The Anti-GoDaddy Stock Trade (WWWW)

You have probably heard of the GoDaddy.com “outage” which has taken place today.  The hacker collective Anonymous has taken credit for taking down the GoDaddy website.  As GoDaddy claims to be the internet’s largest domain registrar, today’s outage is taking down more websites than can easily be counted.  There may be a trade here for investors, but there is a huge caveat.

The company Web.com Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: WWWW) is almost worth $800 million and it competes head to head with GoDaddy for domain registration and for website hosting, design services, online marketing, ecommerce, and many other online features services for small and mid-sized businesses.

If one company is suddenly under attack, that is good for the rival company.  It is particularly good if that rival is a public company like Web.com is and while GoDaddy has decided to remain private.  BUT… again there is a huge caveat.  If Anonymous goes after Web.com in the same manner that it did with GoDaddy and if it succeeds, then all that “goodwill” ambition by the public will disappear just as fast as at GoDaddy.

A Twitter search shows that claim from Anonymous… “By using / supporting Godaddy, you are supporting censorship of the Internet.”

GoDaddy noted on its own Twitter Feed… “We’re aware of the issues people are experiencing and we’re still working on it. Thanks for your patience… As an FYI, we’re still working hard to get this resolved quickly… We’re working on it as fast as we can. Thanks so much for your patience and understanding.”

Web.com’s stock is still down 1.5% at $16.94 on the day and its 52-week trading range is $6.47 to $19.72.

Again, this is the backside of a competitor’s woe, but if this is or becomes the subject of the same sort of hack then all bets are off!

Caveat Emptor…

JON C. OGG