The listing on the Stock Exchange had been expected for some time, but the coronavirus crisis slowed it down. However, Airbnb has decided to cut the bull's head and despite the forecasts for 2020 are of a halving of the turnover (from almost 5 billion in 2019), it will be listed on Wall Street by the end of the year. The documents were delivered to the SEC, the American Consob, on Wednesday 19 August, and the vacation rental platform will be followed by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in the operation.
The IPO will also be scaled compared to the one expected before the Covid: Airbnb's most recent assessment amounts to 18 billion dollarssignificantly less than the high of $30 billion reached three years ago. However, all is not lost and the decision to list anyway makes sense: in the meantime, from the summer onwards, the Airbnb business is destined to recover ground, after having undergone the lockdown phase in many countries in the spring period (which forced the dismissal of 25% of employees worldwide). Summer, at least in Europe but not only, it's going great, even if the fear of a second wave and new limitations is always around the corner.
Then there is a technical reason: according to market analyses, if the company led by Brian Chesky were to debut on Wall Street in 2020 it would do so in a decidedly favorable context: since the beginning of the year, in fact, IPOs have raised more than 60 billion dollars on the US market and, on average, the securities have gained 23% on the first day of trading, a record level since 2000.
This trend has put many companies on the advice of taking advantage of the wave: among the latest in chronological order Warner Music Group and the startup Lemonade, which debuted in early June and July, while the food delivery specialists will soon of DoorDash and Palantir Technologies, which will land on Wall Street between the end of summer and the first weeks of autumn.
