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[no-whammies]

I think we should track the percent of expired listings.  In other words, if your loan gets posted, that's 90% of the battle.

[SLN]

When Urbi updates the listings for yesterday I think we will see a new trend. Just $14,000 in loans yesterday with only 23 loans available. This can't be sustained for very long I imagine.

[Urbi_et_Orbi]

I did see that, but it was very early in the day, so I decided to wait in case Prosper would be making any additional regulatory filings. Also, it could just be an artifact of vacation scheduling and limited operations for the holidays.

[Urbi_et_Orbi]

Prosper has passed $3 million in originations for the month.

[ira01]

Prosper has passed $3 million in originations for the month.

Prosper got an artificial, one-time boost this month from the change in its funding rules.  Loans are originating in the latter part of this month that would have originated in January under the old rules, along with loans that originated in the earlier part of this month that would have originated in November under the new rules. 

[TotoMMB]

Prosper has passed $3 million in originations for the month.

Prosper got an artificial, one-time boost this month from the change in its funding rules.  Loans are originating in the latter part of this month that would have originated in January under the old rules, along with loans that originated in the earlier part of this month that would have originated in November under the new rules. 

They may have gotten a bump, but the month was trending towards $3M anyway.

I'd really like to see some stats on listings: # created, funded, cancelled, withdrawn. Data broken down by day (similar to current performance data). As of 1:00 PST, there are 4 new listings (created today), 18 in total currently open. Now, how many were created today that have funded? How many pulled? Will we ever see a 4.0 listing expire? The two oldest listings are from 12/23. One is 77% funded (with 70% "short funding" caveat). The other is 76%, no "short funding" provision. Even the listings created today are 20% funded minimum. Maybe Prosper did do something right...under this new method, people are not leaving $ tied up in 450 listings, 90% of which would never fund.

[Senator]

What was Larsen's estimate for Prosper to be profitable?  Was it $6M/month?

[ira01]

What was Larsen's estimate for Prosper to be profitable?  Was it $6M/month?

Prosper used to do over $7M a month, and it was never even close to profitable.  Larsen's statement that I think you are referring to was made in November or December 2007, IIRC, at a time when Prosper was origintaing about $6.5M a month on a 12-month moving average basis.  http://www.prospers.org/blogs/ira01.html.  Larsen's statement was that Prosper needed to increase originations 400%, IIRC.  That means that Prosper would need about $25M a month in originations.

In fairness, much has changed since then.  Prosper has raised its fees, and cut some expenses.  OTOH, other expenses have started or increased (such as legal costs, although the recent decision ruling that Prosper's insurer is on the hook for defending the class action helps).  Larsen's statement was also before Web-Bank started originating the loans, which it surely is not doing for free.  I think it is safe to say that Prosper needs an enormous increase in originations before reaching profitability -- probably on the order of at least 500%.  IMHO, that is never going to happen.

[Xenon481]

What was Larsen's estimate for Prosper to be profitable?  Was it $6M/month?

The statement was made back when they were originating about 3x as much as they are now. At that time the estimate was 4x what their originations were at that point.

So, ~12x what they are originating now.

Of course, they have supposedly cut costs and raised fees since then, but they also didn't have to pay WebBank a cut of the origination fees then either.

[SLN]

Prosper just offered this statement in response to all the negative comments on Facebook:

"We greatly apologize for the delay in answering posts. Rest assured that we are not in danger of going out of business, dying, or closing down. Quite the contrary — we’re confident that the recent changes we’ve made to our platform will greatly improve the lender experience on Prosper.com. At the risk of being repetitive, here’s why the number of listings has temporarily dropped off: 1) Listings are now pulled from the site as soon as they reach 100% funding, 2) We no longer list HR listings, 3) We now set interest rates that are commensurate with the level of risk and therefore, listings that previously were underpriced—and would not have been funded anyway—are no longer on the platform, and 4) The time of year. We believe, come January 3, you should see numbers rise dramatically."

[ira01]

Rest assured that we are not in danger of going out of business, dying, or closing down.

Uh huh.  Prosper has several months of funding left, and if it doesn't then get another VC infusion, it will be dead.  Prosper's originations are about 40% of what it had been doing, which was itself only about 25% of what it needed to be doing to break even.  At some point, the VC will stop throwing good money after bad.  When that happens -- bye bye Prosper.

[Senator]

Has anyone computed the next drop dead date?

[kenL]

Since there has been so few listings lately, it probably was a good idea to drop the HR's because too many of them would have funded. I think once they get the listing numbers up again, they might bring back the HR's.

[112233]

Some time ago, iirc, at least 1 of prospers VCs were advertising prosper positions within their own company. It appeared as if parts of prosper's operations were being absorbed into these companies. Maybe not, but this would cut costs as well if this is indeed true.

[TotoMMB]

Since there has been so few listings lately, it probably was a good idea to drop the HR's because too many of them would have funded. I think once they get the listing numbers up again, they might bring back the HR's.

I think it's quite the opposite. Too many HRs were not funding, but tying up funds for 7 days at a time. By concentrating the same # of dollars into fewer, higher quality listings, loans are now created in the blink of an eye. And if E's are topping off at 31.2%, there's not much more room to accommodate the interest rate needed to justify HRs.