Addressing reports that Facebook is burning through its cash and needs to raise money to ride out the online ad slump, COO Sheryl Sandberg told Bloomberg that the social net wasn’t approaching VCs with cap in hand: “We could not be doing better financially ... We might take money—but it doesn’t mean we need to.”

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Facebook raised $100 million last year, mostly for new servers; its user base has doubled to over 200 million members since then, and the consensus has been that it needs more cash to support its next phase of growth. Of course, no one expects Sandberg to admit that the social net is in need of cash—even if the team was feverishly trying to raise money behind the scenes. But she did acknowledge that it was time to show its existing investors some tangible results: “This was a year where we were really, I think, going to have to execute,” Sandberg told Bloomberg.

Just what does that mean? It means running more effective ad campaigns, using more precise targeting, and capitalizing on Facebook’s maturing audience. Sandberg said that the ads coming down the pike would boost sales by 70 percent this year. It also means eking out a profit, and she said the network was on a “clear path to be cash-flow positive next year.”

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