Vonage IPO sinks below offer: all eBay's fault?

Sarah Gilbert — Wed, 24 May 2006 18:52:00 EST

Filed under: After the Bell, Bad News, Launches, Blogs, Competitive Strategy

The question on everyone's lips today, as they watched Vonage stock sink lower and lower, until it was nearly $2.50 below its $17 offering price, was: is it all Skype's (and therefore, eBay's) fault? More to the point, was it all Andy Kessler's fault?

When Skype first announced their free SkypeOut calling in the U.S. and Canada, Kessler wrote for GigaOm, wondering if this move was a catlike (in the sense that cats are evilly playful, like Tom of Tom & Jerry, but smarter): "Vonage is begging customers to buy 20% of the deal - not a great sign. Ebay knows this, why not toy with the mouse before you kill it. What better way to do away with the Vonage IPO and raise their cost of capital then scare investors even more," he wrote.

Commenters excoriated him, complaining that he was both bitter and wrong. Today he had the last word, and wrote, "Here's how not to do a deal. Citigroup raised the number of shares in the deal, but not the price." That, Kessler, says, was the wrong move in an uncertain climate (investors hardly knew whether Vonage had any value when SkypeOut is free). What's more, pricing at the middle of the $16-$18 range, always a questionable strategy, proved to be egg all over Citigroup's face. Vonage has money, Citigroup has its fee, and all the investors who bought at $17 now have lots of places toward which to shake their fists.

Vonage IPO sinks below offer: all eBay's fault? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 24 May 2006 18:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Free SkypeOut! But is it brilliant, or a cheap 'stunt'?

Sarah Gilbert — Mon, 15 May 2006 20:44:00 EST

Filed under: After the Bell, Press Releases, Products and Services, Blogs, Competitive Strategy, eBay (EBAY)

Skype, eBay's VoIP service, has always been free -- for computer-to-computer calls. But this afternoon, in what some are calling "brilliant," others are calling a "stunt," and still others name the "voice-over-loss-leader protocol," Skype announced via email and on the company blog that SkypeOut calls from your computer to mobile and land lines throughout the U.S. and Canada would be free. (And, to be clear, calls must both originate and end in the U.S.; and this deal is only good through the end of the year.)

Skype, you see, was born in the U.K. and most of its users are European (lots of Finns, evidently, among other Northern Europeans). So although this will certainly cost the company something, the theory is that the users will get hooked on using Skype to order pizza and call friends when they're not in WiFi land and, well, just use Skype, and then create "mindshare."

Om Malik at GigaOm has lots of interesting things to say, like that it's "a nifty stunt to bring the focus back on Skype," that for AIMphone it's not necessarily a negative (after all, he points out, AOL will have an easier time getting their users to call on their existing client than Skype will have getting users to download a whole new client), and, most importantly: this is "only part of an ongoing trend - vanishing voice revenues." At neoMarketing.TV, the prediction for the phone companies is more dire: "The future for traditional telecom operators is very dark." And everywhere the question: will the internet be able to handle all this bandwidth?

Interestingly, the announcement was made after market close and eBay's stock bounced back a bit from the 26-cent tumble it took today. It's now at $31.32 in after-hours trading.

Free SkypeOut! But is it brilliant, or a cheap 'stunt'? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 15 May 2006 20:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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