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Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

press.airbnb.com

41–50 of 174 posts

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#41

What exactly is the roadmap for Airbnb? They stays feature seems to have maxed out in listings and declining now that random people are trying to manage 15+ listings in many cities. I often see the same listings on Booking for cheaper too. All the other features I don't even look at because I'm not interested in an 'adventure' given by some random guy with no professional experience. Honestly surprised they haven't e…

> random people are trying to manage 15+ listings in many cities. They're just normal professional hotels / hostels / BNB now > 'adventure' given by some random guy with no professional experience. The tour I went on was with actual professionals Point being, Airbnb may be same feature wise, but the offerings have become more professional, which for me personally defeats the purpose of Airbnb.

Airbnb has the benefit of a much better UI and UX compared to several over hotel aggregators like booking.com or expedia, or even domestic ones here in Japan like rakuten or jalan.

The only thing that annoys me the Airbnb booking experience, is that it's not really a booking, it's putting in a booking request and then waiting for the owners to approve. Compared to regular hotels.

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#42
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every county I stayed in the US taxed Airbnb, somewhat substantially and possibly even above the prevailing rates for hotels. There are counties who derive 1/3 of their revenues from Airbnb taxes. Probably won't be banning them.

Wut, 1/3 seems extremely Hyperbolic, isn't it? Otherwise I agree

There are many towns in the Rocky Mountains whose populations are around 600 people and whose primary industry is tourism. 1/3 doesn't sound high for places like that at all.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2198726/did-airbnb-kill-mounta...

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#43

Why all the recent IPOs?

1) Impending recession

2) Not enough IPOs so lots of investor interest to deploy capital into something( (thus driving up the price, making it more attractive for startups)

3) We're near the end of a 7~10 year cycle where lots of private VC capital was deployed and needs to be returned

4) 500 private investor maximum SEC rule

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Late stage funding options are drying up big time. See Uber, Lyft, WeWork, and Softbank. These companies are still burning cash at high rates, so going to the public markets is the only option to raise that much capital.

This will most likely be a direct listing because Airbnb doesn't need to raise more capital. Its actually about employee liquidity for people waiting 10+ years.

You keep saying this, but you can’t possibly know it unless you have inside knowledge.

So either state your source or just say that you’re guessing.

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#45
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will most likely be a direct listing because Airbnb doesn't need to raise more capital. Its actually about employee liquidity for people waiting 10+ years.

You keep saying this, but you can’t possibly know it unless you have inside knowledge. So either state your source or just say that you’re guessing.

The source is Airbnb themselves saying they have been EBITDA profitable for 2 years now - which is a very strong and verifiable claim for once they do go public.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/15/ahead-of-ipo-airbnb-achiev...

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#46

Tangential to the topic, but does AirBnB operate under any regulations? When I was in Seattle, my apartment building ended up adding an explicit clause in the lease saying you couldn’t rent a property and turn it around into an AirBnB or any kind of room share for temporary or short term stays. The legal framework wasn’t there (this is 2016 I’m describing), and so I wonder why go public now. Get a more solid footing…

A very touristy city near me offers a fixed number of permits to property owners to offer short-term rentals out of their non-primary residences homes, and somewhat recently increased the number of permits they hand out.

Some places are banning operations like airbnb, and others are embracing them with the aim of controlling the downsides.

Apartment owners in general don't like to allow subletting or renting because it makes things like liability and property insurance claims tricky if anything should go wrong, and people tend to like neighbors more than they do strangers walking around outside their door.

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#47
post #28

As Airbnb is getting banned across cities in Europe and locals are beginning to hate on it + staled growth it's about the time to hand the equity over to public investors and cash out. I'm not very bullish on Airbnb, I used to practically live in Airbnb for over 3 years, but for the last 2 years I haven't even logged in and been only using booking.com. I remember years back in London an Airbnb host that wasn't even t…

> I'm probably missing something, but I think the company is going down and they're pulling an exit scam.

Your concerns about the future of the company are reasonable, but to call a profitable company going public an “exit scam” is ridiculous.

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#48
post #28

As Airbnb is getting banned across cities in Europe and locals are beginning to hate on it + staled growth it's about the time to hand the equity over to public investors and cash out. I'm not very bullish on Airbnb, I used to practically live in Airbnb for over 3 years, but for the last 2 years I haven't even logged in and been only using booking.com. I remember years back in London an Airbnb host that wasn't even t…

> I'm probably missing something, but I think the company is going down and they're pulling an exit scam. AirBnB is doing fine. They've posted healthy profits for the past few years, which is more than can be said of nearly every other tech/startup company that has announced an IPO recently (Uber, Lyft, Pelaton, WeWork, Cloudflare, Slack, Postmates, and Pinterest are all unprofitable).

They did post a healthy profit or rather shared earnings before tax with the media. But if there is no further growth potential such profits make the company worth way less than the most recent valuation even by NASDAQ standards which has inflated P/E.

Even if that profit was after tax and amortization, etc. (which it wasn't) it's a tiny fraction of what booking.com makes while Airbnb is still charging higher fees.

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#49
post #28

As Airbnb is getting banned across cities in Europe and locals are beginning to hate on it + staled growth it's about the time to hand the equity over to public investors and cash out. I'm not very bullish on Airbnb, I used to practically live in Airbnb for over 3 years, but for the last 2 years I haven't even logged in and been only using booking.com. I remember years back in London an Airbnb host that wasn't even t…

> I'm probably missing something, but I think the company is going down and they're pulling an exit scam. Your concerns about the future of the company are reasonable, but to call a profitable company going public an “exit scam” is ridiculous.

I don't think it's ridiculous statement considering their profits are rather fragile as that's before regulation and the size of the last years earnings equals about half the current valuation by NASDAQ's median P/E.

Re: Airbnb Announces Intention to Become a Publicly-Traded Company During 2020

#50
post #28

As Airbnb is getting banned across cities in Europe and locals are beginning to hate on it + staled growth it's about the time to hand the equity over to public investors and cash out. I'm not very bullish on Airbnb, I used to practically live in Airbnb for over 3 years, but for the last 2 years I haven't even logged in and been only using booking.com. I remember years back in London an Airbnb host that wasn't even t…

Can relate. I used to use AirBNB exclusively. I hated hotels with a passion. Maybe I just got older. Maybe Booking.com got a lot better. Maybe AirBNB got worse. I'm not sure what it is, but now AirBNB is always my last resort.
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