Skype Co-Founder Says eBay Overpaid For VoIP Company
By Sean P. Aune
In a comment sure to warm the hearts of all eBay stockholders, one of the co-founders of Skype says that the online auction company over paid for the VoIP telephony company.
Niklas Zennstrom, the co-founder of Skype who left the position of CEO last week, has told the ETRE technology conference in Hungary that the projections for the growth of the company were “a bit front-loaded”. While he was happy with the growth of the company, it needed more time to meet the projections they had made when selling the service to eBay.
Mr. Zennstrom said in a Reuters article:
“We overshot in terms of monetization … Our position in the market has strengthened … you need to look at the long-term value of companies,” he said.
eBay has shaved $1.2 billion from the valuation of the company, which they had originally set a potential price of $4.3 billion for. They have also only paid $530 million to Skype shareholders thus far of the possible $1.7 billion.
Mr. Zennstrom co-founded Skype in 2003 with Janus Friis, and while being CEO of the company over the past two years under the reign of eBay, he also founded the Internet video service, Joost, which has gone public recently with its beta..
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