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Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

nytimes.com

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Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#171

Post by mathattack »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #154

I recall that Facebook's first day closed at or near the offer price: Opened at $38 and closed at $38.23. That's a masterful IPO pricing accomplishment, meaning, FB left $0.23 per share on the table. Moreover, the stock traded below the open for 5 quarters before starting it's impressive rise. Even with that pause, buying at the open and holding till now would have yielded nearly 27% annualized return. It's just my o…

It leaves a huge amount on the table. The only caveat is if it comes back down, initial investors would be very angry.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#172

Post by borroka »

gorbypark wrote: post #71
WanderPanda wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they certainly won't be inside with you Not true, we once stayed in Pisa, Italy, and the (absolutely messy) appartment was shared with the host and her son. It was quite awkward at times but we still enjoyed the stay

Many years back I stayed in Melbourne, Australia with a lovely Chinese speaking elderly couple. They made me lunch, I have no idea what it was but it was delicious! I think it was much more common to rent an extra room back when Airbnb was relatively new.

My best Airbnb experience was my first one 4 years ago, when with a partner I booked a room in a house with the owner living in. We had a tremendous time, we had bbq one night together, it was an enjoyable not planned semi-communal experience. Nowadays, the experience Airbnb offers is mostly that of a poorly managed hotel that has properties all over the world. It can be worthwhile when traveling in groups, but otherwise I tend to prefer hotels.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#173

Post by pb7 »

say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #35

25% of AirBnB staff was cut in 2020. Many may still be unemployed. For those who are struggling, please accept my deepest condolences at this time.

All of whom got very generous severance packages that may extend through the end of the year and all of their vested equity is now worth a lot. I don't think they need your condolences.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#174

Post by Erwin »

vmarsy wrote: post #165
jonny_eh wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seat-choosing fee, bagage fee Those are optional, cleaning fees are not. They should be included in the price shown on the map.

> They should be included in the price shown on the map. Completely agree, that would make the experience more user-friendly for the person looking to rent. This is an AirBnb platform issue, not necessarily a owner "scam". Not a trivial engineering problem as the dynamic price based on length of your stay can't be cached easily as base-price-per-night, and I assume caching prices per listing is what makes the map qui…

The price is included in Europe because EU asked them to.

When I search the map shows me a price per night for the amount of nights I picked including the corresponding part of the cleaning and service fees.

So it is not an "engineering problem" but a 100% deliberate "dark pattern" choice on AirBNB's part.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#175

Post by [deleted] »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #154

I recall that Facebook's first day closed at or near the offer price: Opened at $38 and closed at $38.23. That's a masterful IPO pricing accomplishment, meaning, FB left $0.23 per share on the table. Moreover, the stock traded below the open for 5 quarters before starting it's impressive rise. Even with that pause, buying at the open and holding till now would have yielded nearly 27% annualized return. It's just my o…

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#176

Post by borroka »

sida wrote: post #15
loufe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60-100 staff? Sorry but that's very naïve. Think about how many core services this takes: -finance -payment -HR -management -verification of hosts / properties -scam detection and moderation -legal -dispute arbitration -programming -infrastructure -projects -building management for properties like HQ they own -customer service -etc. They'd be lucky to get away with a couple multiples of your guess. This isn't netflix…

I agreed with everything until Netflix. Netflix is incredibly complex. But yes, we can all agree that these take a lot of people to run

Netflix is complex and they also have entire teams whose effect on the product or business is zero or negative. Almost all companies are inefficient in different ways.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#177

Post by Erwin »

ionwake wrote: post #98

As a great fan of airbnb having stayed 10 times in Denmark in different ones, I was suddenly burned by a fake review from a first time host ( she got into trouble with her housing association I think ). She destroyed my feedbacks "image" with made up statements in her statement. After several appeals airbnb did not help at all. I got so burned that I still don't quite understand whether I was unlucky or failed to rea…

I had another fun experience like that, but triggered by the guest reviews. I booked a place for my parents to stay which suddenly disappeared. All I was told by AirBNB is that the host cancelled and the user nor the place was no longer to be found on the site.

Turns out some other guest reported the host for having a hidden camera (which was really the standard Danish fire alarm). The AirBNB messaging made it out to be the host's fault.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#178

Post by kamilszybalski »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #154

I recall that Facebook's first day closed at or near the offer price: Opened at $38 and closed at $38.23. That's a masterful IPO pricing accomplishment, meaning, FB left $0.23 per share on the table. Moreover, the stock traded below the open for 5 quarters before starting it's impressive rise. Even with that pause, buying at the open and holding till now would have yielded nearly 27% annualized return. It's just my o…

Do you really think that the CFO should be accountable for pricing in market hype? I would much rather under-estimate and over-perform then over-estimate and fall short. The narrative between those two scenarios is drastically different.

Related. Look at Snowflake, it's trading well beyond any logic. Most retail doesn't realize that ~10% float is trading. Watch for Monday as lock-ups expire, the price action will be something.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#179

Post by gonehome »

Another strong argument in favor of doing a direct listing to determine market price (and raising privately beforehand if possible).

Anytime one party does a transaction repeatedly as their job and one party does a transaction once (maybe twice) in their life, the transaction will be structured to favor the first group (along with a compelling narrative/PR of why this is not the case).

Airbnb lost out here. It's easy to discount since people are happy to have made money, but I'm not sure this was a stunning IPO considering that. If I was on the company side, I'd be pissed at the initial pricing and the money that was left on the table.

The counter narrative is that pricing is hard and the banks try to do the best they can (with a slight preference for under pricing to benefit themselves). This is probably closer to the truth, but there's a lot of evidence that they're just not good at it.

It'd be interesting to see some clause that if the banks mis-priced by some X% the partners would have to sell and give 50% back to the company. Though I suspect even this wouldn't help because market price is hard to predict even if you're incentivized to try your best.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bill-gurley-direct-lis...

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#180

Post by tc313 »

kamilszybalski wrote: post #178
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #154

I recall that Facebook's first day closed at or near the offer price: Opened at $38 and closed at $38.23. That's a masterful IPO pricing accomplishment, meaning, FB left $0.23 per share on the table. Moreover, the stock traded below the open for 5 quarters before starting it's impressive rise. Even with that pause, buying at the open and holding till now would have yielded nearly 27% annualized return. It's just my o…

Do you really think that the CFO should be accountable for pricing in market hype? I would much rather under-estimate and over-perform then over-estimate and fall short. The narrative between those two scenarios is drastically different. Related. Look at Snowflake, it's trading well beyond any logic. Most retail doesn't realize that ~10% float is trading. Watch for Monday as lock-ups expire, the price action will be…

> The narrative between those two scenarios is drastically different.

Who cares about the narrative unless you need to raise capital again soon? The money you get in an IPO actually goes into the business, while the trading price of the stock has no impact on the business.

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