14 DAY TRIAL // Skype, the VoIP company which rather recently became independent, is now filing for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US, hoping to raise $100 million. The IPO registration was filled with the US Securities and Exchange Commission today. Goldman, Sachs & Co, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley will be managing the offer, the company said in the filling.
This is just the preliminary move, the share price or how much of its shares it hopes to put on the market has not been revealed. The company is valued at several billion dollars, so the IPO will probably make available only a small amount of shares. Skype, which is headquartered in Luxembourg, will list its shares on the NASDAQ Global Market.
This is the second IPO in the tech world in the last few days. On Friday, Demand Media also filed for an IPO, hoping to raise $125 million. The content company hasn’t revealed how much of its shares will be sold either.
Skype went through a rough year in 2009, but plans for an IPO have been made more than a year ago. Lawsuits and the eventual sale of Skype put the plans on hold, but with everything going smoothly and quietly, its owners believed it was the right time for the move.
eBay sold a majority stake Skype late last year to a number of investors, including Skype’s founders, in a deal that valuated the company at $2.75 billion. The independent company is focusing on turning its huge audience into a steady revenue stream. Skype has over 560 million users and generated $406 million in revenue in the first half of 2010. However, net income was only $13 million for the same period.
“Skype has grown rapidly to achieve significant global scale since we were founded in 2003. From June 30, 2009 to June 30, 2010, we grew our registered users from 397 million to 560 million. From the three months ended June 30, 2009 to the three months ended June 30, 2010, we grew our average monthly connected users from 91 million to 124 million and our average monthly paying users from 6.6 million to 8.1 million,” the filing reads.