Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 1, 2011 14:38 UTC (Wed) by erwbgy (subscriber, #4104)
In reply to: Counting chickens before they've been conceived by job
Parent article: Google open-sources WebRTC

Skype now makes money. According to their SEC filing, in 2010 they:

had 663 million registered users
billed 2.8 billion minutes
had an average revenue per customer of $97
made an operating profit of $20.6 million on revenues of $859.8 million

Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 1, 2011 22:39 UTC (Wed) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link] (4 responses)

At $20 million per year it would take 400+ years for Microsoft to pay off their investment in Skype.

I am not sure "they are making money" really justifies this purchase.

Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 2, 2011 5:21 UTC (Thu) by ghane (guest, #1805) [Link] (2 responses)

There are two possible options to waiting 400+ years.

1. You expect income to increase sharply, and continue. Your payback period may then drop (next year to 100 years, a couple of years later to 30).

2. You don't care for the $20m anyway, you hope to sell it for $12b next week to Symantec. (Hey, it worked for Skype already :-) )

I am not saying either is likely, just that P/E is not what drives (at least my view of) investment, but (current P)/(future E). The Price is a done deal. But I am not really interested in their last years income, from which I do not get a cent, but in what I expect/hope will be their *next* year's income. I am buying a share in their future, not their past anyway (I hope no unsettled lawsuits turn up, but I can hedge against that).

Slightly off-the-mark, but what use is a new-born baby?

--
Sanjeev, who is still waiting for his $8.5b deal, but has lots of free advice for everyone.

Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 3, 2011 11:32 UTC (Fri) by erwbgy (subscriber, #4104) [Link]

Most people sleep too much and new-born babies are very good at ensuring that this doesn't happen. Everyone should have one :-)

Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 3, 2011 17:02 UTC (Fri) by jjs (guest, #10315) [Link]

Yea, but last year's income can be an indicator of future income (we don't know the future). The last several years can provide pointers to the direction for future income.

"You pilot always into an unknown future, facts are your single clue. Get the FACTS." - Lazarus Long

Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 3, 2011 2:18 UTC (Fri) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]

> I am not sure "they are making money" really
> justifies this purchase.

Since when has "they make money" (profit) ever justified any Internet company purchase? It seems to me that, over time, the opposite has proven true; "they lose money" is the far better justification.

Doesn't it go something like this?:

1. We should buy Company_X!
2. But they post a large net loss every quarter, and their losses are increasing?!
3. But they have a userbase of Y million customers and this number is increasing at Z%/month (along with other metrics like unique page views/month, percentage of returning purchase customers/month, or whatever statistics can be squeezed out of the customer data to make them look uber-attractive to someone)!!! Just think what will happen when all Y million of those users become _our_ customers!!!
4. ???
5. Profit!

Clemmitt (who knows there's money to be made on this new-fangled Internet but is too stupid to figure out how ;^)