Kara Swisher’s elves must have Mark Zuckerberg’s number. Because she is reporting details from an all-hands meeting the Facebook founder held on Thursday for employees that had an open dial-in number, in which he revealed the following financial metrics for the still-private company:
2007 Revenues: $150 million
2008 Revenues: $300 to $350 million (projected)
2007 Headcount: 450
2008 Headcount: 1,000 (projected)
2008 Capital Expenditures: $200 million (i.e., servers)
2008 EBITDA: $50 million
2008 Cash Flow (EBITDA - CapEx): negative 150 million.
If he wants to go public in 2009, he is going to have to start making some money before then.
@steve
agreed.
every software/web based company has some ridiculous p/e ratio. even apple is only at ~30 now and I believe and was around 60 or something only a couple years ago before iPod/macbook popularity.
STEVE: That is why OpenID and DataPortablity is a bad idea.. “rather future potential exploitable value of their user base. ” WHERES THE VALUE OF ANY COMPANY IF ALL THE DATA IS ACCESSIBLE FREE OF CHARGE?
They are hiring an executive chef, they have puzzles you have to email to some mysterious email you have to figure out using a calculator.
These guys are cheeseballs. Can they be any more un-original.
facebook has developed many and good applications, that they have taken it to be a complete SB. I imagine that to develop it needs them many programmers and Web masters.
The MSFT bid for Yahoo today was 6.37x revenue. That applied to FB would be $955 million valuation based on 2007 revenue and $1.9 billion valuation based on the high end of their 2008 projections. FB’s higher growth would likely fetch them more, just giving some baseline perspective.
what would be interesting to know is Microsofts loss for the guarantee revenue to FB. For example- they are guaranteeing roughly $100m per year to FB but what is the true value of the FB traffic. I have the feeling it’s far far less- close to 1/4th that. It’s tough to validate a buisiness that is building revenue off of non-substantial cash flow. Be fun to learn ‘true’ value of fb right now…
This info along with the confession by Google yesterday on lower than expected revenue from social networking advertising does not bode well for Facebook (or any other social networking sites) current valuation of $15B. I predict a rapid descent to valuation reality in the near term for social networking sites.
most of you guys dont see the picture here…Facebook is working on something bigger and most of these investors know it.
By releasing the numbers via the blogging community, they knew exactly what they were doing..giving the impression that things might not work as it was expected..but I dont buy it..
You’ll see..they’ll release something major by the end of the year or probably in 2009..followed by an IPO !!
I also do not buy the figure of $200M for servers. Their team couldn’t purchase/deploy that many servers in 2008 if they started tomorrow and didn’t stop until December 31st, 2008.
The message here is simple and the leak was clearly planned.
Facebook isn’t going to have a very good 2008. Because of their ‘odd’ partnership with Microsoft, they now have stock options priced at a discount to $15B — not very appealing to a savvy employee. Now, it looks like we’re about to head into a recession. Facebook probably knew their “bad” losses would leak out, causing their employee base to grow concerned.
So, what to do? Sure — let’s tell everyone we’re buying servers. They’ll all believe that cuz almost no one understands IT, etc.
Clever, but I’m not fooled. Facebook doesn’t have enough traffic to justify $50M in IT spending let alone $200M in spending.
Jenkins :
“Clever, but I’m not fooled. Facebook doesn’t have enough traffic to justify $50M in IT spending let alone $200M in spending.”
exactly..one point here is about their traffic that just dont justify it but what if they were working on something that will need those servers.
You know what I’m talking about
We’ve crunched the numbers and FB is actually worth $30B!!! LOL
http://topoilstocks.org/. Facebook could benefit from perceived value when they go to IPO, and that’s what many of these public co’s live by. and die by of course.
So 17% of last years revenues were from 25 million $1 gifts. Looks like I’m on the right track then with my app….sitting….finished…..waiting for facebook wallet to go into production.
Tell me one thing that Facebook does well. The problem with social networking sites is no one knows how to monetize them. From an advertiser perspective performance is piss poor and I mean piss poor. Any decent investor should be aware of this.
They are in some respects, similar to Yahoo!, they have tons of visitors/users but can’t monetize them effectively. They’re also hiring like banshees for a reason I can’t figure out. If they have something bigger they better release it soon….negative cash flow and poor monetization are big issues.
My feeling is that Mark Z. should have sold this crap a long time ago. Going nowhere fast while the little guys catch up and money goes out the door.
The media itself should be ashamed for pimping Facebook so much last year — which drove it to that RETARDED $15B valuation in the first place.
Facebook is a JOKE. It’s certainly worth a lot but nowhere near what many think.
Why? NO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.
Internet users are SUPER FICKLE. The newness of Facebook will wear off and users will be flocking to some other new social communication app.
Facebook will certainly continue to add new features and we’ll have millions using it for many years to come, but nothing that will create BILLIONS in value.
MARK ZUCKERBERG = THE NEXT SHAWN FANNING
over hyped. microsoft bought facebook banner space as part of the oct2007 investment deal. microsoft over paid for the ad space just to be in bed with facebook. everyone knows that social sites traffic does not convert…. saying that the prices microsoft paid for ads in facebook reflect market price and could be earned in the future is naive.
FB will wither in US/Canada, but with the language versions shipping, it’s going to get most of it’s growth from outside North America…perfect platform for MS advertise globally. The Value Proposition that FB has over it’s competitors like MySpace and Google is its information..and the ability of advertisers to target very specifically based on the info of FB profiles and all those stupid apps, and the information people put on their walls. It’s a marketing goldmine. Be prepared to be exploited.
Zuckerberg should have taken the Google $2.3 bil and not listened to Peter Thiel, who personally believes the company is worth $8 bill. His paltry $12.7 million is now worth $1.65 bill. He should have taken the money and ran…now he’s going to tank with Zuckerberg before they get the IPO off the runway.
this sucks!
Well, I don’t know..