Chapter 720 Selling Skype
In December, when the sovereign debt crisis broke out in the Emirate of Dubai and Greece, and the situation became more and more serious, the most eye-catching news was that Microsoft announced that it would sell US$9 billion to Price to acquire Skype.
When Skype went public in early 2007, its market value exceeded US$6 billion. At that time, DS Holdings held 61.25% of Skype shares and 70.13% of its voting rights; while O2 Telecom held 8.5% of its voting rights. % shares.
Later, Skype was also affected by the subprime mortgage crisis, and its stock price fell sharply. DS Holdings took the opportunity to increase its shareholding, bringing its shareholding to 65%.
In Barron's previous life, Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for US$8.5 billion. However, because Skype was developing better than in the original time and space at this time, Microsoft had to For this reason, it paid an extra US$500 million, and finally completed the acquisition of Skype for US$9 billion.
The reason is that in the original time and space, Skype was originally acquired by eBay.
The main reason why eBay acquired Skype at that time was to use this Internet phone application to help its website users communicate when shopping online.
But the problem is that, as we all know, e-commerce companies cannot make popular social software - for example, China's Alibaba Company, even after spending a lot of money, still has not made successful social software. .
The reason is that the communication between users of e-commerce websites is mostly based on the social mode of strangers. They have very few connections with each other and will not build their social network at all.
As for social software like Skype, it is mainly about "socializing with acquaintances". You don't always like to call strangers. Most of the people who can communicate on the phone are acquaintances.
Therefore, after eBay acquired Skype, it did not promote its development. Instead, it restricted the stability of the social network among Skype users to a certain extent.
It’s different now. After being invested by DS Group, they provided Skype with the funds needed for its development, and O2 Telecom also helped them expand their user base.
Now, the number of Skype users worldwide has exceeded 300 million, and Microsoft itself has shortcomings in communication technology. They hope to make up for it by acquiring Skype, and they are very optimistic about video and voice chat. market development and their use in mobile The Windows system on the mobile phone was greatly threatened by Apple's iOS and Android's Android system. It hoped to use Skype to attract users to use its mobile operating system, so it finally decided to spend huge sums of money to complete the purchase of Skype at a premium of more than 40%. acquisition.
In fact, in addition to Microsoft, Google is also interested in Skype. After all, Google also has shortcomings in social networking, and they also hope to integrate Skype into the GOS mobile system...
But in the competition between the two, Google ultimately failed to outbid Microsoft and therefore lost.
When he first invested in Skype, Barron's intention was to sell it to Microsoft at a high price in the future, and he had no intention of staying and developing it.
Because he knows that the results of the past life and later have shown that Skype is not suitable for integration into mobile phones. After Microsoft acquired Skype, it also tried its best to make this attempt, but Skype, which is eager for p2p technology, , when used on the mobile phone, there is a very big drawback, that is, the consumption of data is huge.
In the end, Skype did not make any waves under Microsoft. In the era of mobile Internet, it lags far behind...
Having said that, they have already launched WoawChat APP, and in the future it will be on mobile In the Internet era, whether it is voice chat or video chat, WoawChat is more convenient than Skype.
Thus, after comprehensive consideration, it is more appropriate for Microsoft to take over Skype now while the price is high.
Just after Microsoft took the initiative to negotiate for the acquisition of Skype, it raised the price to US$9 billion. Seeing that this may be the limit of Microsoft's bid, DS Holdings and O2 Telecom readily agreed to the acquisition.
After selling Skype, DS Holdings (Cavendish Trust Fund) can obtain US$5.85 billion in cash and Microsoft shares; O2 Telecom can obtain US$765 million in cash and stocks. It can be said that everyone is happy. . Perhaps the only one who is a little depressed is the founding team of Skype, because some of them reduced their holdings of some Skype stocks during the previous subprime mortgage crisis, and now they do not hold many stocks.
But the good thing is that they can continue to stay in Skype. If Skype can develop in the future, they can still get certain equity incentives...
Of course , this can be regarded as some psychological comfort at most. Barron knows that there is a high probability that this possibility is unlikely.
It can be said that from the initial investment in Skype, to controlling the company, then IPO listing, and finally selling it to Microsoft, DS Holdings completed the entire investment-launch process. This was an extremely successful investment that ultimately brought them Come big rewards.
After completing this sale, DS Holdings used cash to acquire the Microsoft shares obtained by O2 Telecom in the sale of Skype shares - for O2 Telecom, holding Microsoft shares does not make sense. It's better to get cash and use it for the company's operations.
It is worth mentioning that because this time it sold its shares in Skype at a high price, O2 Telecom's stock price rose slightly, and their market value increased even more than the US$765 million.
But Barron knows that Microsoft's stock price will rise exponentially for quite some time in the future, so they are not prepared to cash out the Microsoft stocks they hold, and will keep them for the time being. alright.
As for the cash they received, after acquiring O2 Telecom’s Microsoft stock, the rest was invested in the Caesar Fund.
In fact, compared to Skype, Barron is more concerned about map software.
After all, in the future mobile Internet era, map software can be said to be a basic application. Not only travel, many applications require map software for services.
Among the current map applications, the most complete and well-known is Google Maps.
And Apple has been working hard to improve their Apple Maps.
Among the current smartphone operating systems, Apple’s iOS has Apple Maps, and Google’s GOS has Google Maps. So if Android companies don’t want to pin their future business in this area on competitors, then A map application is a must-have.
Therefore, they have also acquired a number of online map companies, including Poly9, to improve their Android maps.
Well, the map APP built into the Android system is called Android Map, but the same core has another name, called Woaw Map.
This company is a map company jointly invested by Android Company, Woaw and Digital Future Investment Company. It will provide map services to Android Company and Woaw at the same time.
Although objectively speaking, there is a slight gap between the current Android map and Apple map, not to mention compared with Google map, but no matter what, in future mobile Internet applications, map services It is really important, so on the one hand, Android Maps has invested a lot of money in various map optimizations. On the other hand, it will also continue to acquire other online map service providers to supplement their map services.
(End of this chapter)