eBay 2009q3 investor results (the Skype parts)

eBay says Skype sale is on track for mid 2009q4 (November). eBay's cash will live offshore; no immediate plans for it.

Let's look at Skype's performance for July, August, and September this year.

First, Skypers called for 30.8 billion minutes this quarter.

Not only did Skypers call more, more were connected to the Skype network at the same time. Skype's peak dialtone figures crossed the 19 million mark earlier this quarter. Dialtone is a measure of network availability.  

While both Skype-to-Skype and Skype-to-PSTN activity grew, Skype's Freemium Rate (the ratio between the two) also rose to a new high. The freemium rate is the number of free minutes per paid minute. It indicates demand for the premium service and suggests the company's ability to convert free users to fee services. We'll watch to see if this trend continues.

Skype's customers paid $185.2 million this quarter. Revenue continued to grow outside the US but fell slightly in the US.

Skype's prices are stable despite pressure from competitors. Revenue per minute is $0.06, rising again for the second quarter in a row.

While Skype doesn't report active user accounts or abandoned accounts, Skype did say it picked up 40.3 million new users in the third quarter. That's 442,857 new users daily. That's a measure of the effectiveness of Skype's marketing, customer word of mouth, and network effects.

The smart Hudson Barton Real Users Estimate is now over 47 million users, approximating the number of people actively using Skype. My naïve estimate is roughly 114 million people use Skype in a given month.

 

eBay reported the effect of the Skype deal on their financials. 

They will sell 65% of Skype for about $1.8 billion in cash, most of it outside the United States. I assume they'll spend it on future M&A.

They expect Skype to contribute $100 million in profits in the first 45 days of the fourth quarter. After that they don't expect to see Skype post much profit since it will be paying "interest costs and amortization of intangibles."

I'm assuming the 2009 Annual report and 10K will include data for the last six weeks of Skype's activity before the sale. After that, Skype will be privately held and won't need to report financial information.

tags: ebay, skype, financials, charts, trends, stats, statistics, performance

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.