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.
Airbnb’s Stunning IPO
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Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO
#222Market cap now exceeds top 5 US hotel chains combined. How much can it grow from here?
I still don’t think it necessarily justifies the current market cap.
Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
An individual company is not part of an iterative game but the underwriters and institutional investors are, and it creates misaligned incentives.
It’s the reason for the hype around direct listings. So far no one has raised money that way but it’s only a matter of time. The difference is between floating publicly and floating publicly with a raise is basically nothing.
Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's already so easy to do non-standard tourist activities on a vacation that I'm skeptical there is a big opportunity here. All it takes to avoid the standard tourist traps is having interests that influence your travel, talking to locals, or firing up something like Groupon to find something to do in a new area. I've always figured that so many people hit up classic tourist spots because that's what they actually w…
For a lot of people, "tourist trap" doesn't register as a thing - those are just the things you _do_ when you go to whatever place you're going to.
If Airbnb becomes the safe, convenient, well-marketed way to discover reputable but not stereotypical local experiences in a marketplace that takes your credit card, they could do well IMO.
Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was the second largest "money left on the table" from an IPO. Jay Ritter's document shows how much AirBNB could have picked up if they had priced their IPO appropriately. https://site.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/files/Monnew.pdf
Can someone please explain the winners and losers of this $3.9 Billion discrepancy?
Losers: Existing Airbnb shareholders who have shares in a company that could have raised $7B in cash but instead raised $3.5B. In theory, the mispricing "cost" Airbnb around 4% of its market cap, so existing common shares are worth 4% less than they should be.
But there's a caveat[1].
Companies like Airbnb (no stable profit) are almost entirely valued on sentiment and expectation. Assuming perfect information and rational actors, in an alternate universe, a direct listing would have resulted in around a $146[2] share price, on top of which the company can raise a secondary listing for $3.5B without affecting the share price. They'd have the same assets and liabilities as they have today, except pocketing the difference (by limiting dilution) instead of handing it to investors.
However, there's no certainty that the valuation would be $146 today had they gone this route. Humans, especially hype-powered retail investors who like to jump on flashy IPOs, are very susceptible to things like IPO bumps when making their buy or sell decisions. An entire field[3] of investing with significant buying power essentially relies on predicting sentiment.
If I'm a common shareholder, sure I'm sad that my shares are worth maybe 4% less than they "should" and that the financial world pocketed the difference, but I'm probably pretty happy my shares are worth what they are and aren't too interested in, for example, rehashing the deal or picking a offering strategy that could have swayed investor sentiment in a way that made my shares worth much more than 4% less.
[1] - The impact of "more perfectly" priced IPOs on market sentiment and thus public valuation is the most significant factor, but a secondary one is the practical aspect that the IPO process consists of a lot of risk, both on the part of the underwriting investment bank who gives the company the money raised in the IPO and the small number of powerful investors get access to (often) preferential pricing from the investment bank in exchange for an advanced commitment to buy the shares and hold for some agreed upon time. This illiquid market is dominated by relatively few actors. An IPOing company who doesn't "play ball" may find itself unable to find someone willing to underwrite their funding round or buy into it at all. [2] - This theoretical loss per share is computable two ways. The easy way is that they "left $3.5B on the table" which divided into Airbnb's current market cap of $84B is ~4%. The other way is the counterfactual way. Airbnb currently has 600M shares outstanding, having issued 50M shares in the IPO in exchange for $3.5B. So if not for the issuance, Airbnb is worth $80.5B with 550M shares outstanding, or $146 per share. [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis
Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO
#226I 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…
There's an inherent degree of volatility in markets, there's no way to set a price.
Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO
#2272x IPO strike price in first day of trading after $613M recouped stock options after the layoffs. Stock consolidation and 180 day lock up period creates a big risk for when employees sell. Lots of them probably have tens of thousands of shares, exercised them very cheaply, and will want to offload them. I'm not going to touch this stock with a 10-foot pole. I do wish I could short this stock but options aren't availa…
Everyone says this about the lock up and it makes sense intuitively, but it doesn't really match the data. I saw a presentation by a major investment bank that showed that in most cases there is not a significant drop following the lock up expiration -- I'm sure there are examples either way, but this was a compelling basket.
Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO
#228Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO
#229I 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…