Skype Files Statement for Initial Public Offering

Skype (News - Alert) has filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering.

Officially, the company said that the number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have not been determined.

However, Reuters reported that Skype expects to raise up to $100 million in the initial public offering of its shares, according to filings made to U.S. regulators on Monday.

Analysts told Reuters (News - Alert) the IPO could be an effort by Skype's private owners to recoup some of their investment of more than $2 billion when they bought the company in November, 2009, or an effort to encourage other technology companies or telecom companies into a deal.

Skype is a software-based communications platform that offers tools for both consumers and businesses to communicate and collaborate globally through voice, video and text conversations.

Founded in 2003 and based in Luxembourg, the company enables users with virtually any Internet-connected device to communicate with each other by voice, video and instant message for free, or make low-cost voice calls to fixed or mobile numbers, virtually anywhere in the world.

Skype has 124 million connected users and its users placed 95 billion calling minutes over Skype during the first half of 2010, approximately 40 percent of which were video. Skype can be downloaded onto computers, mobile phones and other connected devices for free at www.skype.com.

Skype expects to trade on the Nasdaq.

Goldman, Sachs & Co., J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. and Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc., will be the joint global coordinators as well as joint book-running managers for the offering.

In other company news, Skype recently released an important new, update to an iPhone (News - Alert) app which enables multitasking, according to TMCnet. With this new version of the app, users can receive Skype calls while other apps are running, even when an iPhone is locked. And during a call, a user can keep the conversation going while he/she switches to another task, such as checking a movie listing or reading an email, the company said. When commenting on the new upgrade, TMC CEO Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) said it “should make Skype one of the most-used apps on the iPhone.”