Facebook to lose $150 million in 2008
Mark Zuckerberg called an all-hands meeting at Facebook to discuss the company's financials, Kara Swisher reports at AllThingsD. Headcount will swell from 450 to 1,000 this year. (To put that in context, Google adds more employees in a single quarter.) Revenues, at $150 million in 2007, are projected to fall between $300 million and $350 million, with an operating profit of $50 million. But that's before Zuckerberg's spending spree on servers.
Facebook, he told employees, will spend $200 million on capital expenditures in 2008. That's a lot of servers, switches, and other datacenter equipment. And it means Facebook's negative cash flow will swell to $150 million for 2008 alone. There goes nearly half of the $300 million Facebook has raised. Maybe Facebook should start charging for employee meals after all.