April 24. I bought 50 shares of Airbnb at $189. So far,

April 3, 3 Top Travel Stocks to Watch in April

With travel restrictions starting to ease up, vaccination rates on the rise, and the economy starting to heat up it’s easy to see why vacation stocks are hot again. Cabin fever is turning into holiday booking fever, and the travel industry can’t wait to make up for lost time. 

One of last year’s hottest IPO stocks is a next-gen lodging darling that had the nerve to hit the market in the middle of a travel-icing pandemic. You won’t see investors complaining. Airbnb went public at $68 five months ago, and it has gone on to nearly triple in this challenging climate. 

The hospitality industry disruptor isn’t at its best right now. It grew its revenue by 43% in 2018 and 32% in 2019, only to see its top line plummet by nearly 30% last year when the travel industry got upended. However, there’s a silver lining to that revenue swoon. All of the leading hotel operators experienced a 50% to 70% plunge in revenue last year. The reasons for Airbnb holding up better than conventional hotels and motel operators is also the key to why it will recover first. 

Folks are hesitant to return to cramped hotel rooms with so many strangers around in the hallways and other common areas. Airbnb has always been the most creative way to book a stay somewhere, but it’s also the safest in the new normal. Wall Street still doesn’t get it. Airbnb generated $859 million in revenue back in February for its first quarterly report as a public company. Analysts were only holding out for less than $748 million. 

April 2 Airbnb Among Hot Stocks To Buy Or Watch As Covid Cases Ease, Travel On Tap

Hot stocks to buy or watch now include travel plays such as Airbnb, as Covid-19 cases ease and people look forward to getting away again.

The travel industry is coming back after getting slammed for most of the past year. IBD’s travel booking group, for instance, has jumped to No. 32 among 197 industry groups, from No. 90 six weeks ago.

April 1

Travel restrictions are still common across the U.S., but travel apps are being used more than ever. Vacation rentals have been the star of the pandemic travel sector. Airbnb Inc., a home-sharing pioneer, has fared better than rivals as travelers take advantage of work-from-home opportunities, road-tripping to nearby mountain villages or beach towns, often booking longer stays than usual.

March 31: What Investors Need to Know About Airbnb’s Latest Feature

A lot of news has come out of Airbnb since the pandemic started. There were new cleaning protocols, an IPO, and most recently, the shutdown of its affiliate program. It’s been a lot for hosts to keep track of, to say the least. Now, there’s yet another headline to take note of a new search feature.

According to a recent announcement from the company, Airbnb will now include a “Flexible Dates” option for guests booking on the platform. This apparently coincides better with post-pandemic travel preferences and is now live and available on both the app and website.

Do you currently own an Airbnb short-term rental? Here’s what the new search function means for you — and how you can leverage it.

The how and why

The new feature isn’t a game-changer by any means, but it is something hosts can use to their advantage.

Here’s how it works, according to Airbnb: “Instead of selecting exact dates at the beginning of a search, guests can search for new options like a weekend getaway, a week-long vacation, or even a month-long or months-long stay. This will allow them to browse more options while staying flexible on the exact dates of their trip to make their trip fit with their schedules.”

Several industry reports indicate a growing interest in longer-term stays these days, and according to Airbnb’s data, at least a third of travelers this year have been flexible on travel dates (as well as locations). This is likely due to continued work-from-home and virtual school arrangements.

“The traditional travel industry was built around fixed destinations with fixed dates in mind, but that model no longer meets the needs of today’s travelers,” Airbnb said in its release. “We believe these shifts will continue even after the pandemic fades, and that for those with new flexibility to choose their dates, travel will increasingly become a way of life.”

What it means for investors

For short-term rental investors, there are a few things to think about. First, it brings pricing to the forefront. With guests now able to shop around and compare various weeks, weekends, and months with a couple of clicks, it’s more important than ever that your property be priced right — or, ideally, better than your competitors.

Second, offering longer-term stays will be important. These have been trending since early last year, with many families using Airbnbs as quarantine getaways — and often in off-peak times, too (not on spring break or summer like they’d usually be).

Finally, standing out is going to be critical with guests using this search function. You’ll want your headline, main photo, or in-home amenities to set you apart from other properties they see displayed — particularly if you’re not the lowest on pricing.

The bottom line

Airbnb’s new feature isn’t going to upend your rental profits, but it should make you take a careful look at your pricing and marketing strategy. Leveraged properly, the flexible search function could lead to some pretty sizable revenues — especially if you’re able to snag some of those weeks- or months-long bookings.

What Is a Direct Listing and How Is It Different From an IPO?

Here’s an Airbnb chart. The IPO price of Airbnb was $68. That’s what big investors actually paid. Big investors who committed to buy shares at Airbnb’s IPO actually paid $68. What do you see as the lowest share price that it actually has traded at? A little over $120. The cheapest any retail investor really has been able to get it on the Airbnb at is about double what the big investors paid. That’s just a really good example of how direct listings really level the playing field. Everybody is paying between $60 and $75 for Roblox shares these past couple of days. Everybody who wants to invest, so big difference between a direct listing and a traditional IPO, especially for very popular stocks like these.

March 30: 7 Bellwether Stocks to Buy That Will Soar As Normalcy Nears

Airbnb has grown to become a ubiquitous stock in the travel sector. Anytime a company name gets used as a verb, you know it’s doing something right.

Such is the case with Airbnb. This company’s innovative technologically-oriented solution for hospitality seekers has unsurprisingly taken a hit during the pandemic. The company went public less than a year ago. Thus, we’re unable to see what its stock price might have done pre-pandemic.

Year-to-date, Airbnb has performed well. This stock has provided investors with a gain of more than 30%, amid an increasingly bullish post-pandemic outlook.

Indeed, we’re all itching to get out and go somewhere. Even if that somewhere is a domestic destination (Airbnb is hoping so). As pandemic-related restrictions are lifted, ABNB stock should continue to reflect these increasingly bullish expectations in its stock price.

Again, if things turn sour, this sentiment will likely be reflected in ABNB stock. It’s a stock with a tremendous amount of growth built into its valuation right now. Accordingly, Airbnb investors are perhaps more highly leveraged to the economic outlook than their peers.

March 29: Remote Stay Preference By Vacationers Drive Airbnb’s Valuations

Airbnb Inc’s supply has more than doubled over the past four years, exceeding some of the traditional hotel chains in aggregate, Reuters reports based on AirDNA.

• The pandemic induced higher demand for short-term rentals with larger living space, and their remote location drove Airbnb’s performance compared to the traditional lodging industry. Airbnb’s global active listings rose 2.5% year-over-over in February 2021.
• The company noted over 5.4 million global active listings with higher rent availability compared to the aggregate 3.3 million units at hotel chains including, Marriott International Inc, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc, and InterContinental Hotels Group PLC.
• Airbnb had 2.3 million units in 2017 beginning.
• The uptick in local travel and cost-cutting strategy spurred the company’s valuation compared to Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt Hotels Corp amid the havoc wreaked by the pandemic on the travel industry. Airbnb also recorded a far less severe revenue decline than Expedia Group Inc and Booking Holdings Inc.
• Price action: ABNB share prices traded higher by 0.22% at $176.55 on the last check Friday.

March 28: Investing in IPOs Why this could be such a game-changer for investors

IPO investing has largely been the exclusive realm of institutional investors and the very wealthy. Ordinary stock investors have to wait until a company’s shares start trading on the open market to buy them, which has put them at a huge disadvantage, especially recently. In 2020, the average IPO ended its first trading day 36% higher than its IPO price.

For example, consider Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB) — one of the most closely watched initial public offerings of the past year. The company priced its shares at $68. That’s what the wealthy investors who had access to the IPO paid for them. On the other hand, the lowest price Airbnb has traded for on the open market since going public has been $121.50 — nearly double the IPO price. That’s why retail investors might want to pay attention to the opportunities these new platforms will open up for them.

March 27: Valuation Concerns Loom Over Airbnb As It Clobbers Its Hotel Rivals

Founded in 2008, Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB) has since become a hot commodity for lodging and vacation rentals. In just 13 years, the company has grown to 4 million hosts. It has stayed over 800 million guests. And it has done so in close to 100,000 cities around the world. It’s an amazing story and the company is backed by some legitimate tailwinds for growth coming out of the pandemic. However, I would advise caution when investing in ABNB stock.

Its current valuation is expensive. And that’s not the only risk to consider. Let’s dive a bit deeper into the story behind Airbnb’s stock.

How Did Airbnb Do During Covid?

The hotel industry was one of the hardest-hit industries during 2020. As a result, vacation stay companies saw huge decreases in revenue. Airbnb’s revenue declined 30% year-over-year. Marriot (NASDAQ:MAR) declined 50% YOY. Hilton (NYSE:HLT) declined 54.43% YOY. Wyndham (NYSE:WH) declined 37% YOY.

One key takeaway about the Airbnb’s relative success in 2020 (compared to its competitors) was its U.S. revenue segment. This segment declined only 7% YOY. For comparison, HLT’s North America revenue segment declined 53% on the year.

Historically, ABNB’s revenue has dominated internationally, with international revenue accounting for 67% of its total revenue in 2018 and 63% in 2019. With the U.S. segment representing almost half of the company’s 2020 revenue, it is clear that when U.S.-based citizens wanted to travel domestically, they chose Airbnb over the traditional hotels. With people adapting to the “work from anywhere” trend, Airbnb’s inherently less intrusive and restrictive nature made the choice to stay at an Airbnb an easy one.

Coming Out of Covid-19

The “work from anywhere” trend appears to be sticking for Americans. According to YouGov, 86% of Americans currently working from home would like to continue to do so post Covid-19. The ability to take a “vacation” without actually taking a vacation has resonated with Americans.

This trend bodes well for ABNB in 2021 and beyond. But there’s more to the story here.

The U.S. has done relatively well (in comparison to Europe and other countries) with Covid vaccinations. As of March 19, 2021, 21% of the U.S. population has received at least one vaccine dose. By May, all U.S. adults will be eligible for the vaccine.

According to 6pages, this means that we could hit the 70% vaccination needed for herd immunity by June 2021. With concerns about Covid-19 being addressed, travel is set to boom in 2021 with “99 percent of U.S. and Canadian travelers” stating that they are itching to travel again.

Even with vaccination and herd immunity, I predict that the preferred vacation stay will be at an Airbnb due to the general intrusiveness of hotels as well as the potential for continued hotel restrictions into the future.

Europe’s Situation

It is great that the U.S. has made notable strides in overcoming Covid-19. Europe, on the other hand, is having some serious issues. Over the last few weeks, Covid-19 cases in Europe have soared and a few European countries have implemented new lockdown restrictions. It could be a long a time before travel within Europe and travel to European countries returns to pre-covid levels. This is problematic for Airbnb as international revenue still represented 45% of total revenue in 2020.

Historically it has been the company’s biggest source of revenue. As such, prospective ABNB stock investors should keep a close eye on how Europe’s cases and restrictions evolve over the next few weeks.

Airbnb’s Valuation and Profitability

Europe’s Covid-19 resurrection is just one of the issues I have with ABNB stock. The second issue is its extremely expensive valuation.

Right now, the company currently trades at a market cap greater $110 billion, yet only generated $3.37 billion revenue in 2020. This gives it a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 33x. For reference, MAR’s P/S ratio is 4x, HLT’s P/S ratio is 7.6x and WH’s P/S ratio is 4.8x. It leads me to believe that the current arguments I’ve stated for ABNB becoming a more popular option may already be already priced in.

The lack of future profitability creates another glaring issue for the company. Airbnb just reported an adjusted earnings-per-share (EPS) figure of -1.74 for 2020 and analysts are projecting -1.68 EPS for 2021 and -0.61 EPS for 2021. I’ve included this in some of my past articles, but as legendary investor Peter Lynch states, “stock prices often move in opposite directions from fundamentals but long term, the direction, and sustainability of profits will prevail.”

Final Thoughts on ABNB Stock

Airbnb’s relatively strong 2020 U.S. revenue shows how resilient its business model is when dealing with adverse situations compared to traditional hotel companies. As the company penetrates a larger portion of U.S. travel and stay, and international countries eventually — wishful thinking — recover, Airbnb’s business should only expand. Airbnb should become a much bigger global company as a result.

However, with the company’s current market cap sitting above $100 billion and no profitability projected for at least two years, I would be careful of investing in ABNB stock.

March 26: Airbnb supply gets a boost as vacationers prefer remote stays

U.S. home rental company Airbnb Inc’s supply more than doubled over the past four years, while surpassing some of the traditional hotel chains combined, data from analytics firm AirDNA showed on Friday.

The relative appeal for short-term rentals with larger living space and their location in remote destinations proved vital for Airbnb during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing it to perform better than traditional forms of lodging over the last year, AirDNA said.

Airbnb’s global active listings increased by 2.5% as of February 2021, compared with a year earlier, according to the firm.

Globally, there were over 5.4 million active listings on Airbnb, with more units available for rent than the combined total of 3.3 million units at hotel chains Marriott, Hilton, and IHG, AirDNA said.

Airbnb had a supply of 2.3 million units at the beginning of 2017.

March 25. Value: $52,114,000 Percent of Paul Tudor Jones’ 13F Portfolio: 1.47% Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 68

Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones’ hedge fund loaded up on vacation rental company Airbnb in the fourth quarter, as the firm bought 355,000 new shares of the company, worth $52.11 million. Airbnb shares have gained 20% over the last 12 months. The stock was under pressure amid the coronavirus crisis as international traveling came to a halt. However, the stock is poised to grow amid recovery. Susquehanna recently called ABNB as their top recovery pick. The firm said it believes ABNB is a “must-own name” for the recovery which is expected to start playing out this year.

There were 68 hedge funds that hold a position in Airbnb in the fourth quarter of 2020. The biggest stakeholder of the company is Silver Lake Partners, with 2.6 million shares, worth $375.7 million.

Blue Hawk Investment Group mentioned Airbnb stock in their Q4 letter and said that they established a position in Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ: ABNB), and has high growth expectations from it. Here is what Blue Hawk Investment Group said:

“We typically avoid new issues, with ABNB being a rare exception. ABNB fits right into our wheelhouse as a leader in a promising industry, with a disruptive business model, unique company culture, massive addressable market, and a name synonymous with a category (“got an Airbnb for the weekend”). Towards the end of the year, the narrative of the hot IPO/SPAC environment we found to be fitting, with exception. We believe grouping ABNB into this category is a mistake. The IPO was botched, but the mistake was the initial offering price being far too low in this case. We believe the reason for this initial mispricing was the proximity of the IPO to the vaccine effectiveness data release. The data turned out to be much better than anticipated, a blue-sky result, causing a drastic change in the outlook for travel and lodging, the industry in which ABNB operates. Bayes Theorem in action, people typically have a bias when incorporating new information, in that they do not adjust their view as quickly as they should, and the vaccine data release required an almost complete reversal of views.

Back to the company, we started buying on day one and continued to build a position into the $120s and $130s. A founder-led firm, we believe the company has an excellent management team, a very attractive growth profile with many levers at their disposal, and embedded optionality due to their attractive position in the travel ecosystem (and minimal reliance on Google). The most underappreciated aspect of the story is the attractiveness of the financial model. Not many IPOs come along that get us excited, but we believe the future is bright for this young company. We will reveal more details about our thesis in future letters.”

April 24: Airbnb Slides As Venice, Florence Call for Halt To Short-Term Rentals

Investing.com – Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB) shares slid more than 1% on Wednesday on fresh challenges just as the online rental aggregator was getting ready for business to bounce back after a year of lockdowns in various cities across the world.

According to CNN, two European cities that are most popular with tourists, namely Florence and Venice, have put together a manifesto and sent it to the Italian government. The paper calls for steps to limit Airbnb.

Urging the government to “take a hold of the situation in a serious, forward-looking way,” they suggest classifying all rentals of under 30 days as for tourism purposes, and imposing a limit of two such rentals on owners per city, and a 90-day annual limit for rentals, CNN.com reported.

The cities are following in the footsteps of other ‘over-touristed’ destinations including Paris, which allows people to rent out their primary residences for just 120 days a year; and Barcelona, which is mulling over a ban on short-term rentals.

Airbnb shares have been firming up on the hope that tourists will prefer its properties over hotels on hygiene concerns in the wake of the pandemic.