October 9th, 2007
Skype co-founder Zennstrom implies eBay overpaid for Skype
Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, who resigned from Skype last week kind of said today that well, yea, eBay did overpay for Skype.
“We had to chart the trajectory of growth and how fast that would run, (but) we found out that was a bit front-loaded,” Zennstrom told the annual ETRE technology conference in Hungary.
“We overshot in terms of monetization … Our position in the market has strengthened … you need to look at the long-term value of companies,” he added.
Last week eBay said it was going to cut as much as $1.2 billion off the $4.3 billion potential price of the Skype acquisition it made two years ago.
“It (the final target) was two years away. The time value of money is significant,” Reuters quoting Zennstrom as saying, adding he wanted to focus more time investing cash in smaller companies.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
