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Skype Files For IPO
helix2301 writes with news that Skype has filed plans with the SEC for an initial public offering. From TechCrunch:
"According to the filing, Skype's revenues for the first six months of 2010 were $406 million, with a net income of only $13 million. But a big portion of that was from interest income. That is only a 3 percent net margin, and this isn't exactly a new business. Its income from operations was only $1.4 million for the six months. However, its gross margins are 51 percent, and have been expanding steadily as the company benefits from the scale of is operations and is able to negotiate lower telephone termination fees around the world."
Skype to distribute protocol based on millisecond trades of own stock, Voice Over IPO.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I'm a long-time Skype user, and while it isn't my favorite application, it certainly works, and connects me to people around the world (for work). Good luck, Skype. I do hope this brings plenty of improvements and functionality. If not, we'll use something else!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
so this is the moment skype starts to get serious as a business? they already f*cked up royally by losing the social networking scene to FB, when they had a huge head start. They could have made awesome phones years ago, but blew it with those crappy handsets. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I still haven't seen the full skype client for android and webos. At any rate, this has been a company with so much promise for so long--I can only guess that fiasco with the "joltid" dudes is responsible for these screw-ups.
Be prepared for an increase in tariffs and other hidden fees.
There are exactly 2 reasons for a company to do an IPO:
One involves injecting a large amount of capital into aggressive growth. Does anyone see any particular way how Skype COULD grow agressively?
The second one involves robbing unsuspecting investors of their money.
...at the end of the article:
part of Skype's strategy will be to:...Develop new monetization models, including advertising."
That doesn't sound good. Skype is quite useful to me at the moment (for both VOIP and IM), but if advertising gets in the way, I won't be very happy.
But on the other hand, I guess I use a combination of hosts-file blocking and adblock/flashblock with my browser, so Skype's intrusions will just get added to the counter-measures I take.
I tried to call my broker to buy some shares. Comcast picked that moment to throttle my traffic so the connection got a bit "wonky". Now I own 10,000,000 shares of SCO.
I'm boned.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Actually, I've never wondered that. It's pronounced the same way as "Type" or "Hype" - it's not like they made up a strange new spelling combination.
Dear Slashdot (and TechCrunch for that matter), please don't switch to financial analysis just yet. The statement "But a big portion of that was from interest income." is both misleading (why focus on this portion of the financial statement as opposed to the operational part?) and incorrect (net financial result is actually a loss of about $4.3M). Additionally, when you say that "this isn't exactly a new business", that implies that there is lack of growth and the 3% return on revenue is somewhat indicative of future potential, while in the very next sentence you show that there was over 50% growth in revenue.
This IPO couldn't come a moment too soon - my Vonage share certificates were starting to get pretty soggy and smelly. Switching to Skype shares will freshen up the cage and make my birds much happier.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
ok, prakslash.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The service is great. I pay $35 for unlimited calling across Canada and the US. It's a no brainer for me. Working from home? No problem, I make all the conference calls I want without tying up the home phone. Need to phone mom long distance? No problem. Working from my girlfriend's place where there's no landline? No problem.
There is the occasional issue. Sometimes (rarely), calls drop. Sometimes (very rarely) there is a number somewhere in the US I can't call. Honestly the biggest problem I have is that my number comes up weird on call display, so there's times when people I'm phoning don't answer because they think I'm some telemarketer, but really that's just my own fault for not shelling out $14 for some Skype credits so they can send an SMS message to my cell phone to confirm that they can use my cell number for call display.
Really their problem is they need to advertise better. When I tell people what I pay for my service, they immediately say "Holy crap that's cheap!" Most people just don't know it's out there, or if they do, they think it's only for Skype-to-Skype calling, and don't know you can call regular phones with it.
It would be nice if they had Skype-In support here (Canada), but really for what I'm paying, I can hardly complain. I easily am recouping in long distance savings what I'm paying out. It is not very hard to rack up $35 in long distance charges in a year otherwise.
"Hello. Welcome to skype call testing services..."
or something like that. They have no excuse.
they should fix the goddamn security issues and start having decent CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
Starting in 2007, I was a loyal skypeout customer, plunking something like 75 to 100 USD/mo into my skype account and even buying dedicated skype hardware (I have an ipevo skype handset). However, last month someone apparently broke into my account, twice, and successfully charged my CC for skypeout credit into a different account! Not big deal (my bank reversed the charge), however, skype's own customer support proved to be totally incompetent tracking the issue or even acknowledging that there is a problem. They lost me as a customer.
To be successful, skype needs paying customers. Unless they come to their senses and fix the glaring security problems (their forums are full of stories like mine) and implement a real customer support system (no, one email reply per day is NOT C.S.) , they won't attract and keep too many of them customers.
Vonage's IPO was a disaster with their stock price dropping +20% the following day of their IPO. Investors sued and Business 2.0 Magazine awarded that IPO as the 14th of 101 Dumbest Moments in Business for 2006.
I wonder what measures Skype has taken to mitigate such risk?
Yawn. Most companies are going to claim this. Next!
They want to charge for video calling, even though Oovoo and others offer it for free? Good luck, unless you're going to split it into free group calling or do a freemium model (certain group calling features are limited to paid users).
They want to make more money off of the people who aren't paying for Skype. I predict more ads and third party ads within the Skype application.
This is where the money could be useful: scaling up development and investing in new technologies and getting businesses aware. This requires people and time, which takes money. Right now, Skype isn't big in the corporate world from what I've seen, with big warnings from my company not to install it (and heavy filtering on anything Skype related). If they compromise and possibly allow a business client that keeps within the network for anything that isn't a call to an outgoing line (and maybe integrates with the desktop app), I could see Skype getting a major foothold.
Just some observations. I'm not wowed by this IPO either, and the lack of specificity of how they're going to spend the money makes me wonder if they've even gotten that far yet.
One factor behind the IPO might be cashing out while business is still good. An eight hundred pound gorilla is entering this ring. Google bought out Gizmo5 last year, ostensibly to beef up Google Voice. Rumors were that Google wanted a desktop VOIP program that would rival Skype. Recently, there has been reports of a leaked prototype app. Last year, it was possible set up a hardware phone to work directly with Google Voice but that door was closed by Google. However, that opens the possibility of Google Voice being made available for hardware phones via an ATA. Google is dedicated to Google Voice because it's their door into the mobile phone/Android market and if they can datamine your phone calls using voice recognition, then they'd be making freaking gold for their search apps.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/