Changes in the company

Airbnb published its IPO prospectus on Monday for public access via the NASDAQ exchange. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit Airbnb's business, but the company is showing some improvements and changes in consumer habits.

Airbnb had long planned its IPO, but the COVID-19 pandemic has hampered these plans. The travel company published its IPO prospectus (S-1 documentation) on Monday, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Airbnb plans to place its shares on Nasdaq under the "ABNB" symbol. The company has stated that it will have three classes of shares: class A will give one vote per share, class B (for founders and early investors) 20 votes per share, class N will not have voting rights (the company intends to issue 9.2 million such shares).

Airbnb finance

According to the prospectus, Airbnb's revenues grew rapidly through 2019, but last year the company's total net loss increased dramatically from $16.9 million to $674.4 million.

As a result of the pandemic crisis, Airbnb's revenues for the first nine months of 2020 were $2.5 billion compared to $3.7 billion for the same nine months of 2019, while losses also increased from $322.8 million to $696.9 million.

Airbnb management noted that the company is seeing a change in customer behaviour that, due to the pandemic, has changed long-distance travel to "closer to home" and short-term rentals for a couple of days to longer periods.

The CEO of Airbnb Brian Chesky said: "The length of stay of more than a few days began to increase as work at home on Airbnb turned into work from any home. We believe that the boundaries between travel and life are blurred, and the global pandemic has made it possible to live anywhere. Our platform has proven to be suitable for these new ways of traveling".

In addition, travel companies are getting their growth back as two American companies, Pfizer (PFE) and Moderna (MRNA), are preparing to start producing COVID vaccines. The vaccines give hope that by the end of 2021, the global tourism industry can approach its pre-pandemic state.