With an IPO on Its Mind, Skype Shows Growth
Regardless of what happens to Skype (s EBAY) — if it’s resold to founders, merged with another web giant or spun off via an initial public offering — one thing remains clear: The company is showing raw growth in both its revenues and registered user numbers. For the first quarter of 2009, the company reported revenues of $153.2 million vs. $145 million in the first fourth quarter of 2008.
It added 37.9 million new users during the quarter and now has a total of 443.2 million registered users. In comparison, the company ended 2008 with 405 million subscribers. In the previous quarter it added about 35 million new registered users. Skype, which has become the largest long-distance company, has been experiencing slowdown in its per-user revenues. The company logged 2.9 billion Skype Out minutes, or about 6.53 minutes per user.
FYI, note that Skype grew revenue 38% yoy, net of foreign exchange impact
Also, you mentioned $145M of revenue in Q1 2008, it was actually $126M (cf the graph you posted).
julien
sorry about that. it was fourth quarter of 2008. not first quarter of 2008.
interesting. does anyone know
a) how many minutes are skype to skype —> a good % of that is what they have taken out of the voice market, and cannot monetize
b) length of average conversation, skype to skype vs. skype to skypeOut. curious about the impact of free….
c) number of skype to skype calls with video…
ajay
SkypeOut minutes have been running at 12 – 13% of Skype-to-Skype minutes, at least through 2008.
kudos to skype on its growth … of course it is adding muscle to its current status and probably have good (financial) impact on its future (whatever course it chooses).
will be keen to see a in depth analysis on its monetizing strategy …. don’t you think $153.2 million in quarterly revenue from 443.2 million registered users is not that impressive after all.
Please, every time you put a picture or a chart in a blog post link it to a higher dimension image.
It’s illegible as it is.
Thank you.
John
In hindsight I agree. I will try to do better job next time. (PS: See the VMWare post and I already have taken your advise to heart.)