We reported on happenings in this space last week and it’s finally come to pass… At a much, much lower price than was being reported. Billabong has scored itself around $35 million for the sale of SurfStitch and Swell to a consortium of investors including the SurfStitch founders.

The reports last week suggested that the company would gain around $150 million from the sale with the online retailer expected to be worth around $300 million at IPO. No word on why those figures appear to have changed. And changed significantly. Does this indicate an issue at SurfStitch? Or is Billabong keen on getting rid of the sites to meet some short term targets or debt payments perhaps?

At the higher valuation, Billabong would have been effectively debt free. This is obviously no longer the case. The stock is up 0.5% at the time of writing – waiting for the analysts to come out on either the disappointment at the sale price or that the share movement reflects what the market perceives the value of this transaction to be for Billabong.

More on this over here.