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Nine's Domain dereliction

The Nine merger was a terrible deal for Fairfax shareholders and the enmity which then festered between the Fairfax-Nine directors facilitated the unforgivable drift of Domain, the group’s primary growth asset.

Joe Aston |
Nine's Domain dereliction
Nick Falloon, then Nine’s deputy chairman, and Mike Sneesby, then Nine CEO, at the media company's annual general meeting in November 2021. Photo: James Brickwood.

A concrete offer for digital real estate marketplace Domain materialised on Friday after at least 18 months of private equity tyre-kicking. Andy Florance's Nasdaq-listed CoStar slapped a $4.20 per share bid on the table, more than seven years since Domain shares traded at $3.98 on its listing day in November 2017. Seven lost years.

Domain's life as a public company under the stewardship of Nine Entertainment Co has been, in a word, underwhelming. 

When Fairfax Media floated Domain, it was generating 27 per cent of the earnings of its direct competitor REA and that ratio was reflected in the two companies' respective market capitalisations ($2.3 billion versus $9.6 billion).

This month, Domain reported 15 per cent of the interim EBITDA reported by REA and until CoStar's impending offer disturbed both share prices, Domain's market cap was less than 5 per cent of REA's. That is not a typo. Five per cent: a reflection of the market's (perfectly reasonable) lack of confidence in Domain's ongoing ability to compete.