According to the Wall Street Journal, Airbnb could file a confidential request to go public as early as this month. The same report states that Airbnb it could follow this filing with an IPO before the end of the year. Morgan Stanley and Goldman are helping the previous startup with its IPO process, writes the Journal.
News that Airbnb's IPO could return to a tumultuous year for the home-sharing unicorn, which has promised to go public in 2020 in 2020. The company has been widely suggested to consider a direct listing before the arrival of COVID-19, collapsing the global travel market and, with it, Airbnb's financial health.
Airbnb declined to comment on its IPO plans.
While travelers stayed home, the company was forced to drastically cut staff and hire billions of capital at prices that seemed rather expensive compared to its late-2019 momentum.
But since those hits, Airbnb has begun to make noise about positive progress regarding the use of its platform and, by implication, its financial performance.
In June, Airbnb said that between "May 17 and June 6, 2020, there were more nights booked for travel on Airbnb listings in the United States. compared to the same time period in 2019 "and" globally, over the most recent weekend (June 5-7), we saw year-over-year growth in gross bookings "for" the first time since February. "
And in July, the company said its users had "booked more than 1 million nights of future stays in Airbnb listings" globally in a single day, the first time since March 3 that it had happened.
It is not clear to what extent Airbnb has recovered its path financially. But the company's cost base in the wake of its layoffs could reduce the revenue base it needs to recover to achieve something like profitability, a traditional IPO benchmark even if it has lost luster in recent years.
And with local travel taking off - slowly improving airline occupancy rates, therefore, are not indicative of Airbnb's performance or health - the company could have reorganized its business in the wake of COVID to something it can. still generate attractive revenue with high margins.
Needless to say, I'm excited to read Airbnb S-1, so the sooner it goes down the happier I'll be. Taking an in-depth look at what happened to the unicorn during COVID-19 will be fascinating.
Airbnb joins DoorDash, Coinbase, Palantir and others in our IPO list. More like we have it.
