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

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

#71

Post by pmart123 »

bduerst wrote: post #52
fbonetti wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Revenue is a better thermometer than profits here, especially since most startups leading up to an IPO manipulate their profits into looking great. It seems the regulatory product lifecycle is that AirBnB enters a new market, and then some time later that market starts to regulate and restrict it. How many new markets does AirBnB have left to exploit regulation?

That’s not actually true. A certain real estate leasing firm could give away the first year on a three year commitment to book the revenue at a very high COGS, allowing for unsustainable revenue growth. The internet 1.0 had many great examples of this.

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

#72

Post by pmart123 »

theflyinghorse wrote: post #51
mbesto wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Could you elaborate a bit on the cycle part. Why is it a cycle at all assuming money gets invested all the time instead of once-a-x-years?

The best place to learn about this is to check out the memos Howard Marks has written over the years.

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

#73

Post by fbonetti »

quaquaqua1 wrote: post #67
michalu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is proper to call it an exit scam. Blue Apron has lost 90% of its value since IPOing 2 years ago. Day one investors transfered virtually all of their value to company insiders.

From Blue Apron's SEC filing:

> We have experienced net losses in each year since our inception. In the years ended December 31, 2014, 2015 and 2016, we incurred net losses of $(30.8) million, $(47.0) million and $(54.9) million, respectively.

Blue Apron and AirBnB are not comparable.

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

#74

Post by mrgordon »

jwegan wrote: post #37
mrgordon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said this was an IPO. Most likely a direct listing since Airbnb doesn't need to raise capital.

A direct listing is definitely not the most likely option. Only two major tech companies have done direct listings and there are also a lot more reasons you would want to do an IPO instead of a direct listing 1) Neither SPOT or WORK has done great, especially WORK 2) IPO allows you to choose your investors. This gives you the opportunity to choose major institutional investors that are in for the long term which will…

A direct listing is definitely the most likely option which is why they didn’t call it an IPO anywhere. They already have huge numbers of institutional and strategic investors. I’m not sure who you think they are waiting to get investment from. Crunchbase lists 53 investors including YC, Sequoia, Andreesen Horowitz, Greylock, Founder’s Fund, CapitalG, and TCV. They turned down SoftBank funding. Their shares have been owned by mutual funds from Vanguard, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Principal, T. Rowe Price, and Hartford for at least five years. They’ve already raised the warchest that you’re talking about.

Spotify and Slack had fine initial listings, but they are both losing tons of money so the market reacted negatively as their quarterly earnings made this more and more clear. Not a great comparison to a company that has been printing money and hasn’t raised a serious round in years.

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

#75

Post by bduerst »

pmart123 wrote: post #71
bduerst wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revenue is a better thermometer than profits here, especially since most startups leading up to an IPO manipulate their profits into looking great. It seems the regulatory product lifecycle is that AirBnB enters a new market, and then some time later that market starts to regulate and restrict it. How many new markets does AirBnB have left to exploit regulation?

That’s not actually true. A certain real estate leasing firm could give away the first year on a three year commitment to book the revenue at a very high COGS, allowing for unsustainable revenue growth. The internet 1.0 had many great examples of this.

True, but I didn't mean to say revenue was completely immune to the same manipulation - Microsoft was notorious for deferring windows revenue to show QoQ growth stability in the 90's, like you're eluding to. Still, there are fewer levers to manipulate revenue than profits, and I'd have more faith in that for AirBnB than profits.

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

#77

Post by ilikehurdles »

FreeHugs wrote: post #70

I am a big time traveler. When AirBnB appeared on the scene, it was a life changing event for me. So much better then hotels. Since then, AirBnB have not added anything that benefits me. But booking.com have catched up massively. To the point that I prefer booking.com again these days. I would have never expected that to happen. Some of my pet peeves with AirBnB: AirBnB's reviews are not chronological. So you have to…

In the touristy parts of colorado, hotels and formal condo rentals are pretty much cheaper across the board than AirBnb this year, and it's primarily due to cleaning (followed by service) fees that are often double the cost of a 1- or 2-base night rate that is already often more expensive than the nightly of a hotel. It reminds of purchasing things on eBay back in the 2000s, where the shipping cost would be triple the purchase cost.

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

#78

Post by dec0dedab0de »

SenHeng wrote: post #41
alephnan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I used Airbnb for the first time a few months ago, and I was surprised they were able to stay in business with the current interface.

I the prices kept changing at different views, I couldnt save a search, even active searches would just go away if i tapped back, they pushed me to link to a third party auth, but when I did they created a separate account and i could no longer reach the one that had my reservations. It was a mess all the way around.

The only thing I did like was all the weird places to stay.

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

#79

Post by randomsearch »

SenHeng wrote: post #41
alephnan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I actually think Airbnb’s UI is awful, and the website is very slow so poor UX.

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

#80

Post by oftenwrong »

FreeHugs wrote: post #70

I am a big time traveler. When AirBnB appeared on the scene, it was a life changing event for me. So much better then hotels. Since then, AirBnB have not added anything that benefits me. But booking.com have catched up massively. To the point that I prefer booking.com again these days. I would have never expected that to happen. Some of my pet peeves with AirBnB: AirBnB's reviews are not chronological. So you have to…

How many of these pet peeves are held by the average AirBnB user?

I would guess "none". These are the kinds of complaints that "power users" have because they use websites like tools. Average users don't. My mother would look at the first three reviews and consider that in-depth research. The next time she uses AirBnB, she won't notice re-listings, or removed reviews.

In short, I don't think these kinds of issues are going to hurt their business.

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