LONDON (Alliance News) - Minds + Machines Group Ltd Friday said it has reached two outsourcing agreements that it said will allow it to reboot its business as a "pure-play, high-value registry group with dramatically reduced overheads," as it looks to downsize its technical and registrar operations.
The first agreement is with Nominet, a non-profit domain name registry which operates the .uk domain, to take over the technical back-end registry functions for up to 28 top level domains in Minds + Machines portfolio. Commercial terms of the agreement cannot be disclosed, Minds + Machines said.
The company expects that, subject to normal approvals from the Internet Corp for Assigned Names & Numbers, and also from clients, the technical operation for up to 28 top level domains, including .london and .work, will be transitioned to Nominet before the end of the year, during which time Minds + Machines will reduce its in-house technical operations.
The second agreement is with Uniregistar Corp, part of Uniregistry Inc, which operates a number of top level domains including .audio and .help.
Under this agreement Uniregistrar will take over the loss-making consumer facing www.mindsandmachines.com branded registrar operation.
Minds + Machines' registrar will transfer its customer accounts to Uniregistrar, in return for a perpetual commission to Minds + Machines over the life of the accounts. This transition is expected to begin in the next three months, subject to ICANN approval, during which time it will reduce its in-house registrar operations.
"These two transactions allow us to reboot our business as a pure-play, high-value registry group with dramatically reduced overheads," said Chief Executive Officer Toby Hall in a statement.
"Firstly, the Nominet agreement provides us with the flexibility to now significantly scale the business, on economically sure-footing, safe in the knowledge our domains will be running on a world-class platform. Secondly, the Uniregistry agreement sends a definitive message out to the registrar channel that we are here to partner, not compete, while ensuring existing customers of our consumer-facing registrar are migrated onto an award-winning platform. As such, we believe these two agreements will transform our operations and cost-base," Hall added.
Shares in Minds + Machines were up 7.1% at 9.24 pence Friday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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