Gardens’ ICM Registry acquired for $41M

Provider of .xxx, .sex sites sold to British firm Minds + Machines.

PALM BEACH GARDENS — The Internet company that sells .xxx, .sex and .porn websites has a new owner.

Privately-held ICM Registry of Palm Beach Gardens said May 4 that British firm Minds + Machines Group paid $10 million in cash and $31 million in stock for the company. Minds + Machines trades on the London Stock Exchange and runs a number of niche domains, including .miami, .london, .fit and .fashion.

Stuart Lawley, the founder of ICM Registry, said his company needed the backing of a larger firm “with the corresponding resources, vision, opportunities and obvious cost savings that would bring.” ICM Registry doesn’t sell directly to purveyors of porn. Instead, it sells domain names through providers such as GoDaddy.com.

“We don’t run any of the sites,” Lawley said. “The customers who register the names build and run the sites like they do in .com. We supply the names only.”

It’s a small but profitable business. Minds + Machines said the same day ICM Registry turned a profit of $3.5 million in 2017 on revenue of $7.3 million.

Lawley spent years and millions in legal fees to establish the .xxx domain. He had to persuade the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which the U.S. government established in 1998 to run the internet’s address system, to establish the dotxxx domain.

Lawley was awarded the .xxx domain in 2011. By selling sought after addresses, ICM has cashed in big paydays. Lawley sold gay. xxx for $500,000, while fetish. xxx fetched $300,000 and shemales.xxx earned $200,000. In 2014, ICM Registry sold sex.xxx for $3 million.

The most-trafficked sites provided by ICM Registry include xxx.xxx and sex.sex, Lawley said.

In a 2012 interview with the Palm Beach Post, Lawley called .xxx “a clean space for dirty content.” He promised stricter policing of domain-name registration than for dot-com sites. For instance, ICM verifies the identity of those who buy sites. Once the site is up and running, ICM runs regular security checks to make sure the sites aren’t spewing out viruses and malware.

And ICM promised .xxx sites show no images of children being abused.

“Anybody can get a dot-com for $10 a year,” he said. “There’s no certainty, no protection, no nothing. The consumer can go there knowing the dot-triple-x sites are the safest anywhere on the internet.”

ICM Registry has just five fulltime employees and three parttime employees, according to the announcement.

“Low overhead and recurring revenue has always been my interest in business,” Lawley said in 2012. “And this has both.”

Lawley’s next project? A blockchain venture.

‘We don’t run any of the sites. The customers who register the names build and run the siteslike they do in .com. We supply the names only.’