Messaging app maker Snapchat, Inc. may have finally turned the business around to the point it’s making decent money, at least according to one report Monday.

Re/Code quotes multiple sources familiar with the company’s plans as saying they are targeting between $300 million and $350 million in revenue in 2016, up from $50 million in revenue in 2015 and a measly $3 million from April to December 2014.

The report claims that Snapchat hit a run rate of $100 million in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2015, but it is fairly noted that Q4 is always a strong quarter due to the holiday season. Nonetheless, this is indicative of a company that is growing its revenue base.

So far Snapchat has introduced various revenue streams, including advertiser-sponsored stickers for selfies, news service “Discover” that runs ads next to curated news from large publishers, and Live Stories that allows advertisers to sponsor a montage of photos and videos around a particular event. But as we pointed out when news of new venture capital being raised emerged last week, the problem the company continues to have is that their target market (millennials) is never going to tolerate serious advertising.

Facebook comparison

If the $300-350 million figure is correct, that would put Snapchat’s current valuation of $16 billion at approximately 50 times revenue, a seriously high figure in a market where the arguable competitor Facebook is valued at 17 times revenue.

Surprisingly it’s not without precedent, and that precedent is actually Facebook itself.

Business Insider dug up some figures on Facebook at the age of four and compared them to Snapchat (also now four years old), and found that Facebook had both similar valuation and revenue at the same point.

Facebook in its fourth year had a valuation of $15 billion on roughly $300 million revenue at a multiple of 55 times, whereas Snapchat has a $16 billion valuation on an estimated for this year $300-350 billion revenue on approximately 50 times.

There are two ways you can look at those figures: Snapchat is doing well and potentially has great things ahead of it like Facebook had, or conversely Facebook got lucky.

Facebook’s early audience was also a younger crowd and perhaps back then the argument against Facebook succeeding would be along the same lines as the argument against Snapchat today; that a service that appeals to younger users will never gain mass appeal. That said, disappearing chats still don’t have the same appeal as the ability to connect with family and friends on a message board.

Like Facebook did as it evolved over time, Snapchat needs to find a way to increase the appeal of the service to people outside of their current core user base, but how and in what form is the unanswered question.

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