Airbnb Filed to Go Public By the End of This Year

Today, Airbnb, the home-sharing service, has announced that it had filed to go public. The move comes after some reports that claimed the company was prepping an IPO filing this month.

This move will put the company on a path to a public offering. Also, the reports indicate that the company might go public by the end of the year. Therefore, the offering of A Q3 or Q4 Airbnb is a distinct possibility.

Ever since shutdowns related to COVID-19 slammed the travel market, Airbnb has mounted a comeback while simultaneously tanking its revenues.

From the start of lockdowns, the company has laid off as many as 2,000 workers and took on expensive capital from external sources.

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In 2019, the company had promised that it will go public in 2020. However, that pledge seemed a little distant. Since they have informed people about different parts of its business that have come back to life despite the new travel and work and vacation patterns of its customers.

With the company’s decision of going public, analysts are presuming that their current results must be good enough to get it live. Otherwise, the firm would have not filed and simply gone public later. However, this raises another question, if its Q2 report were good enough or if they intended to update its S-1 filing with Q3 numbers.

Such a course of action will definitely put its public debut perilously close to the election and its Q2 numbers are down not only from Q1. In revenue terms, but more sharply from its year-ago.

In short, the growth story of Airbnb’s might not be clear until Q3 numbers are tallied. Airbnb has joined the group of other companies that have filed privately, like DoorDash, by waiting for the right moment to go public.