Skift Take
In initial public offering land, it's a long time until 2019. The markets are turbulent at the moment and there are big regulatory headaches that stubbornly persist, but investors are salivating at the prospect of dropping some money into Uber and/or Airbnb. These IPO plans could be very impactful.
If 2015 was a frenetic year for mergers and acquisitions in travel, next year could shape up as a bellwether year for initial public offerings as a couple of unicorns that have labored behind the shield of massive private fundings are racing to go public.
We are referring to the near-mythical creatures, Uber and Airbnb of unicorn notoriety, as well as the more diminutive Lyft.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Uber is entertaining proposals to field an IPO from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley at a valuation as steep as $120 billion, which is much larger than prior reports, and much-smaller ridehailing rival Lyft tapped JP Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse and Jeffries to underwrite a listing at a market value of around $15.1 billion.
Lyft could time its public-coming-out party for the first half of 2019 while Uber was considering the second half, but it could speed things up so as not to lose some momentum with Lyft entering the markets first, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Of course, homesharing service Airbnb, is likewise mulling an IPO in 2019, and has to overcome some skepticism about its regulatory prospects, among other issues. "As the company heads toward a potential IPO in 2019, Airbnb clearly has a lot of work to do," a new Skift Research report, A Deep Dive Into Airbnb 2018: Tackling Roadblocks on the Runway, found. "Nevertheless, the company’s ability to shift and disrupt the way the industry thinks about accommodation and travel is a force to be reckoned with, and its economic and financial impact can no longer be ignored."
By all accounts the IP
