Airbnb pops on the first of trading. Shares surge 115% above $100 billion valuation, doubling its $68 per share IPO price

Last week we wrote about Airbnb after the home-sharing platform announced its long-awaited IPO at a $35 billion valuation. Today, the company finally made its debut on Wall Street with shares priced at $68 on Wednesday, giving the vacation rental marketplace a $47 billion valuation.

Airbnb shares later surged to $146 per share during the opening trades, a more than 115% jump, pushing the company’s valuation to more than $100 billion, more than doubling the $68 per share price set for its IPO the day before.

With this new valuation, Airbnb is now more valuable than the traditional hotel chains as well, such as Marriott and Hilton, which hold market caps of more than $42 billion and $29 billion, respectively. Airbnb’s market cap also surpasses that of Delta Air Lines, which has a market value of about $30 billion.

We covered Airbnb last month after the vacation rental marketplace reported a loss of $697 million in 2020 with ‘no path to profitability.’ The company also reported that it has filed to go public and trade under the symbol “ABNB” on the Nasdaq.

Because of its cut-cutting measures, the home-sharing platform was able to generate $219 million in net income on revenues of $1.34 billion last quarter. So far this year, the company has a net loss of nearly $697 million on revenues of $2.52 billion. The year before wasn’t any better. In 2019, Airbnb reported a net loss of $674 million on revenues of $4.81 billion.

Founded in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb is an online community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book accommodations. Since its inception, Airbnb has raised a total of $6.4 billion in funding over 22 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jun 3, 2020, from a Secondary Market round. The company has been privately valued at $31 billion.