Flickr sellr at $4bn? Stickr shockr more likr.....

So Mark Evans reckons Flickr's worth up to $4bn......the maths is, shall we say, "interesting":

Let’s do some back of the envelope calculations based on its current financial model. If you assume 10% of its 44 million unique visitors have Flickr Pro accounts, that’s about $110-million in revenue; if it’s only 5%, it’s $55-million. Then, add another $10-million in e-commerce commissions.

What you get is revenue of $65-million to $120-million. If we now take Henry Blodget’s 25X revenue formula (which he applied to Facebook), Flickr is worth $1.5-billion to $3-billion.

Or, he notes, if the "monetised better" (aka raised CPMs to rates un-dreamed of today) they could:

If Flickr could get $5/CPM, that would generate $10-million in advertising/year based on the assumption it’s getting about 100 million global pageviews/month. It’s not a lot of revenue given the conservative approach to how much advertising Flickr would present and how much it would charge but, nevertheless, it would give Flickr an additional $250-million based on Blodget’s formula.

Then, you’re looking at a company worth $1.75-billion to $3.25-billion. Add on a takeover or IPO premium of perhaps 25%, and you’re looking at a valuation of $2.2-billion to $4-billion.

Apart from (i) the $5CPM (when most Socnet would be delighted to get 1/10th of this), and (ii) the rather worrying use "Blodgett's formula" (Blodgett being that well known dotcom stock bear) from the same article comes - in my opinion - the killer refutation - this bit:

:

So - similar traffic to Photobucket, which was worth $300m last May to News International. Be very interested in what justifies a 10x price increase for a similar gig now.

(Mind you, I suppose the next thing we'll see is the argument that Flickr should be worth c $15bn based on similar trafficing to you know who )