EBay has agreed to sell 65 per cent of its Skype Internet-calling unit to an investor group led by Silver Lake for about $2 billion to focus on reviving sales at its main e-commerce site.
The buyers will pay $1.9 billion in cash and will also give EBay a $125 million note, the company said in a statement today.
Ebay, which had planned an initial public offering for Skype, will retain 35 per cent of the business.
The sale lessens chief executive Officer John Donahoe’s dependence on a unit that he has said doesn’t fit with the rest of EBay’s operations.
The company is improving its Internet- retail operations to stem customer defections to Amazon.com Inc. Donahoe’s predecessor bought Skype for about $2.6 billion in 2005 and wrote down its value the following year.
The buyers also include Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm headed by Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen, and Index Ventures, a firm that invested in Skype before EBay acquired it.
Skype allows people to make calls from their computers to land lines and mobile phones, as well as other computers. It makes money when users call regular phones, set up voice mail and use text-messaging services.
Mr Donahoe said in May Skype’s value in an IPO could be more than $2 billion. The IPO was scheduled for the first half of 2010, and EBay said in July it was continuing its efforts to split off Skype.
Skype’s revenue grew 25 per cent to $170 million in the second quarter, EBay reported in July. The service added 37.3 million users in the three-month period, for a total of 480.5 million.
Even as the business grew, EBay never made good on its original promise for Skype: integrating the service into its e- commerce site, so buyers and sellers could use it to discuss large purchases.
EBay wrote down Skype’s value to $1.2 billion in 2006.
EBay is also entangled in a legal dispute with Skype’s founders, who still own a piece of software used by the calling service and have accused EBay of breaching a licensing deal.
Bloomberg