Sharing economy pioneer Airbnb is all set to go public this year in what is being labeled ‘2019’s Most Anticipated IPO’.
Airbnb serves as an intermediary that connects hosts and guests, providing them with an online platform for sharing listings. Today, the platform hosts over 2 million people a night and has already hosted 400 million people since its inception, offering around 6 million places to stay in over 191 countries in more than 100,000 cities. The company is all set to make a big splash in the market.
According to TechCrunch report published last year, many Wall Street analysts expect Airbnb to go public as early as 30 June 2019, and no later than 2020. Regardless of when the IPO pans out, Airbnb is definitely a company angel investors and private funds want to keep an eye on.
So far, Airbnb has raised a total of $4.4 Billion over 16 fundraising rounds. The latest was a Secondary Market round on 5 September 2018. The company’s lead investors are JPMorgan Chase, Hillhouse Capital Group, TCV, and CapitalG.
The company has witnessed a 62.5% increase in guest arrivals in 2018. In 2016, over 50% of Airbnb users chose the service as a replacement to a traditional hotel stay. In the US, the price for one night stay in an Airbnb room is, on average. cheaper than a hotel’s daily rate by margins ranging from 6% to 17%. In Europe, Airbnb bookings are 8% to 17% cheaper than hotel bookings. At the end of 2018, Airbnb said that guest stays continued to surge in cities like Mexico City up 79%; Beijing up 91% and Birmingham up 70%. Since 2009, the global compound growth rate of the company has risen up to 153%.
At this pace, going public would give a massive boost to the company’s growth. However, unlike Uber and Lyft, the company is in no rush to hit the market. In a recent interview with Business Insider, Airbnb co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Nathan Blecharczyk stated: “We have already said that we are taking the steps to be ready to go public in 2019. That doesn’t mean we will go public in 2019.”
Given its popularity and growth, Airbnb is steadily becoming unstoppable and is changing the paradigm on which the hospitality industry is based. Since Airbnb doesn’t have any big rivals with a set IPO date in 2019, it seems like it could be a good year for the company to go public. The company is definitely doing well financially as well as competitively, thus making it an attractive buy for those looking to invest.
Keep watching this space for more details on the Airbnb IPO.
