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Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

nytimes.com

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Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#61

Post by BoiledCabbage »

grailed wrote: post #8

I hear a lot of talk surrounding their "moat" and many skeptics are questioning whether or not they will be able to maintain their competitive advantage. However, it feels like Airbnb has solved a truly hard problem: how to make people trust your service. People are using this app to go stay in random people's homes. How often do you hear people talk about being murdered in uber? I still hear it. How often do you hea…

> I hear a lot of talk surrounding their "moat" and many skeptics are questioning whether or not they will be able to maintain their competitive advantage.

Why do they need a moat? What happened to all the free market capitalism everyone believes in? Let the better company win out in true competition?

Or is that just a taking point, and everyone actually believes in building moats to avoid competition?

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#62

Post by BoiledCabbage »

tempsy wrote: post #58
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Setting your price too high and then crashing your stock is worse for the company due to tax implications and overall investor sentiment. Raising double the money is a bad thing due to "investor sentiment"? What tangible negative impact does that have on Airbnb. You're gonna need to explain this one. Because it really sounds to me like repeating a talking point told by a counterparty.

you don’t raise double the money because you set the price 2x unless that was your plan. you would sell half the shares if you had a fixed goal eg $3B. you decide on how much you need and then decide the number of shares you sell at what price. it isn’t like they would’ve raised twice the money if they upped the share price.

> you don’t raise double the money because you set the price 2x unless that was your plan. you would sell half the shares

You keep throwing out assumptions without anything backing them.

They at a price and amount for sale. Absent an auction set price it's almost certain that price is inefficiently set. And you're arguing that it was efficiently set when we have tens of billions of proof it wasn't efficiently set via yesterday's stock move.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#63

Post by tempsy »

grailed wrote: post #8

I hear a lot of talk surrounding their "moat" and many skeptics are questioning whether or not they will be able to maintain their competitive advantage. However, it feels like Airbnb has solved a truly hard problem: how to make people trust your service. People are using this app to go stay in random people's homes. How often do you hear people talk about being murdered in uber? I still hear it. How often do you hea…

shorting a stock in this market is a fool’s errand.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#64

Post by Nelkins »

As someone whose main exposure to stocks is investing via retirement accounts, can someone explain if they're really leaving $4 billion on the table? Can't they just issue/sell more stock to drive down the price to their originally targeted price? Or is that some kind of breach of fiduciary duty (or something else)?

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#65

Post by boberoni »

jpalmer wrote: post #31

Market cap now exceeds top 5 US hotel chains combined. How much can it grow from here?

Based on Airbnb's other product of "experiences", I could see them growing into the broader vacation industry.

I remember a talk by Brian Chesky where he lamented the (pre-COVID) style of travel where tourists just herd into queues at mainstream tourist attractions. Airbnb experiences are supposed to subvert this and create an industry of tourism that is more serendipitous and less standardized.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#66

Post by dhnajsjdnd »

Nelkins wrote: post #64

As someone whose main exposure to stocks is investing via retirement accounts, can someone explain if they're really leaving $4 billion on the table? Can't they just issue/sell more stock to drive down the price to their originally targeted price? Or is that some kind of breach of fiduciary duty (or something else)?

When they issued shares in the IPO, that diluted existing shareholders. The only way to un-dilute them would be to buy back those shares (at current inflated prices). They could sell more shares, which would mean further dilution.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#67

Post by pavlov »

Nelkins wrote: post #64

As someone whose main exposure to stocks is investing via retirement accounts, can someone explain if they're really leaving $4 billion on the table? Can't they just issue/sell more stock to drive down the price to their originally targeted price? Or is that some kind of breach of fiduciary duty (or something else)?

Yes, the company can do a secondary offering after its IPO, and it's pretty common. I think the hype around the IPO will help them do a secondary next year, so in that sense the low initial price is like a marketing tool for future stock.

Also, Airbnb (like other tech companies) is issuing quite a lot of new stock in the form of RSUs used to pay employees. This constant dilution benefits from the high stock price.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#68

Post by whimsicalism »

tempsy wrote: post #51
whimsicalism wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They handed over boatloads of money because that is the toll that Wall Street firms exact in illiquid markets and that is how Wall Street firms make money. I'm not saying that they were screwed over. > all he said was it makes the stock market look bad when some people double their money in a day. That is one part of what he says, very misleading. He describes it as an "error" that is due to a flaw in the "way Wall S…

No one could’ve predicted Airbnb would be bid up to $100B. Just because you’re Goldman does not mean you can predict where a share price will go on day 1. we are in a massive speculative cycle that isn’t just impacting Airbnb’s IPO but a lot of tech stocks, many up 1x-10x in a year. So to try to argue that wall street purposefully set the price too low when $50B is already high given travel hasn’t fully recovered yet…

> Just because you’re Goldman does not mean you can predict where a share price will go on day 1.

The EMH doesn't apply if there wasn't a previous market price. This was an absolutely massive move, and I'm supposed to believe there was no indication of that ahead of time.

You can definitely model supply and demand if you're Goldman - I'm not saying that you can predict market moves, but this wasn't a move from a previous efficient market-determined price.

> $50B is already high given travel hasn’t fully recovered yet is makes no sense.

$50B is not high by definition given the current market pricing.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#69

Post by ghaff »

iandanforth wrote: post #60
andy_ppp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with Airbnb and hosts who are basically trying to rinse as much money as possible for as little effort as possible. I’m not sure after a long journey I want to wonder around the Edinburgh fringe again, trying to decipher Scottish, while the wind is going crazy and there are millions of people floating around just to get keys. I think Airbnb is great if there are 15 of you sharing…

Because I've had the opposite experience would you be willing to share how you pick places? I rent: "Whole places", with a strong bias towards detached buildings, that rate 4.7 or higher on their scale, and have glowing reviews that mention how nice the host is. These are almost always $90/night or more, with an average of $120/night.

I have stayed at "conventional" B&B's that I've noticed apparently also list on AirBnB and they've been fine. I think a general point whether we're talking renting a room/apartment, ordering online FBA, etc. is that a lot of people bargain hunt. While that often works out, there's also a reason for the saying that if something looks too good to be true, there's a good chance you're going to get burned.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#70

Post by whimsicalism »

rezz wrote: post #47
whimsicalism wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the interior of America has given up on distancing.

Maybe ease up on the costal holier than thou sentiment. I’m in Miami right now and 90% of the people I’ve met are tech / finance types from NYC doing blow inside of clubs until 4am.

I was in Texas recently. I'm not going to ease up on it when mask compliance compared to SF or DC (haven't been to NYC) is measurably awful.

> I’m in Miami right now and 90% of the people I’ve met are tech / finance types from NYC doing blow inside of clubs until 4am

I don't even know what this means. 90% of people you've met in Miami do "blow"? What? Are you a coke dealer?

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