How Airbnb's Valuation Compares To The Existing Hotel Industry

Airbnb, Inc. ABNB is set to deliver some huge gains for IPO investors on Thursday. After pricing its IPO shares at $68 on Wednesday, the stock opened for trading at $146.

The Numbers: That $146 price range values Airbnb at around $100 billion, up from an $18-billion valuation during its last private fundraising round in April.

That large jump, coupled with the surprisingly high opening valuation for DoorDash Inc DASH during its market debut on Wednesday, is raising some eyebrows among investors and analysts.

Related Link: DoorDash's Valuation Already Raising Some Eyebrows

Airbnb reported just $1.34 billion in revenue in the third quarter and generated $4.81 billion in revenue in 2019 prior to the pandemic.

In other words, the stock opened at a valuation of around 20.8 times normalized sales. Airbnb also reported a normalized net loss of $674 million in 2019.

Airbnb's Competition: For comparison, legacy hotel stock Marriott International Inc MAR reported $5.37 billion in revenue and net income of $1.27 billion in 2019 prior to the pandemic.

The stock currently trades at a price-to-sales ratio of just 3 and has a market cap of only $41.2 billion.

Hilton Hotels Corporation HLT reported $3.77 billion in revenue and $881 million in net income in 2019. The stock trades at 5 times sales and has a market cap of $29.1 billion.

Hyatt Hotels Corporation H had $2.56 billion in revenue and $766 million in net profit in 2019. The stock trades at just 2.5 times sales with a $7.3-billion market cap.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Inc WH generated $1.43 billion in revenue and $157 in net income in 2019. The stock trades at 3.5 times sales and has a $5.3-billion market cap.

In other words, Airbnb generates $4.81 billion in normalized annual revenue at a net loss of $674 million and has a market cap of around $100 billion.

Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham generate $13.13 billion in normalized annual revenue at a net profit of $3.07 billion.

Those four hotel companies have a combined market cap of just $82.9 billion, far lower than Airbnb’s.

Benzinga’s Take: The huge surges in valuations this week for DoorDash and Airbnb are understandably drawing comparisons to the dot-com bubble of 1999 and 2000, when companies with unproven business models were routinely going public at valuations that their underlying businesses would never, ever come close to justifying.

Stock market bubbles are defined by “irrational exuberance” that can temporarily send stock prices soaring to irrational levels.

An Airbnb at Joshua Tree National Park, California. Courtesy photo.