Tuesday, April 14, 2009
eBay Spinning Off Skype
Skype was mentioned again in the mobile presentation Monday, and eBay just announced that they will spin off Skype next year through an IPO. As most of you are aware, eBay has struggled to justify the price they paid for Skype and they later had to write down much of that value, and this "un-doing" of the acquisition is due to limited synergies with eBay's other services. However, Skype is still growing at a rapid pace, and it'll be interesting to see how this IPO will go down, especially during the current economic environment with very few IPOs taking place.
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Apparently they announced it after the NASDAQ closed. EBay's share price didn't climbed despite as you said all WS analysts have claimed that EBay's share has been affected by the lack of synergies between both businesses.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting also to see how management will start thinking on other ways to monetize this business now that they will have shareholders to worry about as a stand alone company. I think we will start hearing some news about it.
I am also interested to see how they monetize Skype. I believe the spin-off is a wonderful idea as the management and execution of the two services require very different competitencies. I always thought the justification for acquisition was a little light on the eBay side and this divestiture does not surprise me at all.
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