Skift Take
We all know Airbnb will go public someday — it's just a question of when. When will it finally be ready — and what does the company need to do before it does?
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When will Airbnb do its initial public offering? That's the question on the minds of many Airbnb investors and industry watchers.
The San Francisco-based company, which got its start in 2008 when its founders were scrambling to pay their rents by advertising air mattresses in their living room, is now worth an estimated $31 billion. That's only $7 billion less than the market cap of Marriott International, the world's largest hotel company.
It's also one of the few wildly successful Silicon Valley tech unicorns that has yet to go public. Earlier this year, Airbnb reported a profit for the first time in its company history. In other words, the company seems ripe for an IPO.
In March, CEO Brian Chesky confirmed that, yes, the company is on a path to an IPO. But when that will happen has yet to be determined.
"We don't have anything to announce," Chesky told the audience during a luncheon hosted by the New York Economic Club at the New York Stock Exchange. "We are working on making sure the company is ready to go public and so, you know, we've always said it's a two-year project and we're probably halfway through that project as far as being ready to go public. At that point, you know, our investors are very patient. None of them are anxiously waiting for us to go public."
When reminded he made the same comments in 2015, Chesky said the two-year period was "flexible." He also said the only reason Airbnb would seriously enter into an IPO would be to deliver immediate liquidity for the company's shareholders.
That Airbnb will eventually go public is mostly a given. The only question left to answer now is when.
Kathleen Smith, principal of Renaissance Capital and manager of IPO-focused exchange-traded funds, said there's no better time than now for a company like Airbnb to go public, especially given the current state of the markets.
"These are the best of times in the public markets," Smith said. "Any company that is not moving forward to go public that has the ability to do so is crazy. If they're able to go public, they should do it now. We aren't always in these good times."
Smith said that by going public, Airbnb will benefit from having more credibility in completing major transactions, raising more financing, and doing more business with suppliers and other large companies. In
