The popular home-sharing rental business, Airbnb has announced plans to become a public company in 2020 through a brief statement. “Airbnb, Inc. announced today that it expects to become a publicly-traded company during 2020.” Having said that, the company didn’t disclose any target date or a specific timeline for the initial public offering.
This news comes a day after We Company, the parent organisation of WeWork, was forced to delay its initial public offering (IPO) after investors questioned its worth and expressing concerns about WeWork’s corporate governance. According to Renaissance Capital, which researches IPOs, Airbnb was valued at $31 billion last year.
Earlier this week, the San-Francisco company said it made one billion dollars in revenue in the second quarter of this year but didn’t give any information on profits. As per the company statement, hosts have earned more than $80 billion sharing their homes and spaces on Airbnb, as of September 15, 2019.
Many of the market analysts believed Airbnb would receive a far better reception from investors than Uber or Lyft. Notably, both the company has performed poorly, failing to show investors a path to profitability. On the other hand, tech startups, including Zoom, Slack, PagerDuty, Cloudflare, and Pinterest, are trading above their IPO pricing at present.
WeWork IPO postponed!
WeWork postponed its IPO as its valuation has plunged to $20 billion from $47 billion earlier this year. In fact, the company filed its S-1 as a tech company for listing, but many have raised questions in that regard as well.
In general, WeWork is a real estate company, and technology plays a minimal role in its revenue model. On the other hand, critics have also raised concerns as to what would happen if there were a recession or companies wanted to trim their rental costs. Even though the company defended its model, they are yet to prove its claims.
Trusted market place for people to list and discover
For the uninitiated, Airbnb is an online community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book accommodations around the world. Founded in August of 2008 by Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, it is based in San Francisco, California, Airbnb connects people to unique travel experiences, at any price point, in more than 33,000 cities and 192 countries.
Notably, this platform acts as the easiest way for people to monetize their extra space and showcase it to an audience of millions. Headquartered in San Francisco, we have satellite offices in Dublin, London, Barcelona, Paris, Milan, Copenhagen, Berlin, Moscow, São Paulo, Sydney, and Singapore.
A few months back, Airbnb launched a new luxury service called Luxe featuring more than 2000 luxury hotels in a bid to compete with Marriot’s luxury home-rental service, Homes & Villas. On the other hand, Airbnb acquired hotel room app HotelTonight, which was last valued at $463 million in March 2017.
Credit image: Airbnb
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