The news started leaking days ago, but now it’s official: eBay has sold Skype to a group of investors.

Rumors started to circulate last Friday that investors were pooling funds to purchase Skype from eBay.  This morning it started to appear that an announcement was due at any time, just no one realized that it might be as early as today.

The parties involved with the purchase are Silver Lake, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board, but they aren’t getting the entire operation.  For $1.9 billion in cash, and a $125 million note, eBay is only selling of 65 percent of the well known Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service, meaning the online auction giant retains a 35 percent stake in the company.

“This is a great deal, unlocking both immediate and long-term value for eBay and tremendous potential for Skype,” said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe. “We’ve acted decisively on a deal that delivers a high valuation, gives us significant cash up-front and lets us retain a meaningful minority stake with talented partners. Skype is a strong standalone business, but it does not have synergies with our e-commerce and online payments businesses. As a separate company, we believe that Skype will have the focus required to compete effectively in online voice and video communications and accelerate its growth momentum.”

“This deal achieves our goal of delivering short- and long-term value to eBay and its stockholders, without the possible delays and market risk of an IPO,” Donahoe said. “Selling Skype now at this great valuation, while retaining an equity stake, makes sense for the company. And it allows us to focus all of our energies on the opportunities in front of PayPal and eBay.”

The synergy between the VoIP company and eBay was one that had always puzzled outside observers.  While eBay had promised to integrate the service with its auctions to ease communication between buyers and sellers, that never fully materialized on the site, and people were left to wonder what exactly was going to happen with Skype.  Many experts had called for the auction company to dump the service, but it kept holding on to it.  Once the IPO (initial public offering) had been rumored, some thought that was a sign it was ready to sell off the company, and it appears those suspicions were correct.

The deal is expected ot be finalized in the fourth quarter of this year.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 3:53 pm under Software.

Read more entries by Sean P. Aune.
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