E-commerce giant eBay announced on Tuesday that it is selling its Skype unit for US$2.75 billion to an investor group that includes Marc Andreessen's new venture.
Under the deal, eBay will receive approximately US$1.9 billion in cash and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of US$125 million, for a total of about US$2.025 billion. The participants expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter.
The investor group, which will take a roughly 65 percent stake in Skype, is led by Silver Lake and includes Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board. The remaining 35 percent of the Internet telephony service will be retained by eBay.
The sale of Skype had been expected for some time. Word of Tuesday's impending sale to the private investor group was first reported late Monday in The New York Times.
The Andreessen Horowitz venture capital group was launched in July by Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape and co-founder of Opsware, and Ben Horowitz, also co-founder of Opsware.
With the sale, eBay acknowledged that things hadn't worked out as planned with Skype, which it acquired for US$2.6 billion in 2005 with the plan to offer customers the ability to discuss their transactions in real time. But over the course of the four years, eBay found that its acquisition failed to provide the synergies it sought.
"Skype is a strong standalone business, but it does not have synergies with our e-commerce and online payments businesses," eBay's CEO John Donahoe said in a statement on Tuesday. "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."
Lead investment firm Silver Lake echoed those sentiments. "This transaction benefits all parties involved and will allow Skype the opportunity to accelerate the growth of its business by harnessing the deep technological and company development expertise that resides within the investor group," Egon Durban, managing director at Silver Lake, said in a statement. "Josh Silverman has done a strong job leading the company, and we look forward to working with Josh and his team to grow the Skype franchise."
In 2007, eBay said it would take a US$900 million so-called impairment write-down against the value of Skype, meaning that eBay had been forced to reassess the value of the internet telephony company relative to its overall business. By recording a charge, the company essentially announced it had taken a loss on its original investment.
When eBay announced Donahoe as its new CEO in 2008, he indicated that the company would take a year to evaluate the future of its online phone and video-conferencing service.
In April, eBay announced plans to spin off Skype, with an IPO in the first half of next year.
Along the way, reports surfaced that Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis were interested in repurchasing the company, with the aid of private equity firms KKR, Warburg Pincus, Elevation Partners, and Providence.
This article is first published as a blog post on CNET News.
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