Airbnb debuts on Wall Street with a valuation of 47 billion

The short-term rental platform is listed on the New York market after closing a placement at 68 dollars a title, above expectations

(Image: pixabay) After years of postponements, the expected debut on the Airbnb market. The short-term rental platform presented itself for the start of trading on December 10 on the Nasdaq list with a price of 68 dollars per share, much higher than that expected in recent months which stood in a range between 44 and 50 dollars per share.

As Bloomberg reports, on December 9 the company and its main investors placed about 52 million shares at a price of 68 dollars each, after raising the fork between 56 and 60 dollars. in the previous days. With this price, the company could therefore raise more than 3.5 billion dollars, thus bringing its market valuation up to 47 billion dollars.

Similar figures, which until a few months ago were considered unrealistic by many analysts, they arrive today following favorable conditions for the company. If the Covid-19 emergency and the lockdown caused a drop of almost 90% in bookings during the spring, the summer marked an important recovery that led Airbnb to earn over 219 million dollars in net profits on a turnover of 1.34 billion in the single quarter ended at the end of September.

Also for this reason the valuation achieved is much higher than previous estimates, which instead attested to a valuation of the company between 25 and 30 billions of dollars . And contributing to the recovery of Airbnb ahead of today's debut were also the 2 billion of emergency financing guaranteed by the Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners funds in April, and other agreements with banks to open new lines of credit. .

This has enabled the Californian company to cope with the crisis, which has also led to it cutting over 1,900 of its employees worldwide. To date, the platform has over 5.6 million listings in over 100,000 cities around the world, for over 4 million registered hosts and 800 million check-ins.

With these figures, that of Airbnb certainly represents one of the most anticipated debuts on the Wall Street market, and also comes at a positive moment for US stock exchanges, which in 2020 saw the record of over 163 billion dollars raised from the various initial public offerings made despite the uncertainties of the markets due to the global emergency, according to what Bloomberg still reports.