- GeneralIPO
- December 10, 2020
- 4 minutes read
Airbnb Seeks $3.4B From IPO
The online home rentals company Airbnb has announced the pricing of its imminent initial public offering (IPO), with the company seeking…
The online home rentals company Airbnb has announced the pricing of its imminent initial public offering (IPO), with the company seeking to raise up to $3.5 billion by selling over 51 million shares for $68 apiece. Altogether, about 51.3 million shares are being offered for sale, with 50 million coming from Airbnb, the company, and the rest from current stockholders.
At $68 apiece, Airbnb’s market value will stand at $47 billion, compared to its peak private valuation of $35 billion. Notably, the $3.5 billion it’s seeking to raise would mark it as the third-biggest IPO for a US company this year, only beaten by the $3.9 billion raised by the software company Snowflake and $4 billion raised by hedge fund tycoon Bill Ackman’s blank-check firm Pershing Square Tontine Holdings.
Airbnb is expected to be $3.4 billion richer after the sale of 50 million shares on its own part. It’ll mark one of the biggest IPOs in recent years and one for a company whose public offering has been anticipated for a long time.
Airbnb is going public twelve years after it was founded. Originally known as AirBed & Breakfast, it began as a site for people to book short-term living quarters and breakfast outside of the conventional hotel structure and has struck true to its roots ever since. It now has global operations spanning dozens of countries and over 7 million listings on its site.
Early this year, Airbnb’s business was greatly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and led the company to seek emergency funding that sunk its valuation to as low as $18 billion. Now, in the late end of this year, the company has largely rebounded and even reported a profit of $219 million on $1.3 billion in revenue for the quarter ended September 2020.
Airbnb shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on the 10th of December, 2020, under the ticker symbol “ABNB”. In addition to the 51.3 million shares being offered for sale, Airbnb also has an over-allotment option to sell 5 million extra shares at the same $68 price.
Update: We made a correction to indicate that Airbnb would mark the third-biggest US IPO this year, rather than the second-biggest we previously stated.
Photo: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky
