Zuckerberg 'in no rush'

The numbers are in for Facebook Inc.'s acquisition of mobile-messaging application WhatsApp Inc.: The social network paid $22 billion for a start-up that generated $10.2 million in revenue last year.

In a regulatory filing Tuesday, Facebook disclosed WhatsApp's financial results for 2012 and 2013. The messaging service, which reached 400 million active users in December, generated less than 3 cents in revenue for each one last year. By comparison, Facebook paid $55 per user when it acquired the company. WhatsApp's net loss was $138.1 million for 2013.

The valuation of the deal was already regarded as lofty, at 19 times projected sales. Still, the results illustrate how far Facebook has to go to get its money's worth for the app, which generates revenue by charging 99 cents for subscriptions after a user's first year. Chief executive officer mark Zuckerberg said he was in no rush to make money from WhatsApp, or Facebook's other growing applications, until they reach 1 billion users.

"The right strategy is to focus on connecting the people before aggressively turning them into businesses," Zuckerberg said Tuesday evening in a conference call to discuss Facebook's third-quarter earnings. "Once we get to that scale, then we think they will start to become meaningful businesses in their own right."

Zuckerberg has spent freely on long-term bets, including virtual reality and connecting the world to the Web. Now those moves are set to face increased scrutiny.

Facebook projected fourth-quarter sales that fell short of the highest analysts' predictions and said spending would increase 50 percent to 70 percent next year as the company hires more and invests in newer products.

The combination of slower revenue growth and higher costs triggered a sell-off of the company's shares. Facebook closed at $75.86 Wednesday on the Nasdaq, down 6.08 percent.

The message was jarring as Facebook forecast fourth-quarter revenue that will be 40 percent to 47 percent above that of a year earlier, indicating sales of $3.6 billion to $3.8 billion. The growth rate would be the slowest since the first quarter of 2013, when revenue rose 38 percent, according to Bloomberg data.

As Facebook's revenue growth decelerates and expenses rise, that "will likely force investors to adjust their near-term profit outlook," said Paul Sweeney, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

Facebook is projected to take 8 percent of the $140.7 billion global ad market this year, up from 5.8 percent last year, according to EMarketer. Its share of the mobile ad market could reach 20 percent, up from 17 percent last year, the research firm said. "It's becoming much more ambitious in offering digital services far beyond what the company was initially created to do as a social network," said Debra Aho Williamson, an EMarketer analyst.