Skype Looking for IPO (EBAY)

Almost everyone in the world knows about Skype. After eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) sold off a majority stake to a private equity group, the company had been valued at roughly $2.75 billion.  We have no clue yet what the valuation will be, but Wall Street is going to find out soon.  Skype has filed for an initial public offering.

The real-time Internet communications giant did not disclose the shares offered nor a price range for the offering have not yet been determined. The filing lists for the sale of up to $100 million, but that is merely for filing purposes and may be grossly different by the IPO date.

Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley will be the joint global coordinators as well as joint book-running managers for the offering. Other firms listed in the underwriting group are BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank as joint book-running managers’ co-managers are listed as Lazard Capital Markets, RBC Capital Markets, UBS Securities, Allen & Co. and Evercore Group.

Skype grew its registered user base from 397 million to 560 million from June 30, 2009 to June 30, 2010;  it grew its average monthly connected users from 91 million to 124 million.  Its average monthly paying users grew from 6.6 million to 8.1 million users.

In the first six months of 2010, Skype posted $406.2 million in revenues and adjusted EBITDA was $115.8 million.

It was in November, 2009 that eBay completed its sale of the majority stake. The company retained close to 30% and it received about $1.9 billion in cash and a $125 million note from the buyers; eBay also purchased senior debt securities with a face value of $50 million as part of a Skype debt financing.

It is a wonder why we had not seen a filing yet anyhow.  It was just last week that eBay, Skype, IDT, and Net2Phone settled their legal disputes and patent cases.

JON C. OGG