According to The Deal.com, the long wait for Vonage's IPO is about to end. Within the next six weeks, Vonage will apparently file with the SEC for an IPO to raise $400-million to $600-million. The company, which has more than 800,000 customers, could follow a dual-track process, which would let it pursue a merger and an IPO. Om Malik raises some interesting points about Vonage's timing given the buzz about a Skype sales or IPO, Google Talk and VOIP services from Microsoft and Yahoo. Om says it's now or never for a Vonage IPO, which jibes with my view Vonage seems to be losing its mojo. Given VCs love liqudity events such as IPOs, you have wonder whether Vonage and CEO Jeff Citron made a strategic mistake by waiting too long to do an IPO. My take is Vonage wanted to be acquired rather than go through the IPO process. The speculation was being purchased would allow Vonage to circumvent the trouble Citron has had with the SEC. The boys at Silicon Beat also have some thoughts on the curious timing of a Vonage IPO; VOIP guru Jeff Pulver, who helped Citron start Vonage five years ago, has some early-morning thoughts; while Rich Tehrani looks at what Vonage's IPO could mean for other VOIP companies.
In terms of Vonage's potential valuation, I'll go back to my back of the napkin formula using 8x8 Inc. as a base given its publicly traded. 8x8 sports a market cap of $106-million and has 73K customers. Vonage has about 800K customers so multiplying 8x8's market cap by 11 gives you $1.17-billion. After giving Vonage a $250-million to $500-million premium for its brand and investor demand for the IPO, you have a company perhaps worth $1.4 billion to $1.7-billion.
Speaking of Skype, CNet needs to get its fact straight or some sense of reality given it's reporting Skype could be worth $6-billion to $10-billion. And we all thought $3-billion was proposterous! Techdirt has the scoop on how this Skhype numbers game has gotten out of hand.