Airbnb Still Eyeing The Public Market Despite Pandemic Effects

Published on August 16, 2020

Airbnb plans on filing for an initial public offering in the public market this month, according to a report from Wall Street Journal. 

It’s big news, as the short-term home rental company was arguably 2020’s most anticipated tech IPO. But then the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in mid-March, throwing the economy for a loop–especially hammering the travel industry. Airbnb was affected, raising questions if the company would go through with an IPO after all.

Now a public debut will reportedly still be happening this year. And with Airbnb’s valuation at $18 billion (per the Journal, and down from an earlier valuation of $31 billion) it would be among a small group of companies to go public with such a high valuation in the last five years. 

Since 2014, there have only been five U.S.-based venture-backed companies with initial post-public valuations of $10 billion or more*. Those companies were more or less household names: Uber, Lyft, Slack, Pinterest and Snap.

*Post-IPO valuation reflects valuation before shares begin trading.

Uber

Total Funding: $24.7 billion

IPO Date: May 9, 2019

Valuation At IPO: $82.4 billion

IPO Share Price: $45

Lyft

Total Funding: $4.9 billion

IPO Date: March 29, 2019

Valuation At IPO: $24 billion

IPO Share Price: $72

Slack

Total Funding: $1.4 billion

Direct Listing Date: June 20, 2019

Valuation: $23 billion

Reference Price: $26 

Pinterest

Total Funding: $1.5 billion

IPO Date: April 18, 2019

Valuation At IPO: $12.7 billion

IPO Share Price: $19

Snap

Total Funding: $4.9 billion

IPO Date: March 2, 2017

Valuation At IPO: $33 billion 

IPO Share Price: $24

We can’t really speculate what Airbnb’s IPO will look like. There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the world with COVID-19, and that could affect the company’s plans or the public market’s reception to Airbnb. We’ll have more when we can get a look at the company’s S-1 registration document.

Related: How Email Marketing Will Evolve in the Next 5 Years

The article Airbnb Still Eyeing The Public Market Despite Pandemic Effects by Sophia Kunthara first appeared on Crunchbase News.

Crunchbase News is a digital publication covering the intersection of technology and money. It is an independent group which operates as part of the Crunchbase family. (Crunchbase is a public database of private companies that also sells data access and business intelligence tools.) 

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