In this Feb. 22, 2018, file photo Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky speaks during an event in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)
By Dee-Ann Durbin
Airbnb was losing money even before the pandemic struck and cut its revenue by almost a third, the home-sharing company revealed in documents filed Monday ahead of a planned initial public offering of its stock.
The San Francisco-based company has yet set a date for the IPO but it is laying the groundwork by filing financial records with U.S. security regulators.
The documents show that leading up to the coronavirus outbreak earlier this year, Airbnb was spending heavily on technology and marketing to grow its business.
Its revenue jumped 32% to $4.8 billion in 2019, but it reported a net loss of $674 million that year. The company also lost money in 2018 and 2017.
This year, Airbnb said, revenue fell 32% to $2.5 billion in the first nine months as travelers canceled their plans after the pandemic crippled travel and forced lockdowns around the world.
Airbnb said it currently has 7.4 million listings run by 4 million hosts worldwide. Eighty-six percent of its hosts are outside the U.S. and 55% are women, the company said.
The company said it had 54 million guests in 2019.
Airbnb was founded 12 years ago by Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia — classmates at the Rhode Island School of Design — and Nate Blecharczyk, a software engineer. Their first listing was Chesky and Gebbia’s apartment in San Francisco.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
