Skype, the popular internet telephone service, has announced that it is going public and expects to raise $100 million in its initial public offering (IPO), reports PC World.
Unlike some technology companies that go public to raise capital, Skype is already profitable, having achieved a net profit of $13 million and revenues of $406 million in the first six months of 2010. The IPO is planned for the Nasdaq exchange and could help revive offerings in the IT market. Analysts speculate that the sale of Skype could be the largest IPO in the technology sector since Google went public in 2004, raising $1.67 billion. The IPO will be supported by groups Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley.
Skype, which offers free or low-cost video and voice calls over the internet, has grown rapidly since it was founded in 2003 by two entrepreneurs, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. The company, headquartered in Luxembourg, announced that it has an average of 124 million users monthly worldwide, and that these users made 95 billion minutes of calls in the first six months of this year. However, only 8.1 million users pay for services, and only when calling landlines or mobile phones, as calls to other Skype accounts are free.
“They are a company that has developed their product exceptionally well over the years,” said Ian Fogg, an analyst at Forrester Research, adding that the challenge for Skype in the future is how to develop new business models for video and new technologies. Video calls already account for 40 percent of all calls on Skype, and analysts predict that this percentage could further increase as the rise in smartphone users allows more people to make such calls on the go. (Zlatko Salahović)
