The home-rental company filed a form S-1 for its IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday afternoon. That included disclosing a trove of information that was previously unknown. For starters: Airbnb is over $2 billion in debt.But that's far from all the filing document has to offer — a section labeled "Risk Factors" details the major issues Airbnb believes it could face.
"The COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of actions to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic have materially adversely impacted and will continue to materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition," the company said in the first of many risk factors listed in the S-1.Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky in 2017.Airbnb enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity, and it's unlikely to return to those levels of growth anytime soon.
For the last three years, revenue growth has declined steadily, and it fell sharply in the first nine months of 2020. 3. Laws and regulations regarding temporary home rental vary from region to region, and are always in flux, and that could hurt Airbnb's business.Like Uber and other app-based startups that have exploded in popularity across the last decade, Airbnb has tangled with legislators and locals over how it does business.
In some cases, like New York City, Airbnb says those regulations could result in a loss of revenue. In many cases, though, the laws simply do not exist yet to regulate short-term home rentals, and that means unknown risks.With a revenue of $2.52 billion and a net loss of $696.9 million for the first nine months of 2020, Airbnb isn't exactly stacking up a war chest.