Skype Files For IPO 87
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."
Doh (Score:1)
I read the headline as "Skype Fails for IPO"
Reading fail.
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I read the headline as "Skype Fails for IPO"
Prophetic. [google.com] without the hardware.
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oy.
Secret new project (Score:5, Funny)
Skype to distribute protocol based on millisecond trades of own stock, Voice Over IPO.
Good Luck, Skype (Score:5, Funny)
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Perhaps... I just wish they stay a good service offering competition to the phone companies. With their mobile apps finally being available without special accounts my husband can finally call his home country mobile phones relatively cheaply from anywhere.
As an IPO, there's a risk they'll become part of the oligiopoly.
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Re:Good Luck, Skype (Score:4, Informative)
We'll see how this goes!
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They are actually looking forward to the IPO so that they can spend some of the initial capital making some (to use his words) "much needed improvements."
Over the last 20 years, I can't help but notice that every time they have an IPO, to make some "much needed improvements", all the original founders start driving really expensive cars and move into very different neighborhoods. Not that I blame them, but part of me always thinks that an IPO is always planned to happen at the zenith of their theoretical w
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The Skype founders got their pretty cars when Ebay payed $1 billion for the company.
That's the record Meg Whitman is running for governor of California on.
The beneficiaries of the current IPO will be the private equity group that picked up the pieces from Ebay.
Re:Good Luck, Skype (Score:4, Informative)
The Skype founders got their pretty cars when Ebay payed $1 billion for the company.
Actually, they paid $2.6 Billion [cnn.com]..
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Without the IPO (or a buyout by some larger company), it is very hard for the investors to see any gains. Of course
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Well, if the company was making a decent profit, then the investors would get their return in dividends, which would also make the company easier to sell whole to other investors. But for companies that size (multi-billion) it isn't that easy to find buyers, granted. Many companies never IPO and do fine, but they rely on being actually profitable.
Dividends can be a bad sign (Score:2)
Well, if the company was making a decent profit, then the investors would get their return in dividends,
A company only should pay a dividend if the company believes the return on investment the company can make is less than the return the shareholders can make on their own with other investments. In other words, paying a dividend is normally an admission that the company is a shitty or slow growing investment. If a pre-IPO company is paying a dividend they are basically saying you can do better with this money than we can by reinvesting it in the company. No less an authority than Warren Buffet frowns on p
Two words : File Sharing. (Score:2)
I'd recommend they add friend-to-friend file sharing with blind encrypted peer-to-peer caching, kinda like Freenet. And then mock the system up as a social networking site, i.e. photos are given special features, but arbitrary filetypes are supported.
They'd immediately gain hard core file sharers because solid friend-to-friend systems are immune to the MafIAA. All those file sharers would serve as their basis for beating Facebook.
Skype mobile apps are problematic (Score:2)
There are good examples how you can be even more successful and none of them involves around any money.
Skype's own clients on mobile devices are really problematic and third parties (read as:free coders) like Fring, which is a giant on mobile scene have been treated really bad recently.
I personally use Nimbuzz but removed Skype from its profiles as connection was always shaky (for some reason) with Skype servers. So, I decided to install their "official" version, a nice attempt but a giant in terms of Symbi
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maybe?
Hello world (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hello world (Score:4, Insightful)
Not every web service with a social function needs to be Facebook.
Not all great software needs bespoke hardware. Ubiquitous software abhors it.
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Not every web service needs to be Facebook, but regardless, just about every web service organized as a business wants to be Facebook.
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In scale and finances, yes. In nature, no. Nobody got to be a trillionaire making own-brand cornflakes, and they certainly shouldn't try when they have a successful business as the nation's go-to oatmeal company, if you'll pardon the metaphor.
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He said full version. Dunno about yours, but my Skype only works over Verizon's connection, with WiFi not allowed to be used.
Re:Hello world (Score:4, Informative)
That's because they did a deal with Verizon for exclusive Skype on Android. The really troubling thing is that there's no determination as to how long this will be.
I have somewhat marginal cell coverage in my home from T-mobile. When using my N900 it is not a big deal thanks to the incredible Skype integration. I just set the "forward when unreachable" call forwarding (**62*) to my Skype-in number and it works like butter. With my Galaxy-S, not only can't I get skype, but it seems that the Verizon version will never let you use WiFi for calling. That makes it worthless for me.
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If skype doesn't want our business, maybe it's time we move on to some other client that works on Android and works over WiFi & 3g...
Enough supporting companies trying to screw us...
WhyTF did they block Fringe?!
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Since I don't know where you're calling I can't directly argue the rate, but for me Google Voice is [marginally] cheaper, and is built into the dialer in Android phones. Skype's big draw for me was the ability to make calls when I had wifi but no cell service, so Skype's Android client, even if it were available on my non-Verizon phone, would be completely useless. No problem though, because I picked up Fring, which allowed Skype-out calls over wifi. Then Skype told them to cut it out, and they dropped Sk
friend-to-friend file sharing (Score:2)
I agree, they needed a file (photo) sharing feature. Ideally they'd add general purpose friend-to-friend file sharing with blind encrypted peer-to-peer caching, kinda like Freenet. Hordes would dump Facebook for Facebook minus games plus piracy. You'd give photos special features of course, but allow arbitrary filetypes.
After IPO (Score:5, Insightful)
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So how does SKype compare to this new competition I discovered? http://www.magicjack.com/5/index.asp [magicjack.com]
I don't know anything about MagicJack, but it looks easy enough to use, and $20 a year is certainly a good price. That's cheaper than my current 5 c/minute rate. C-NBC called it a "Skype and Vonage killer"?
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I use it, it works, fantastic.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Approaching one of the big cellular networks would be a good move, and require investment to improve their capacity. Right now they have a deal with Three in the UK that sees their client installed on all their smartphones. Skype snatches the lucrative "overseas student calling home" market away from phonecards, gets some more visibility, while Three gets to look like they're the hot shit dogs on the 3G data campus. (In fact, they've arranged to route Skype calls on their standard voice network for convenience.)
They're probably viewing Apple's recent attempt to launch videocalling in the US with some enthusiasm, too. That'd take some serious infrastructure.
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"Facetime" apparently only works over WiFi, unless you have a jailbroken phone. Probably exactly because the networks aren't ready for hoards of people (who have had video-call capable phones for years) suddenly discovering that an iPhone can do it and using it for a month.
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Doesn't have to be over 3G. If people get interested in video chat, they could get interested in Skype video chat because of its ubiquity, and that's a way into getting them as Skypein and Skypeout customers.
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How about "You need to sell the company (Skype) because you need the money for other projects" and an IPO may be the best way to sell a company.
Or how about "We need to focus on our core business, and there is no synergy between an auction site and a ip phone company so we sell it. (Being owned by Ebay may make it difficult for Skype to do some thing they need to do, so selling it may be the best business thing to do.
But we are talking Skype a company with many non-paying customers and almost no income and
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That would be amazing... I mean really... (Score:2)
if they did that, they could even make a web page
http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your-mobile/skype-mobile/ [skype.com]
all about it....
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There's a lot of long-term upside to Skype, IMHO.
What will they do with the money? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What will they do with the money? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Buried... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Buried... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Bullshit. I pay Skype for phone calls and text messages I make to POTS or mobile phones. The cost of these is slightly over the odds compared to a number of SIP offerings, but it's worth it to me to have a convenient softphone that does IM as well.
There's nothing selfish about wanting the product to stay that way, rather than inflicting advertisin
The name Skype (Score:2, Insightful)
I am not against whimsical names. They have been all the rage since the dotcom era.
But, the name has to be at least easily pronunceable (like Google, Twitter etc).
I bet everyone of you has wondered at least once whether it was pronounced "skyyp" or "skyypeh" or "skip" or whatever.
And, to me, this confusion distracts the customer. Makes the company look amateur. And, makes the customer wonder about the quality and the professionali
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or something like that. They have no excuse.
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I bet everyone of you has wondered at least once whether it was pronounced "skyyp" or "skyypeh" or "skip" or whatever.
And, to me, this confusion distracts the customer. Makes the company look amateur. And, makes the customer wonder about the quality and the professionalism of the compnay's services.
Yeah I know loads of people who didn't purchase Wacom tablets because they were wracking their brains over whether it's "way-comm" or "wack-umm".
Last time I used Skype (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Last time I used Skype (Score:5, Funny)
Now I own 10,000,000 shares of SCO.
Well, there's $10 down the drain.
Financial Analysis (Score:2, Informative)
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Excellent news! (Score:5, Funny)
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Switch to SCO.PK (or whatever they are today)
What they need to do (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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I think you should mention I pay $35 per month or year.
While I can't answer what you pay, I pay $60 per year.
http://www.amazon.com/IPEVO-S0-10-Desktop-Phone-Black-handset/dp/B0028NJTUE [amazon.com]
And I basically have a regular phone with this, although it seems to be discontinued by Ipevo. Works great.
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Sorry, I thought the following made it clear:
But yes, to be clear, it's $35 per year.
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One time fee, as far as I recall. It's just basically so that they can confirm that you are the actual owner of that phone number. They send a message to your phone (hence why the Skype Credits are required), then you message back to confirm that you got the message. Otherwise nefarious types could use the service to masquerade as though they were calling from your number.
with all that IPO cash (Score:2, Insightful)
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 b
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they should fix the goddamn security issues and start having decent CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
Nah, it's much more important to release a new version that spams you with little pop up windows reminding you that you can use Skype to actually call people (I'm shocked! I had installed it thinking it would defrag my hard drive).
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I'm shocked! I had installed it thinking it would defrag my hard drive.
That's ridiculous. If it did that, there wouldn't be a linux version!
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they should fix the goddamn security issues and start having decent CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
Nah, it's much more important to release a new version that spams you with little pop up windows reminding you that you can use Skype to actually call people (I'm shocked! I had installed it thinking it would defrag my hard drive).
Mod this guy up - I can't get over how many stupid pop-up windows v4.2 has. And the worst thing is that it's not even advertising that could be considered to be remotely useful. It truly is messages along the lines of "Call your friends now!" Ridiculous.
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they should fix the goddamn security issues and start having decent CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
Nah, it's much more important to release a new version that spams you with little pop up windows reminding you that you can use Skype to actually call people (I'm shocked! I had installed it thinking it would defrag my hard drive).
Yeah, v4.2 is a joke. Inane ads at the bottom of your contact list and popping up near the top as well. All the ads aren't even promoting anything of value - it truly is crap like "Call your friends using Skype!"
Lessons learned from Vonage IPO (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder what measures Skype has taken to mitigate such risk?
I wouldn't be holding my breath... (Score:2)
Competition Just About To Tighten (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [worldtech24.com]. 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.
Hey, Skype, glad you could make it! (Score:2)
Welcome to the party, dude! You're looking good. How's things? Can I get you a frosty beverage? Sure, we have some tasty micro-bre...what? Wait, what? Yeah, of course I knew that Fring was going to be here. I mean, come on, you know how our parties are: One big bash. You two have been coming for years, I'm not going to "dis-invite" anyone. Just chill, dude. It's a big enough house for everyone. Let me get you a beer...
Say, Fring, check it: Guess who just showed up. Yeah, and he was asking about you, too. Ye
IPO = Initial Penis Offering (Score:2)
Skype would do a lot better with their IPO if they did something to stop the porno spam. It's hard to recommend Skype so Grandma can talk to her grandkids when they are both going to have porno popups selling sex chat on her screen. This problem was reported to Skype years ago by many people but they've done bugger all to fix it. When I reported it they said turn off notifications... but then no one else could reach us. I pointed this out. They didn't care. They wouldn't take any action against the sex spam