Ancestry.com is being sold to European firm Permira for a whopping $1.6 billion. Not bad for a site that bases its entire existence on tracking a person’s family tree.
According to reports, Ancestry.com agreed to the 9.7 percent premium sales price on Monday. Ancestry.com first explored a sale in June; since that time, shares have skyrocked by 41 percent at the genealogy website .
Since going public in 2009, shares at Ancestry.com have more than doubled, attracting attention from various private equity firms.
Ancestry.com is a huge hoarder of data with more than 2 million paying subscribers, 10 billion records, and almost 40 million family trees.
Ancestry also owns websites MyFamily.com, ProGenealogists, and Rootsweb.com, genealogy software Family Tree Maker, and Footnote.com. The latter platform holds billions of image that contain various historical records.
Ancestry.com is a global company that operates websites throughout parts of Europe and in Australia, China, and Canada.
There are various family ancestry sites, but Ancestory.com has become a mainstream entity, going so far as to partner with NBC for the reality TV show Who Do You Think You Are? which helped celebrities trace their family genealogies.
Ancestry.com is also no stranger to controversy. The site came under fire last year when the social security numbers of recently deceased people were leaked through the company’s Social Security Master File.
How Permira will leverage Ancestry.com to earn back its $1.6 billion buy price is not yet known. With the ability to reach a large unique visitor base, it’s likely that much of Ancestry.com will continue with business as usual.
