eBay ended its troubled marriage with Skype on Tuesday, agreeing to sell a majority stake to a group of investors in a deal that values the Web communications service at $2.75 billion (Bt93.8 billion).
The online auction giant, which will retain a 35-per-cent equity investment in Skype, said it will receive $1.9 billion in cash upon the completion of the sale and a note from the purchasers for $125 million.
The buyer group, which will control a 65-per-cent stake in Skype, is led by private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, whose portfolio includes Ameritrade, Intelsat, Nasdaq, Travelocity and Seagate Technology.
Its other members are London-based Index Ventures, an early investor in Skype, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm founded by Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen.
Andreessen, whose investments include LinkedIn and Twitter, is a member of the boards of eBay and Facebook and is chairman of the board of Ning, an online platform for creating social networks.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of the year.
eBay purchased Skype in 2005 for a price tag that eventually exceeded $3.1 billion, including pay-outs to Web entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom of Sweden and Janus Friis of Denmark, who founded the company in 2003.
But eBay has acknowledged that Skype was not a good fit with its core auction and online payments business PayPal and announced plans in April to spin off the company with an initial public offering in 2010.
At the same time, the San Jose, California-based eBay said it would entertain offers for Skype.
"This deal achieves our goal of delivering short-and long-term value to eBay and its stockholders, without the possible delays and market risk of an IPO," eBay president and chief executive John Donahoe said in a statement.
"Selling Skype now at this great valuation, while retaining an equity stake, makes sense for the company," he said. "This is a great deal, unlocking both immediate and long-term value for eBay and tremendous potential for Skype.
"We've acted decisively on a deal that delivers a high valuation, gives us significant cash up-front and lets us retain a meaningful minority stake with talented partners," Donahoe said.
"Skype is a strong stand-alone business, but it does not have synergies with our e-commerce and online payments businesses," he said.
Skype bypasses the standard telephone network by channelling voice and video calls over the Internet.
Its allows users to call others free of charge and provides the ability to connect with landlines or mobile devices at low rates.
Skype's revenue rose by 44 per cent in 2008 to $551 million and its number of users increased by 47 per cent to 405 million.
"eBay has acknowledged that Skype is not a good fit with its core auction and online payments business PayPal."
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