Technology
The Business of Airbnb, by the Numbers
The Business of Airbnb, by the Numbers
Airbnb was one of the most highly anticipated IPOs of 2020.
After a trading surge, the company’s market cap topped the $100 billion mark. Now that the dust has settled, here are some key numbers behind the company’s unique business model.
The Last 5 Years
Since 2015, Airbnb has had an epic run.
With a market cap of close to $90 billion, they are one of the largest businesses in the travel and tourism space. However, there is still plenty of room to grow: Airbnb identifies their total addressable market (TAM) to be worth $3.4 trillion.
| Metric | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gross Booking Value ($ Billions) | $8.1B | $13.9B | $21.0B | $29.4B | $38.0B |
| Annual Nights & Experiences Booked (In Millions) | 72.4M | 125.7M | 185.8M | 250.3M | 326.9M |
| Revenues ($ Billions) | $919M | $1.6B | $2.5B | $3.6B | $4.8B |
Nights and experiences booked by customers have shot up 4.5x, from 72 million in 2015 to 326 million in 2019. At the same time, the gross dollar value of these bookings has surged from $8.1 billion to $38 billion.
No Shortage Of Space
Airbnb’s ability to scale its services is reflected by its room count, which is unmatched when compared to the hotel industry.
In 2019, Airbnb had nearly 5 million rooms available, a mammoth of a figure considering the next largest was Marriott at 1.3 million. The company is a giant thorn in the hotel industry’s side, and their room count is approximately the size of the five largest hotel chains combined.
A Shortage Of Profits
Despite a global presence and attractive numbers, the business of Airbnb is yet to be profitable.
Airbnb has lost money every year—and the company’s cumulative losses total $2.8 billion since 2008. Not surprisingly, those losses have been exacerbated during the pandemic, a common theme for all travel and tourism stocks. Airbnb had -4 million bookings in March, and these negative bookings helped lead to a -32% decline on their top line compared to 2019.
| Metric | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 (Q1'-Q3') |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $919M | $1.6B | $2.5B | $3.6B | $4.8B | $2.5B |
| Net Income | -$135M | -$136M | -$70M | $-17M | -$674M | -$696M |
Airbnb’s net income losses so far in fiscal 2020 (Q1-Q3) are -$696 million, the largest of any year.
Silver Linings
Airbnb has demonstrated an ability to adapt during this time of uncertainty through the introduction of digital experiences. They also made the tough decision to cut 25% of their staff this year.
Monthly bookings and experiences have shown signs of recovery. Since the negative bookings earlier in March, figures have crept back up to the 20 million range, near pre-pandemic levels.
A resilient segment for the business of Airbnb is short-distance travel within 50 miles of guest origin. As the pandemic expanded, people are taking vacations from their abodes by visiting less densely populated neighboring communities.
Another Hot IPO
The Airbnb IPO was one of many headline makers of 2020. When it comes to initial public offerings, markets as of late have shown no shortage of exuberance. Company shares have had the tendency to surge once hitting the secondary market, reflecting investor appetite. The Airbnb IPO experienced just this: initially intending to be priced at $56-$60 a share, in just a few weeks they traded as high as $160 per share.
The Renaissance IPO Index, a returns tracker for U.S. public offerings, reports that IPOs are up roughly 108% in the last calendar year, experiencing one of the best years on record.
But the aftermath of an IPO can just as likely go sour. Public companies are subject to more strenuous regulation relative to the private markets. And with a near $90 billion valuation, future expectations are high for Airbnb. The company will have to woo shareholders in the coming quarters to keep momentum, which likely means showing strides in an uncertain travel and tourism landscape.
Technology
How Big Tech Revenue and Profit Breaks Down, by Company
How do the big tech giants make their money? This series of graphics shows a breakdown of big tech revenue, using Q2 2022 income statements.
Creator Program
In the media and public discourse, companies like Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft are often lumped together into the same “Big Tech” category. After all, they constitute the world’s largest companies by market capitalization.
And because of this, it’s easy to assume they’re in direct competition with each other, fiercely battling for a bigger piece of the “Big Tech” pie. But while there is certainly competition between the world’s tech giants, it’s a lot less drastic than you might imagine.
This is apparent when you look into their various revenue streams, and this series of graphics by Truman Du provides a revenue breakdown of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.
How Big Tech Companies Generate Revenue
So how does each big tech firm make money? Let’s explore using data from each company’s June 2022 quarterly income statements.
Alphabet
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In Q2 2022, about 72% of Alphabet’s revenue came from search advertising. This makes sense considering Google and YouTube get a lot of eyeballs. Google dominates the search market—about 90% of all internet searches are done on Google platforms.
Amazon
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, Amazon’s biggest revenue driver is e-commerce. However, as the graphic above shows, the costs of e-commerce are so steep, that it actually reported a net loss in Q2 2022.
As it often is, Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the company’s main profit-earner this quarter.
Apple
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Apple’s biggest revenue driver is consumer electronics sales, particularly from the iPhone which accounts for nearly half of overall revenue. iPhones are particularly popular in the U.S., where they make up around 50% of smartphone sales across the country.
Besides devices, services like Apple Music, Apple Pay, and Apple TV+ also generate revenue for the company. But in Q2 2022, Apple’s services branch accounted for only 24% of the company’s overall revenue.
Microsoft
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Microsoft has a fairly even split between its various revenue sources, but similarly to Amazon its biggest revenue driver is its cloud services platform, Azure.
After AWS, Azure is the second largest cloud server in the world, capturing 21% of the global cloud infrastructure market.
Technology
Animation: The Most Popular Websites by Web Traffic (1993-2022)
This video shows the evolution of the internet, highlighting the most popular websites from 1993 until 2022.
The Most Popular Websites Since 1993
Over the last three decades, the internet has grown at a mind-bending pace.
In 1993, there were fewer than 200 websites available on the World Wide Web. Fast forward to 2022, and that figure has grown to 2 billion.
This animated graphic by James Eagle provides a historical look at the evolution of the internet, showing the most popular websites over the years from 1993 to 2022.
The 90s to Early 2000s: Dial-Up Internet
It was possible to go on the proto-internet as early as the 1970s, but the more user-centric and widely accessible version we think of today didn’t really materialize until the early 1990s using dial-up modems.
Dial-up gave users access to the web through a modem that was connected to an active telephone line. There were several different portals in the 1990s for internet use, such as Prodigy and CompuServe, but AOL quickly became the most popular.
AOL held its top spot as the most visited website for nearly a decade. By June 2000, the online portal was getting over 400 million monthly visits. For context, there were about 413 million internet users around the world at that time.
| Rank | Website | Monthly Visits (May 2000) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | AOL | 400,891,812 |
| 2 | Yahoo | 387,573,587 |
| 3 | MSN | 354,239,803 |
| 4 | eBay | 116,101,785 |
| 5 | Lycos | 116,064,930 |
But when broadband internet hit the market and made dial-up obsolete, AOL lost its footing, and a new website took the top spot—Yahoo.
The Mid 2000s: Yahoo vs. Google
Founded in 1994, Yahoo started off as a web directory that was originally called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.”
When the company started to pick up steam, its name changed to Yahoo, which became a backronym that stands for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”
Yahoo grew fast and by the early 2000s, it became the most popular website on the internet. It held its top spot for several years—by April 2004, Yahoo was receiving 5.6 billion monthly visits.
| Rank | Website | Monthly Visits (April 2004) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yahoo | 5,658,032,268 |
| 2 | MSN | 1,838,700,057 |
| 3 | 1,318,276,780 | |
| 4 | AOL | 905,009,947 |
| 5 | eBay | 805,474,705 |
But Google was close on its heels. Founded in 1998, Google started out as a simpler and more efficient search engine, and the website quickly gained traction.
Funny enough, Google was actually Yahoo’s default search engine in the early 2000s until Yahoo dropped Google so it could use its own search engine technology in 2004.
For the next few years, Google and Yahoo competed fiercely, and both names took turns at the top of the most popular websites list. Then, in the 2010s, Yahoo’s trajectory started to head south after a series of missed opportunities and unsuccessful moves.
This cemented Google’s place at the top, and the website is still the most popular website as of January 2022.
The Late 2000s, Early 2010s: Social Media Enters the Chat
While Google has held its spot at the top for nearly two decades, it’s worth highlighting the emergence of social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook.
YouTube and Facebook certainly weren’t the first social media platforms to gain traction. MySpace had a successful run back in 2007—at one point, it was the third most popular website on the World Wide Web.
| Rank | Website | Monthly Visits (Jan 2007) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7,349,521,929 | |
| 2 | Yahoo | 5,169,762,311 |
| 3 | MySpace | 1,276,515,128 |
| 4 | MSN | 1,259,467,102 |
| 5 | eBay | 957,928,554 |
But YouTube and Facebook marked a new era for social media platforms, partly because of their impeccable timing. Both platforms entered the scene around the same time that smartphone innovations were turning the mobile phone industry on its head. The iPhone’s design, and the introduction of the App store in 2008, made it easier than ever to access the internet via your mobile device.
As of January 2022, YouTube and Facebook are still the second and third most visited websites on the internet.
The 2020s: Google is Now Synonymous With the Internet
Google is the leading search engine by far, making up about 90% of all web, mobile, and in-app searches.
What will the most popular websites be in a few years? Will Google continue to hold the top spot? There are no signs of the internet giant slowing down anytime soon, but if history has taught us anything, it’s that things change. And no one should get too comfortable at the top.
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