Skype To Float - 10/8/10
Posted by Cloud Net on Tue, Aug 10, 2010 @ 03:16 AM
Skype has filed documents with the Securities and Exchange
Commission in America to allow it to make an initial public offering of its shares.
Skype describes itself in the documents as “a software-based communications platform that offers high-quality, easy-to-use tools for both consumers and businesses to communicate and collaborate globally through voice, video and text conversations. …We have 124 million connected users and our users placed 95 billion calling minutes over Skype in the first half of 2010, approximately 40% of which were video. Skype can be downloaded onto computers, mobile phones and other connected devices for free at www.skype.com.”
Skype was owned by eBay until 2009 having paid $2.6bn for the company. They sold a majority stake to an investor group in November 2009 in a deal worth $2.75bn to an investor group lead by a company called Silver Lake. Ebay kept a 35% stake.
The flotation will be jointly co-ordinated by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley. A preliminary prospectus will be available from Goldman Sachs but is not available yet.
Skype have around 50m active users using the service every day (as opposed to the 124 million cited above). They make around $100m profit a year. ($44m 2007, $117m 2008, $76m 2009).
It seems that the offering of the shares will be a limited affair designed to give liquidity for the company and assign value to the shares allowing the company to use stock for amongst other things, incentivising employees and give a capability to raise further funding if needed. It will become more obvious once the prospectus is released.
Although Skype has tried several forays into the business arena it continues to be almost purely a consumer to consumer brand insisting as it does on prepayment for calls. SIP continues to be the preferred model for business, such as that offered by Cloud Net, which gives the benefits of free calls within the network plus billing on account and complete PBX functionality.
It will be interesting to watch the long term battle between the proprietary Skype and the open SIP protocols. It will also be interesting to see an open market valuation for Skype which will then be put into a context for share prices for other large telecoms providers such as BT and AT&T .
Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net