A billion dollar discount on Skype?

By Davey Winder
Monday, 13 April 2009 00:53

Technology

When the founders of Skype sold it to eBay for a total in excess of US $3 billion everyone thought it was the deal of the decade. Now it seems that might be yet to come if they can buy it back with a billion dollar discount.

It would appear that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Internet telephony outfit Skype, are busy raising the money required to buy back their baby from auction giants eBay.

eBay acquired Skype four years ago when it paid the European twosome some US $2.6 billion, followed by bonus payments which took the total to a staggering US $3.1 billion.

At the time of the eBay buyout, Skype had a respectable 53 million registered users. Today that figure has jumped to a rather more impressive 405 million. So why the possibility of selling for such a big loss in such a short time?

Well Skype may have gone on to acquire something in the region of eight percent of the total international calling minutes across the world according to industry analysts,  but revenues are hardly astronomical.

In the fourth quarter of 2008, for example, Skype could show just US $145 million in revenue courtesy to the low cost of those international 'Skype to non-Skype' minutes and the no cost of everything else.

Even the move into the business telephony market may have come too late to make make much difference to the bottom line figures for Skype.

Perhaps more importantly, Skype has never really been what you might call a great fit for eBay. The auction house CEO, John J.Donahoe has, says the New York Times "repeatedly signaled his willingness to sell Skype for the right price."

The paper also points out that Skype has "few synergies" with the eBay "core e-commerce and payments businesses."

I can't help but wonder how the small matter of Joltid, a Zennstrom and Friis founded concern, terminating the eBay license to use its P2P technologies used within the Skype service earlier this month might influence any potential negotiations?