Airbnb Earnings Were Strong. People Are Traveling—and Still Working Remotely.
Text size
Airbnb
posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter results, as the company continues to reshape its business as it emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic period.
For the quarter, the short-term rentals marketplace posted revenue of $1.53 billion, up 78% from a year ago, and 38% above the 2019 level. That’s slightly ahead of the Street consensus at $1.46 billion. Guidance had called for Airbnb (ticker: ABNB) to post revenue of $1.39 billion to $1.44 billion.
Net income was $55 million, or 8 cents a share, ahead of the Street consensus at 3 cents.
Gross bookings were $11.3 billion, up 91% from a year ago, 32% higher than two years ago, and slightly ahead of the Street consensus at $11.1 billion. The number of “nights and experiences” booked was 73.4 million in the quarter, slightly below the Street consensus forecast at 74.8 million.
Airbnb reported adjusted Ebitda, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, of $333 million, ahead of the Street consensus at $278 million.
For the first quarter, Airbnb is projecting revenue between $1.41 billion and $1.48 billion, well ahead of the Street estimate of $1.24 billion. The company also said it expects nights and experiences booked to “significantly exceed” 2019 first-quarter levels, with average daily rates projected to increase 4% in the quarter from a year ago.
“Nearly two years into the pandemic, it’s now clear that we are undergoing the biggest change to travel since the advent of commercial flying,” the company said in a letter to shareholders about the quarterly results. “Remote work has untethered many people from the need to be in an office every day. As a result, people are spreading out to thousands of towns and cities, staying for weeks, months, or even entire seasons at a time. For the first time ever, millions of people can now live anywhere.”
In the quarter, nearly half of nights booked were for stays of a week or longer—and one in five nights were for stays of a month or more, the company said. Over the last year, Airbnb added, the company booked nearly 175,000 stays of three months or longer.
Airbnb also said that gross nights booked in urban destinations accelerated from the the third quarter level and have nearly recovered to fourth quarter 2019 levels. In the U.S., fourth-quarter gross nights booked for urban travel were up over 20% compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. Cross-border travel has accelerated, accounting for 35% of nights booked in the fourth quarter, up from 20% of the total in the first quarter of 2021.
Shares of Airbnb were up 3.8% to $187 in premarket trading Wednesday.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at [email protected]
Read More: Airbnb Earnings Were Strong. People Are Traveling—and Still Working Remotely.