Miss Group strengthens market position in the Nordics with latest acquisition

International fast-growth web hosting business Miss Group has completed its second acquisition of 2023  – Norwegian domain registrar business Domene AS.

Domene AS is a Norwegian domain registrar which specialises in domain registration, web hosting and email services. Domene AS has over 10,000 customers and manages more than 16,000 domain names. The business reported FY22 billings growth of more than 25%.

Domene AS will join Miss Group’s portfolio of over 30 businesses, complementing its five existing brands across the Nordics.

Miss Group’s ambitious growth trajectory saw proforma billings for the year ending December 2022 reach €90 million with a 45% EBITDA margin and has excellent billings momentum heading into FY23.

Mattias Kaneteg, Miss Group’s founder and head of M&A, said: “We are extremely pleased to announce Miss Group’s second acquisition of the year in such quick succession to our first - Spanish web hosting business, Sered, which joined the Group earlier in January. We’re focused on accelerating our successful buy-and-build acquisition strategy in 2023, adding ambitious businesses that share the Group’s values on delivering excellent service to customers, as well as expanding our footprint in attractive global markets.”

Finn Krøvel, Domene’s founder and CEO, said: “We are happy to become part of a group that shares our passion for excellent customer care and continuous service improvement. We are confident that this combination will further enhance the experience and offering to our current and future customers.“

Finn Krøvel will leave the business post acquisition, with day-to-day management transitioning to Miss Group’s established management team.

Fredrik Björklund, co-founder and CEO of Miss Group, added: “Domene is an important acquisition for Miss Group; the business is well established in Norway and we are particularly excited to bring yet another Nordic-based business into our fold. Domene’s customers will benefit from access to Miss Group’s global suite of products and services, and we look forward to accelerating growth across the Domene business by leveraging the operating platform that we have established across the Nordic region.”

Perwyn, a European private equity company, acquired a majority position in Miss Group in February 2020 to support the growth ambitions of the business through international expansion and ongoing M&A. Domene takes the total number of acquisitions completed under Perwyn ownership to 15, and the total number of acquisitions completed by Miss Group since 2018 to 24.

Mark Blower, Partner at Perwyn and Miss Group board member, added: “Miss Group continues to achieve an extremely impressive growth trajectory and further internationalisation, having announced its last acquisition, in Spain, only a few weeks ago. We are delighted with the acquisition by Miss Group of Domene in Norway, further solidifying the company’s strong foothold in the Nordics which includes successful brands such as Hemsida24 in Sweden, as well as Domainkeskus and Seravo in Finland. We look forward to sustained growth at Miss Group, underpinned by both the team’s outstanding track record of delivery and execution, and our continued support.”

Domene was supported on this transaction by:

• Legal advice – Berngaard (Anders Storeng)
• Corporate advisory – Casico (Carsten Buch Sivertsen)

Miss Group was supported on this transaction by:

• Legal advice – Squire Patton Boggs (Matt Canipa, Mona Mojtabavi) and SANDS Advokatfirma DA (Erik Lind)
• Financial due diligence – EY (Steven Kingham and Jace Swift)
• Corporate advisory – Anecta / Translink Corporate Finance (Fredrik Ullberg, Sebastian Süllmann, Leif Larsen and Sander Helseth)

About Miss Group

Founded in 2014, Miss Group is an international web hosting group that offers a range of hosting related services at competitive prices including web hosting, domain registration, VPS, dedicated servers, website builder, SSL-Certificate, SEO Tools, web security and domain management. Miss Group is also an ICANN-accredited Domain Name registrar via Name ISP. Miss Group is a well-established operator in its core markets, with a customer service-oriented model driving industry-leading performance metrics for its >700,000 web hosting customers. The majority of Miss Group is owned by Perwyn, a European private equity company.