Stocks of short-term rentals company Airbnb rebounded up to 4% and up to 1% in after-hours trading Thursday as the company posted growing losses and a decline in revenue and bookings in fourth quarter earnings.
They reported the following:
- Revenue: $ 859 million versus $ 748 million projected by Refinitiv
- Loss per share: $ 11.24
CNBC does not compare reported earnings to Wall Street estimates for a company’s first report as a publicly traded company because uncertain stock numbers can skew expectations.
The company posted a net loss of $ 3.89 billion in the fourth quarter. This is a 1,005% decrease from a loss of $ 352 million last year. Airbnb attributed much of the loss to fees related to the company’s IPO in December.
Revenue decreased 22% from $ 1.11 billion year over year to $ 859 million. Revenue in the fourth quarter also decreased nearly 36% from $ 1.34 billion in the third quarter.
Chesky noted that the company has no plans to ever spend as much on marketing as it did before the pandemic.
“The pandemic has shown that we can take marketing to zero and still have 95% of the same traffic as last year,” CNBC’s Chesky Jim Cramer told Mad Money. “We will not forget this lesson.”
The company also announced that it expects the year-over-year revenue decline in the first quarter to be smaller than the decline the company saw in the fourth quarter. Airbnb expects year-over-year comparisons of gross booking value and nights and experiences booked in the first quarter will be higher year-on-year, but lower than in the first quarter of 2019.
The company said it continues to have “limited visibility into growth trends in 2021 as it is difficult to determine the pace of vaccine adoption and the associated impact on willingness to travel.”
Airbnb had 46.3 million nights and experiences booked in the fourth quarter, down 39% year over year. That number was down 25% from the 61.8 million nights and experiences in the third quarter.
The gross booking value was $ 5.9 billion, 31% below the prior-year figure. Gross booking value also decreased more than 26% from $ 8 billion in the third quarter.
