Even with increased revenues, Prosper lost money at a faster pace in 2011 than they did in 2010.
2010 - Loss before other income: $10,505,982
2011 - Loss before other income: $12,291,164
That is a burn rate of over $1,024,263 per month on average for the whole year of 2011. That is an almost 17% increase in burn rate in just one year!!!
An interesting thing, though, is that their burn rate didn't just increase from 2010 to 2011, it continued to increase even between the first and second halves of 2011.
1H 2011 - Loss before other income: $5,934,838
2H 2011 - Loss before other income: $6,356,326
Prosper's burn rate increased by over 7% in just the last 6 months of 2011!
Even more scary is the rate of increase in their burn rate from Q3 to Q4 in 2011.
Q3 2011 - Loss before other income: $2,837,290
Q4 2011 - Loss before other income: $3,519,037
Prosper's Q4 2011 burn rate was ~24% higher than their Q3 2011 burn rate!!!
Prosper seems to be running as hard as they can to get further and further away from profitability.
Prosper currently (as of December 31st, 2011) has cash on hand of $19,213,553
Assuming a static average burn rate for the 2nd half of 2011, Prosper has about 18 (since the end of 2011) of operating time remaining before they run out of money, requiring another venture capital infusion. That brings them out to about June of 2013. If they're burn rate continues to increase (as all signs seem to point towards), then that 18 months may be a significantly high number.
Prosper spent $1,169,278 in rebates and promotions in 2011. ~35% of that was in the 4th Quarter of 2011 alone.
Prosper also spent an additional $2,017,981 in marketing and advertising in 2011. Just under 40% of that was in the 4th Quarter of 2011 alone.
Prosper paid employee compensation of $6,824,295 in 2011; a ~43% increase over 2010. That is an average of over $117,000 per employee assuming all 20 of the new employees were hired at the very beginning of 2011.
Each one of these 2011 expenses is individually significantly more than their 2011 Net Revenues of just $975,142.
Prosper's 2011 Net Revenues are merely ~7.4% of their 2011 Expenses.