Details are coming out about AirBnB’s pending IPO deal.
Reuters reports today the company plans to launch a $30 billion IPO, which would stand tall in the 2020 market as short-term rentals benefit from COVID anxieties around hotels.
According to the reporting, in July the AirBnB platform marked a booking of one million nights in one day, and that key stock metrics, as well as the CBOE volatility index provided greenlighting for AirBnB’s plan.
“Shares of U.S. online travel agency Booking Holdings Inc BKNG.O, which some Airbnb investors use as a conservative public market proxy for its own stock, have rebounded more than 50% in the past eight months,” write Joshua Franklin and Anirban Sen.
Another part of the company’s strategy is the creation of an endowment seeded with 9.2 million shares.
The plan is to trigger a giveback to AirBnB hosts at $1 billion, in order to fund the processes that made AirBnB what it is today, and support the people behind the administration of these short term rental properties.
A 15-member host advisory board will control the endowment, of which the company filed the following statement according to reporting at pymnts.com:
“The Host Advisory Board will be as diverse as the host community itself … 85 percent of you live outside of the US, and 55 percent of you are women.”
Notwithstanding many local municipal rules on short-term rentals, AirBnB has a lot of room to grow. It’s also innovating its payment structures in a big way, and creating other on-ramps for hosts and other stakeholders to thrive in.
“Airbnb hired Apple’s former chief design officer Jony Ive and his firm LoveForm to consult on the design of future products and assist in the hiring of an internal design team,” write pymnts.com reporters.
Factor AirBnB into your portfolio for 2020 and beyond.
