The Wall Street Journal reports that FaceBook’s Mark Zuckerberg held an open conference call yesterday to discuss the company’s 2007 financials – highly unusual for a private company.

Among the highlights:

Revenue for 2007 $150m

Projected revenue for 2008 $300 – $350m

Projected pre-tax earnings for 2008 $50m

Pretty good for a four-year old start-up.

The jaw-dropping figure is right at the bottom of the WSJ story, however.

“Facebook collected $300 million in investments recently from Microsoft and other investors, which pegged the valuation of the company at $15 billion.”

$15bn? On pre-tax earnings of $50m that’s a PE ratio of 300. In other words, nuts. A PE of 300 is ridiculous for any company, just ask anyone who got burned in 1999/2000, but for a company which only expects to grow revenue by 2x next year, which has had the bad publicity FaceBook has this year, it’s insane.

What’s more interesting than the valuation, however, is the distinct possibility of an IPO in 2008. As Danny Sullivan points out in a comment on the WSJ story, his site, SearchEngineLand, predicted back in October that FaceBook may have to IPO in 2008.

This is because FaceBook’s employee headcount will hit 1,000 this year and it has a great wad of cash in the bank. If we assume most, if not all, FaceBook employees have stock options, then the company will trigger a provision in the 1934 Securities Exchange Act which says that companies with at least $10m in assets and more than 500 employees must report as if they were a publicly listed company.

It was this provision that accelerated Google’s IPO and it may well do the same to FaceBook.

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