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Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

nytimes.com

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Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#201

Post by therealx »

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.

I think the host caliber was much different then too. The professional AirBNB people had not setup shop.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#202

Post by therealx »

karmakaze wrote: post #101
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've had the displeasure of going through AirBnb dispute resolution process more than once, which was resolved in my favour once and not the other. Neither time did I think they did a good job of hearing the sides of the case and deciding on solid principles or written foundations. It's pretty much a matter of who sees it and makes a subjective call. It's also shocking that the first several tiers of customer support…

Their dispute process reminds me of credit card chargebacks. They don't read the info you produce most of the time and make a call based on what's best for the company. I hate it.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#203

Post by say_it_as_it_is »

chasedehan wrote: post #163
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…

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?

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#204

Post by chungus_khan »

bob33212 wrote: post #80
jeffbee wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are struggling. They IPO not due to the health of their business, but because so many dupes are putting their dumb money on the table these days.

I assume most investors are smarter than that and are hoping AirBnB will build a monopoly similar to how google did with search and Wikipedia did with online encyclopedias. A 5% monopoly tax on most rentals/hotels does give you a huge profit eventually.

There are a lot of tremendously unprofitable monopoly plays riding this sort of dream train, particularly since 2008.

Which ones will work and which ones won't is hard to tell, but that is indeed what investors are betting on.

At least Airbnb has a business model that could theoretically make it to profitability. An alarming number of these don't have any coherent path.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#205

Post by spenczar5 »

chubot wrote: post #166
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…

So what happened to the Dutch Auction idea? Seems that tech is more powerful / autonomous in some ways than Wall St. now and could eliminate this risk? Why subject themselves to this process -- what are they gaining? https://money.howstuffworks.com/ipo7.htm Instead of letting the underwriter dish out shares to favored institutions, Google held a Dutch auction in which everyone who wanted a share put in a bid. The low…

The story I've seen is that retail investors, who didn't have access to the pre-IPO pricing, flooded in and sent the price way higher.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#206

Post by therealx »

ghaff wrote: post #109
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…

Dispute resolution at most marketplace and social media companies is pretty hit or miss in my experience. In general, you're not going to get a big time slice from whatever low-paid customer service rep you get assigned to. Maybe they'll make the right call and maybe they won't but any investigation is going to be pretty cursory. That's not to say stuff never gets fixed. A few months ago I had a random blog on postin…

The dispute processes make binding arbitration with a third party company seem desireable, and that's saying something.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#207

Post by chungus_khan »

Ekaros wrote: post #107
bob33212 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume most investors are smarter than that and are hoping AirBnB will build a monopoly similar to how google did with search and Wikipedia did with online encyclopedias. A 5% monopoly tax on most rentals/hotels does give you a huge profit eventually.

I really wonder if these monopolies will happen. Is there any paid service with actual monopoly yet? Amazon has market share, but also competitive prices. To me all of these big markets like taxi, food delivery and online booking seem rather low barrier of entry. And that the customers will be price aware. That can't be really compared with free services like Google, Wikipedia or Youtube...

The optimal shape for most markets is a duopoly. Both competitors get a large enough stake to continue growing, but don't really meaningfully compete, and don't have to worry as much about antitrust.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#208

Post by triceratops »

tc313 wrote: post #180
kamilszybalski wrote: post #178

Earlier 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.

Airbnb employees get paid in stock. For many it may be as much as 40% of their total compensation. If the price drops, those employees are going to be very upset. The trading price matters very much.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#209

Post by therealx »

pm90 wrote: post #164
vvilliam0 wrote: post #140

Airbnb is great until you get a bad experience. For hotels, there is a floor for bad experiences - it can only get so bad, and the customer service is usually decent. I used airbnb until I had a single terrible experience and worse customer service that did not help me because I had no proof of the incident. Been using hotels ever since.

They will churn through new customers who get bitten by this until they come up with controls/features that prevent it. Instituting those will increase the price making them less competitive and opening the door to others. Its quite amusing how much the gig economy is hyped up but besides the initial surge of excitement, it just settles down and looks like the industry its trying to replace. But I'm a pessimist. Mayb…

It's often worse than what it replaced, too. Uber did well because the Taxi industry already had gone to such low low's, but the gig economy feels synonomous with an excuse to pay less than minimum wage to me.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#210

Post by therealx »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #148

I pretty much stopped using Airbnb after getting a bad review from a host for “not tidying up” - what exactly is the large cleaning fee for? So paying almost hotel prices for less than hotel level service seems like a pretty bad deal. Particularly when the host wants you to also jump through hoops to avoid getting busted by the homeowners or tenants association...

I absolutely hate that. I've had AirBNB's tell me to take out the trash and the full gamet before leaving while still charging me $30 to clean. I refused.
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