eBay is selling a 65% stake in Skype for $1.9 billion in cash and a $125 million note, reversing a 2005 acquisition that had puzzled analysts, the auction site announced yesterday.
Led by private equity firm Silver Lake, the group of investors buying the stake includes Index Ventures, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Andreessen Horowitz, the new $300 million fund set up by Web pioneer Marc Andreessen.
The deal values Skype at $2.75 billion. The voice over IP (VoIP) telephony service lets people make free or cheap voice and video calls on computers and cell phones.
"We think Skype definitely is a viable standalone business," Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian said. "It has clear market-share leadership and the margins have turned positive."
Skype's revenue rose 25% percent to $170 million in the most recent quarter.
Earlier this year eBay said it would spin off Skype, after struggling to justify its 2005 acquisition of the company for $2.6 billion. The hope had been that buyers and sellers on the eBay auction site would use it to communicate, but the practice never took off. In 2007 eBay took a $900 million write-down on Skype in tacit acknowledgment that it had overvalued the business.
eBay's stock has rallied nearly 60% this year, at least in part because of the announced spinoff.
Sources: Tech Trader Daily blog, Forbes.com, The Associated Press
