Skype sale
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
By Chris Marsh In August after only nine months since it was purchased from eBay ( EBAY ) by a group of investors Skype filed for an IPO. A closer look at the filing shows new revenue streams are the goal and the enterprise market a key target: We believe the business communications market represents a large opportunity for Skype. Approximately 37% of over 40,000 of our connected users surveyed in the first quarter of 2010 told us that they use our product platform occasionally or often for business-related purposes. We believe there is a significant opportunity to better serve the communications needs of the small and medium enterprise segment, as well as larger enterprise customers, by focusing on user needs in this market and developing additional products specifically tailored to business users.
Has Skype Scored a Bullseye in Enterprise Market? -- Seeking Alpha
Technology - Skype and Twitter name new chief executives
Twitter and Skype, two of the fastest-growing private internet companies , have appointed new chief executives as they look to reinforce their leadership ranks with more experienced business managers. Dick Costolo, who has won recognition in Silicon Valley for bringing a sharper business focus to Twitter since joining as chief operating officer a year ago, was named chief executive on Monday. He succeeds Evan Williams, a founder of the micro-blogging service, who said he would now focus all his attention instead on product development.
Facebook, Skype Poised to Announce Wide-Ranging Partnership | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD
You didn’t think Facebook would integrate with Google (GOOG) Voice, did you ? Actually, according to sources close to the situation, Facebook and Skype are poised to announce a significant and wide-ranging partnership that will include integration of SMS, voice chat and Facebook Connect. The move by the pair–which have tested small contact importer integrations before–is a natural one for the social networking giant, which is aiming to be the central communications and messaging platform for its users, across a range of media.Skype Files For $100 Million IPO
The document reports a loss of $368.6 million on revenue of $718.9 million for 2009, during which Skype spun off from eBay. Most of that loss was connected to Skype's huge legal settlement with its founders -- many more details about that here . Skype is still rapidly growing its user base: Its 560 million registered users figure is up 41% year-over-year. And it has 8.1 million paying users, up 23% year-over-year, who spend an average $96 per year.
EBay 's ( EBAY ) decision to spin off Skype, its phone-service-via-Internet unit, was greeted by approval from eBay's investors and analysts. But will Skype's initial public offering enjoy the same response? Things have sure changed since 2005, the last time Skype stood alone. The economic meltdown has nearly evaporated the IPO market. And Vonage ( VG ), the only company focused solely on Internet telephony to go public, has struggled mightily and trades for pennies. Skype lets people make free voice calls via their PCs to other Skype users and low-cost calls to regular phones.
Skype Growth Helps IPO Outlook - Investors.com
So if eBay considers the current consensus valuation of $2 billion for Skype to be low, but carries the company at a $1.7 billion valuation on its books, the question remains, what is the company really worth? Skype posted revenues of $153.2 million in the first quarter, putting it on pace for yearly revenues in excess of $600 million. The company has said it expects to generate more than $1 billion annually by 2011, and eBay executives said the gross profit margin for the company will be about 18 percent to 20 percent long term. Skype also has a user base of 443.2 million, but only generates about $1.30 per user annually. Based on Skype's current user base, its average revenue per user, and its projected gross margins, analysts argue that a $2 billion IPO is in line with estimated net earnings of $200 million for 2011.
What's Skype really worth? - FierceVoIP
The $3 Billion Question: Analysts Divided Over Skype’s Valuation | paidContent
Now that eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) has announced it is taking Skype public , the big question is how much investors will pony up for shares in the calling service — and analysts are all over the map with their answers. –Merill Lynch analyst Justin Post is by far the most bullish on Skype. Post says Skype is worth $2.2 billion today given his revenue forecasts — and that could grow to $3 billion by the time it goes public in 2010. But he also says that eBay may still be considering selling to private investors and may have floated the IPO plan as a bargaining chip for eBay. – The most conservative is Jeffries & Company analyst Youssef Squali, who values Skype at a mere $1 billion . Squali’s revenue and profit margin forecasts are less aggressive than those of the other analysts, but he does agree with his counterparts that shedding the Skype service will give eBay some needed cash and allow it to focus on what it does best — sell products.
Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More eBay has just announced that it has completed the sale of Skype , valuing the company at $2.75 billion. The investor consortium who is the buying party and will control an approximately 70 percent stake is a group led by Silver Lake Partners and includes Joltid (i.e. the company founded by Skype’s original founders) and “certain affiliated parties”, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz .
Breaking: eBay Completes Skype Sale At $2.75 Billion Valuation
Interesting to see ( in one of the above mentioned links ) that an analyst predicted a revenue of $786 million ( for 2010? I guess this was a typo, and they meant 2009 ) while I predicted in a private chat with some Skype fanatics $750 million for 2009 some days ago.
The valuation of Skype
Skype IPO
Strategy: 1) Continue to grow our connected and paying user base, 2) Increase usage of our free and paid products and extend our relationship with our users, 3) Develop new monetization models, including advertising and 4) Broaden our user base to include more business users by wallen Oct 25
H1 2010: revenues 400M$, gross margin 50%, Adjusted EBITDA 115M$ (28%), net income 13M$, 560M users, 124M active users, 8M paying, 700M$ debt by wallen Oct 25
Forecast: LT margin of 20%, revenues of 1bn$ in 2011 by wallen Oct 25
Q1 2009: 450M users, 1.3$ revenue per user, 150M revenues, valuation 2.75$bn (vs. 3.4bn$ in 2005) by wallen Oct 25