In the week that online retailer eBay has reported that their turnover is up by nine percent to $2.2bn, Skype’s Chief Strategy Officer Christopher S. Dean speaks candidly for MeetTheBoss.TV on how their recent break up was clearly the best thing for both parties.
eBay, which also owns the PayPal payments system, is in the second year of a three-year restructuring, part of which involves making its site easier and cheaper to use. Last year saw the online auctioneer sell its telephony business, Skype, at a $1.1billion loss, having acquired Skype four years earlier for $3.1 billion. At the time, this had massive ramifications for both companies, including a drawn out legal battle over just who had the rights to Skype’s innovative technology. What’s more, investors sparked rumours that Skype was not the ‘big money spinner’ that eBay had once lauded them as.
Christopher, however, in his interview for MeetTheBoss TV, soon put these concerns to rest: “I do think that the amount of money that eBay paid for Skype was very dear when they bought it, but Skype is on its growth trajectory today and is very much growing into the valuation that was ultimately paid for the company.”
Nonetheless with eBay sticking to revenue forecasts for the full year of $9bn, and with turnover growing by 18% since relinquishing Skype, its easy to see why the critics would come down hard on the Skype model.
“Actually Skype has been an incredibly successful business since we cut ties with eBay,” offers Christopher. “We have 560 million users globally at this stage. We did $713 million of revenue last year, which marks a 30 percent increase year-to-year, and the company's been profitable for the last 12 quarters.”
In the end, the split has been to the benefit of both parties, suggesting that maybe they just weren’t meant to be: But now, with Skype’s much publicised move into browser-based communication, perhaps the future relationship between such giants could get competitive.
To watch the interview with Christopher S. Dean in full, please go to www.meettheboss.tv
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