Will Airbnb Flip the Initial Public Offering Playbook Yet Again?
Photo Credit: Airbnb is once again considering a public offering in 2020. Airbnb
Skift Take
In this tragic and topsy-turvy year, market conditions can change before the end of this sentence. As of this writing, Airbnb seemingly has a path to go public at a valuation that it can likely live with.
The on-again, off-again prospect of Airbnb going public during coronavirus-ravaged 2020 is on again — potentially.
Internal discussions about Airbnb trading on the stock market are under way at the home-sharing behemoth, Axios reported Tuesday, and Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky told Bloomberg a couple of days earlier, "We're not ruling out going public this year and we're not committing to it."
Airbnb announced in 2019 that it intended to go public in 2020, and at the time Skift reported that the likely scenario would be a direct listing instead of an initial public offering. That's because Airbnb's primary motivation would be to enable employees to cash in their stock options, it didn't need to raise money, and could avoid millions of dollars in bankers' f
