Jessica Guynn

USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook traded a tenth of its market value for the popular messaging service WhatsApp, which has more than 600 million monthly active users.

In return for its nearly $22 billion, the giant social network got meager revenue and steep losses, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

WhatsApp had just $10.2 million in revenue last year. And it recorded a net loss of $138 million in 2013, more than doubling its losses from the previous year.

About $98.8 million of the loss came from stock-based compensation. So the start-up was operating at about a $40 million loss.

Still it's an extravagant bet for Facebook.

Facebook paid $4 billion in cash and $12 billion stock and made the founders eligible for an additional $3 billion in restricted stock.

The value of the deal has risen with Facebook's share price, reaching about $22 billion.