Hosting company GoDaddy sets stock price at $20 per share in IPO

GoDaddy, a company that has carved out a large position for itself in the domain registration and web hosting markets, today priced shares of its stock at $20 in its initial public offering, ahead of the expected debut of company stock on the New York Stock Exchange later this week.

Reuters and SeekingAlpha initially reported on the pricing news, alongside tweets from CNBC and Investor’s Business Daily writer Brian Deagon. Renaissance Capital confirmed the figures.

The reports said the company sold 22 million of its shares, but several hours later GoDaddy officially announced in a statement that it had sold 23 million. That means GoDaddy has raised $460 million in the IPO before the shares become publicly traded.

Reuters pegged the company’s valuation at $4.5 billion.

The $20 figure exceeds the $17-$19 price range that GoDaddy set for its stock shares earlier this month.

The company’s S-1 filing originally became public in June 2014.

GoDaddy started in 1997. Its headquarters are in Scottsdale, Ariz. The company had 4,908 employees as of Dec. 31, and nearly 70 percent of them were on GoDaddy’s Customer Care team, according to a recently updated S-1 filing.

Private-equity groups KKR, Silver Lake, and TCV bought a controlling interest in GoDaddy for a reported $2.25 billion in 2011.

GoDaddy owns and operates a data center in Phoenix; it also keeps infrastructure in colocation facilities in Arizona, California, Illinois, Virginia, Singapore and the Netherlands, according to the updated filing.

Earlier this year, GoDaddy acquired Node.js startup Nodejitsu.