ
materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking
statements. Such risks and uncertainties include a variety of
factors, some of which are beyond our control. In particular,
such risks and uncertainties include the risk that the
transaction does not close when anticipated, or at all;
difficulties encountered in integrating acquired businesses
and retaining customers, and the additional difficulty of
integration when continuing the acquired operation; the
adverse impact of competitive product announcements; failure
to achieve anticipated revenues and operating performance;
changes in overall economic conditions; the loss of key
employees; competitors' actions; pricing and gross
margin pressures; inability to control costs and expenses;
and significant litigation.
Information concerning additional factors that could cause
results to differ materially from those projected in the
forward-looking statements is contained under the caption
"Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K
for the year ended December 31,
2011, and in discussions in other of our SEC filings. These
forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as
representing our views as of any subsequent date and we
assume no obligation to publicly update or revise these
forward- looking statements for any reason, whether as a
result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
CONTACT: Investors: Ancestry.com Inc. Deborah Crawford (801) 705-7942
dcrawford@ancestry.com
Media: Ancestry.com Inc. Heather Erickson (801) 705-7104
herickson@ancestry.com
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