Facebook Goes Cash Flow Positive, Now at 300+ Million Users

It was not that long ago that Facebook crossed the quarter-billion user mark (Berman Post: 250 Million People on Facebook). They have now passed the 300 million user mark (http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=136782277130). More importantly, they are now reported to be cash flow positive.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/15/facebook-crosses-300-million-users-oh-yeah-and-their-cash-flow-just-went-positive

"Back in April, we noted that while the company has been EBITDA profitable for several quarters in a row, they weren’t expecting to go cash flow positive on an operating basis until 2010. Back in 2008, there was roughly a $200 million gap between Facebook being cash flow positive and their EBITDA numbers. So why was it going to take another 2 years to close that gap? It’s likely because Facebook has been spending a lot of money over the past couple years on things like servers, but accounting rules allowed them to spread those costs over time. But the amount of money they’re pulling in has either eclipsed those costs earlier than expected or it isn’t spending as much. (Equipment spending for big storage servers tend to be lumpy)."