OK, so the costs of running Facebook from a pure employee point of view are smaller than Yahoo. And their cost for traffic is certainly lower (as the YHOO numbers include revenue distributed to ad carriers).
But does the 2B revenue really justify a 50B valuation?
You'd hope so! I know most of Facebook would be classed as engineers, vs. a lot of Yahoo as sales, support, etc. But really? 1/10th the employees, you'd expect their salary bill would be less.
It might be an naive assumption, but aren't shares for options usually set aside relatively early in the process?
Interesting comment, just provoked me to do a little research, as I had initially thought that stock options would be accounted as a future liability, and only a cost, at their strike price, when vested AND executed.
Yahoo! Market Cap: 22B. Revenue: 6.5B. Employees: 13,900 Facebook valuation: 50B. Revenue: 2B. Employees: > 1,300
OK, so the costs of running Facebook from a pure employee point of view are smaller than Yahoo. And their cost for traffic is certainly lower (as the YHOO numbers include revenue distributed to ad carriers).
But does the 2B revenue really justify a 50B valuation?