Airbnb IPO Filing Reveals How The Company Bounced Back During The Pandemic

By Amit Chowdhry ● Nov 18, 2020
  • Airbnb is going public on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ABNB.” These are the details.

When the pandemic began early this year, one of the companies that was hit the hardest was Airbnb. After doing some restructuring, the company was able to bounce back and file for an IPO. Before the end of the year, Airbnb is going to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ABNB.”

During the second quarter, Airbnb saw its revenue decline 67% and the losses were $400 million. And by April, the valuation of the company reportedly fell from $31 billion to $18 billion. Plus Airbnb laid off about 25% of its staff.

Several months later, Airbnb was able to turn the company around and its bookings were back to pre-pandemic levels by July. The type of stays that saw a surge were bookings within 300 miles of the home address of users due to fatigue around the global shelter-in-place orders.

According to Airbnb’s S-1 filing, the Q3 revenue fell just 18% year-over-year compared to Q3 2019. And Airbnb actually had reported a profit of $219.3 million due to the drastic spending cuts. For example, Airbnb reduced its marketing budget by about $800 million at the end of March.

During the first 9 months of 2020, the company still saw a net loss of $696.9 million — which was more than double the loss of $322 million in the first 9 months of 2019. The company’s revenue for the first nine months of 2020 fell 32% to $2.52 billion.

Companies have been switching to a hybrid model where a majority of American employees who are working from home are now saying that they want to have a remote component in their workweeks. And this hybrid model is going to benefit Airbnb in the long-run. In a survey of U.S. travelers, Airbnb found that 25% of respondents are expecting that they will be able to live where they want and work remotely due to the growing acceptance of working remotely.

Airbnb was originally founded by Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia back in 2007. What inspired them to create the company was the idea of having the ability to rent out their apartment to business travelers who came into town for a design conference.