Marabese

Those little advertising graphics have helped Facebooks cash pile

Sheryl Sandberg (Harvard educated) has helped revolutionise Facebook's finances, since joining in 2008 (having helped Google's finances). They're even more staggering than we imagined. Since 2010, profits have helped the social network accumulate a war-chest rivalling companies like the long-established Yahoo.

As I've suggested previously 'Advertising works' - Those subtle little adverts just 110 pixels by 80 pixels, have really contributed to the following figures... c.September 2011.

Assets: $5.6 billion
Cash/cash equivalents: $3.5 billion
Debt: Zero
Shareholder equity: $4.5 billion
Operating cashflow: $1 billion
Revenue: $2.5 billion
Operating income: $1.2 billion
Net income: $714 million.

This year, despite worldwide economic problems, Facebook is likely to make circa a billion dollars in profit this year, more than double what it reportedly made in 2010. Facebook simply cannot stop making more money. Investors like Li Ka-shing (0.75% shareholder) are queuing up to give Facebook cash. Having also raised $1.5 billion through Goldman Sachs (0.8% shareholders, with clients having another 3%) in January, makes me wonder if they are considering buying a large rival or even a cash and paper merger - to my mind Yahoo, would be a possible target. The benefit of Yahoo, would be the potential for diversification and integration and even locking horns in the future with Google's search engine market.

Facebook is likely to have at least $3.5 billion in cash. The cash pile might only be a fraction of the giants like Apple and Google, though other established tech savvy companies like Adobe are likely to be especially envious. Facebook is seriously considering raising another $10 billion at a $100 billion valuation with an IPO, probably in 2012.

Having seen Friends Reunited and MySpace, hit the rocks, Facebook is keeping itself fresh with Zynga and Playfish games. Google's Google Plus social network is also a potential challenge, along with Twitter. These competitor challenges make their figures all the more impressive.

Those little graphics, have really helped make one huge pile of cash.