EBay Announces IPO for Skype in First Half of 2010

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 14, 2009 - 11:05am.

San Jose, Calif. - Online auctioneer eBay (NASD: EBAY) announced on Tuesday that it plans to spin-off its Skype Internet telephone unit in an initial public offering in the first half of 2010. "Skype is a great stand-alone business with strong fundamentals and accelerating momentum," said eBay president and CEO John Donahoe. "But it's clear that Skype has limited synergies with eBay and PayPal. We believe operating Skype as a stand-alone publicly traded company is the best path for maximizing its potential."

"This will give Skype the focus and resources required to continue its growth and effectively compete in online voice and video communications. In addition, separating Skype will allow eBay to focus entirely on our two core growth engines -- e-commerce and online payments -- and deliver long-term value to our stockholders."

The company said its decision follows a plan outlined last April by Donahoe, in which he said eBay would spend a year evaluating Skype's synergy with the company.

The news comes amid reports that the two co-founders of Skype -- Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis -- who sold their venture to eBay for $2.6 billion four years ago, are looking to raise funds to repurchase the company from eBay.

EBay noted that Skype now counts 405 million registered users, and that Skype for iPhone has been downloaded over 2 million times in just over a week -- putting it on more than 6% of all iPhones and iPod touch devices, and adding nearly half a million new Skype users.

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http://www.skype.com