Airbnb soars 142% in its debut on the Stock Market

Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, in a video projected on the facade of the Nasdaq headquarters in New York, this Thursday.

Successful stock market debut for Airbnb.

The shares of the tourist rental platform have been placed at the opening of the day on the Nasdaq in New York at 146 dollars (about 120.4 euros), well above the public offer for sale, which was 68 dollars.

In initial investor euphoria, stocks have rallied further, to $ 165, for a 142.6% gain.

In the later stages of the day, they have returned to a price around 145 dollars.

This means that the global valuation of the company has reached 101.600 million dollars (almost 84,000 million euros), well above the 30,000 million that it expected to reach in its premiere.

The operation marks a prodigious recovery for Airbnb, which suffered in the first half of the year as a result of the pandemic and international restrictions on tourism, which led to a delay in its announced IPO.

Founded in 2008, the US company was valued at just $ 18 billion in a first round of fundraising with private investors last April.

It was much less than the result ($ 31 billion) that another similar round had produced in 2017.

At a price of $ 146 per share, the firm founded by Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joseph Gebbia went on the Nasdaq with a market capitalization of $ 87.2 billion, ahead of other direct competitors such as Booking Holdings (owner of the booking website Booking and Kayak, among others), with 86,300 million, and doubling the Marriott International hotel chain (42,300 million).

Despite the glitzy debut, it hasn't been an easy year for Airbnb.

In the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, it announced the layoff of a quarter of its workforce and requested emergency funding of $ 2 billion from investment funds such as Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners.

But as the lockdowns relaxed, the company's numbers improved, especially when many travelers opted for the apartments advertised on the platform as an alternative to hotels.

This led to the fact that, in the third quarter of the year, losses were transformed into profits.

In 2019, the last full year, the San Francisco-based company (western US) posted a net loss of $ 674.3 million, compared to losses of $ 16.9 million in 2018 and $ 70 million in 2017. But revenue posted remarkable growth, rising from $ 2.562 billion in 2017 to more than $ 4.8 billion last year.

The IPO was one of the most anticipated and ends a 2020 of sounded irruptions of technology companies in the New York market.

This Wednesday, without going any further, the DoorDash delivery company managed to multiply by four the valuation obtained six months ago in attracting investors.