Chapter 418 Skype takes off

If Barron had no hesitation in rejecting Apple's acquisition of FingerWorks, then it would take a certain amount of courage to refuse another acquisition.

This is eBay's bid for Skype!

At the earliest stage, DS Capital invested US$10 million and helped its founders resolve the lawsuit against them in the California court, obtaining 60% of its shares - in fact, US$10 million is not high, but in order to resolve the lawsuit in the California court The lawsuit against the founder of Skype is even more difficult.

To this end, Barron not only used favors to connect Mr. "Terminator" as the governor of California, but also paid $15 million to the copyright owners who filed lawsuits to reach a settlement.

For this reason, the founding team of Skype is still very grateful to Barron.

Later, through continuous capital increase, DS Capital's shares in Skype had reached 75% at this time; another 10% of the shares were held by O2 Telecom - O2 Telecom later also invested in Skype. And it has entered into strategic cooperation with it to fight against Yahoo Messenger, which is cooperated with other telecommunications companies including BT.

In the end, Skype's founding team still holds 15% of the company's shares and is responsible for the company's innovation and operations.

Just recently, eBay, the American e-commerce giant, has taken a fancy to Skype. They offered an irresistible price, hoping to acquire the Internet phone company.

This price is up to US$2.5 billion in cash plus eBay stock, as well as corresponding options. If the Skype team can achieve eBay's requirements in the next few years, then with these options, the total transaction price will reach US$4.1 billion. Dollar!

I have to say, this price is really exciting.

As for why eBay wants to acquire Skype?

One is e-commerce and the other is Internet telephony, which doesn't seem to have much to do with each other.

The main reason is that the current development of Skype is indeed very smooth. As of now, Skype has 55 million free phone users and about 3 million paid phone registered users in 225 countries and regions around the world.

And its free users are also increasing at a rate of 150,000 people every day...

When users use Skype, calls between Skype users are free; but if Skype users need to make calls to other landline or mobile phone users, a certain fee will be charged, including calls to O2 Telecom users. , the cost is the lowest - of course because O2 Telecom is its shareholder and the two parties have strategic cooperation.

In terms of revenue, Skype's revenue in 2004 was only US$7 million, but by 2005, its revenue has reached as high as US$35 million so far. It is expected that Skype's revenue in 2005 will exceed US$60 million!

By next year, Skype’s revenue will exceed $200 million!

Therefore, for eBay, Skype's nearly 60 million users are really attractive.

In addition, eBay believes that integrating Skype into eBay can improve the communication efficiency of its users, thereby providing impetus for eBay's business growth.

And at this time, eBay has acquired the payment system Paypal, and there is a relatively large overlap between Skype's paid members and Paypal users. Combining eBay, Paypal and Skype will produce more chemical reactions, thus improving the overall performance of eBay. revenue.

In fact, Barron knew that in his previous life, eBay did not do a good job in integration after acquiring Skype. This acquisition was even rated as one of the top ten most far-fetched acquisitions in the technology industry many times.

However, eBay was not at a loss in this acquisition, because in 2011, Microsoft became the taker and acquired Skype for US$8.5 billion...

eBay handled it, buying and selling it, and made more than 2 billion U.S. dollars (eBay did not sell Skype directly to Microsoft, but it had previously sold 65% of Skype shares to Bank of America for U.S. 2.75 billion in 2009. A consortium led by Lake Capital).

If this is the case, why does Barron let eBay be this "second-rate dealer"...

And currently, Skype is not useless to his industry.

Therefore, although there were some hesitations, in the end they decisively rejected eBay's acquisition proposal.

Of course, eBay's purchase this time still has its uses...

A section of the media got the news "accidentally" and began to report it.

eBay is still very powerful now and is a well-known e-commerce giant. They are actually willing to pay a high price of US$4.1 billion to buy Skype, a seemingly "unremarkable" Internet phone company.

This topic, not surprisingly, exploded on the Internet, which also greatly increased the popularity of Skype and became a hot topic in media reports during this period. It also brought super traffic to Skype, resulting in the recent growth curve of its users. He took off directly on the spot...

It seems that it is not impossible to continue to develop and let Skype directly IPO at the right time without following the original path of time and space.

Speaking of which, according to the information obtained by Barron, the founding team of Skype was not unmoved by eBay's high-priced acquisition.

After all, they still own 15% of Skype's shares. According to eBay's total bid of US$4.1 billion plus equity incentives, if it falls on them, it can exceed US$600 million!

It can be said that as a result, these "bitter people" who were originally forced to hide in Tibet due to court proceedings will immediately achieve financial freedom.

But the key is that DS Capital has the most say in whether to sell Skype.

However, their founding team is still needed to run Skype, so in order to appease them, Barron also asked Amber Sheehan, CEO of DS Holdings, to help them.

"Young people should not be carried away by short-term interests. As long as they persist, run Skype well, and wait until the right time, IPO it. By then, Skype's market value will be not to mention tens of billions of dollars, but six to seven billion dollars." Yes, you are no better than selling yourself to a rich man? Blah blah blah..."

Anyway, the final effect is good, and the members of Skype’s founding team seem to have been given a shot of chicken blood again, and they have begun to study how to optimize the software and win more paying users...

Of course, this cannot be said to be a simple picture, but it is really possible to achieve it.

Could it be that eBay has too many stupid people and too much money? Then Microsoft just happens to have stupid people and a lot of money.

That they are willing to pay this price only shows that Skype has such value.

The prices are shouted out, well, they are not just shouted out, they are bought.

If someone is willing to pay this price, then everyone will really think that it is worth this price. So as long as Skype continues to develop steadily, by the time it IPOs, as long as the data is significantly improved compared to now, then the market value by then will be It will inevitably be much higher than eBay's bid at this time.

It's a capital game, that's it.