Skype Founders May Seek to Buy It Back

The European duo who created Skype and sold it to eBay for billions may have another trick up their sleeve: buying it back. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype, have approached several private equity firms and are pooling their own substantial resources to make a bid for the Internet calling service, say several people with knowledge of their plans.

The two men sold Skype to eBay in 2005 for $2.6 billion, and later received bonus payouts that increased the final price to $3.1 billion. Since then, Mr. Zennstrom, a native of Sweden, and Mr. Friis, of Denmark, have created the venture capital firm Atomico and backed the online video service Joost, both based in London.

Skype has more than 405 million registered users, up from 53 million when eBay bought it, and the service had $145 million in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2008. Calls are free between Skype users, and rates are a few pennies a minute for international calls to non-Skype users; the low cost has helped the company gain 8 percent of the world’s international calling minutes, according to TeleGeography, a market research firm.

Skype also currently has one of the most popular applications for Apple’s iPhone, and has said it is developing software for the BlackBerry, which is expected in May.

EBay has admitted, however, that Skype has few synergies with its core e-commerce and payments businesses. In addition, John J. Donahoe, eBay’s chief executive, has repeatedly signaled his willingness to sell Skype for the right price.

Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis did not respond to requests for comment, and it is unclear at this point if they are actively engaged in negotiations with eBay. But one person with knowledge of their discussions said they were trying to raise about $1 billion in equity from private investors, and were discussing one case in which eBay itself would put up the rest of the financing in the form of a seller’s note to complete a deal worth more than $2 billion.

Selling Skype would solve a number of problems for eBay, including generating cash for its United States operations. EBay had $3.19 billion in cash at the end of last year, but $2.8 billion of that money is overseas and would be subject to repatriation taxes if the company were to invest it in its ailing United States e-commerce marketplace, according to analysts.