After Web.com Group Inc. was bought out by a private equity firm in October, the company announced Friday that founder David Brown will retire as chief executive officer in early 2019.
Brown has been running the Jacksonville-based company since it started in 1997 and grown Web.com to $750 million in annual revenue.
Affiliates of Siris Capital Group LLC bought Web.com for about $2 billion, including the assumption of debt. The company said there would be no major changes in operation after the buyout but did not say at the time if Brown would stay on as CEO.
Web.com is continuing with plans to move into a new 218,700-square-foot headquarters building on Jacksonville’s Southside next year.
“Over the last 21 years, David Brown has successfully grown and evolved the company to a leading global provider of domain name registration and web presence services to millions of customers globally,” Siris Executive Partner and Web.com Chairman Robert Aquilina said in a news release.
Web.com expects to name a new CEO in the first quarter of 2019. Brown will stay with the company during a transition period to assist the new chief executive.