I'm not sure how a Prof. who teaches equity valuation keeps his sanity in the current market but he seems to be holding up okay.
From Musings on Markets, a teardown of the now supersized offering, Wednesday, December 2, 2020:
The Sharing Economy come home: The IPO of Airbnb!On Monday, November 16, Airbnb filed it’s preliminary prospectus with the SEC, starting the clock on its long awaited initial public offering. On the same day, rising COVID cases caused more shut downs and restrictions around the world, creating a clear disconnect. Why would a company that derives its value from short term rentals by people who travel want to go public, when a out-of-control virus is causing its business to shut down? In this post, I will argue that there are good reasons for Airbnb's IPO timing, and make my first attempt at valuing this latest entrant into public markets.Setting the Table
As with any valuation, the first step in valuing Airbnb is trying to understand its history and its business model, including how it has navigated the economic consequences of the COVID. In this section, I will start with a brief history of the company, move on to reviewing its financials leading into 2020, and then look at how it has performed in 2020. I will end the section by looking at information disclosed in the recent prospectus filing that provides insights into the company’s journey to its initial public offering.
Timeline of Airbnb
Airbnb's roots go back to 2007, when during an industrial design conference in San Francisco, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia realized that there were opportunities for homeowners to rent their homes to visitors, and created a company called AirBed & Breakfast. Joined in 2008, by Nathan Blecharczyk, a Harvard graduate and technical architect, AirbedandBreakfast.com was born and later renamed Airbnb. In subsequent years, the company grew, with multiple rounds of funding from venture capital. Along the way, investors in the company rapidly escalated their pricing of the company from $1 billion in 2011 to $10 billion in 2014 to more than $30 billion in 2016. The time line below captures some (but not all) of the highlights in Airbnb’s history:
While the company has been able to hit new milestones of growth each year, there are two challenges that it has faced along the way, that need to be incorporated into any valuation you attach to the company today.
- Legal Challenges: The company has faced multiple challenges from cities that feel that its business model violates local zoning laws and regulations, and evades taxes. While you can attribute some of this pushback to hotel company lobbying and the inertia of the status quo, there is no doubt that Airbnb, like Uber, pushes regulatory and legal limits, taking action first and asking for permission later. While Airbnb has found a way to co-exist with laws in different cities, the restrictions they face vary widely across the world, with some locations (like New York) imposing much more stringent rules than others.
- Acquisitions: As the number of hosts and guests on Airbnb have climbed over the years, the company has invested in building a more robust platform for its rentals. While some of that money has been spent on internal improvements, much of it has been spent acquiring more than two dozen companies, most of them small, technology businesses.
Business Model
Airbnb's primary business model connects hosts who own houses and apartments with guests who want to rent them for short term stays, while providing a secure and easy-to-use platform for search, reservations, communications and payments. That said, though, it is worth peeking under the hood to see how this business model plays out as revenues and earnings. In the picture below, I look at the Airbnb business model, both in its original form (which still holds for hosts renting their own houses or apartments) and professional hosts (who own multiple units or even operate small hotels), a model it introduced recently and is still transitioning into:....
....MUCH MORE
