Airbnb Reports Earnings on Thursday. One Analyst Sees a Blowout.
By Eric J. Savitz
Barron's
Feb. 22, 2021 11:13 am ET
Airbnb will report its first quarter as a public company on Thursday after the market closes—and at least one analyst sees a blowout coming.
Airbnb stock (ticker: ABNB) went public Dec. 10 at $68 a share, closed the first day of trading at $144, and has since rallied past the $200 level, giving the short-term real-estate rental platform a market cap of more than $120 billion. That’s more than the combined value of the two leading online-travel-agency stocks, Booking.com (BKNG) and Expedia (EXPE).
The Wall Street analyst consensus forecast for Airbnb’s fourth quarter calls for revenue of $740.2 million, with a loss of $9.17 a share. Street consensus for the March quarter is $591.5 million, with a loss of $1.21 a share.
Loop Capital analyst Rob Sanderson on Monday lifted his rating on Airbnb shares to Buy from Hold, with a new target of $240, up from $150. Sanderson thinks December quarter results will beat consensus estimates by “a significant margin.” He’s projecting revenue for the fourth quarter of $937 million, way above consensus.
Sanderson notes that bookings growth for Expedia’s Vrbo unit improved sequentially in the fourth quarter, “a trend that continues” into the March quarter. He says that third-party analytics find “record growth” year over year in January. The analyst writes that Airbnb unit volume has shown “directional correlation” with Uber rideshare bookings over 11 quarters—and he adds that “world-wide rides bookings improved further for Uber in Q4 while consensus for Airbnb reflects material deceleration for the quarter.”
He does caution that the stock could face selling pressure into a pair of coming lock-up expirations, the first on March 1 and a larger tranches after the first quarter earnings report, likely in early May. But he still likes the stock.
“Our initial opinion was that Airbnb is a premium company with a tremendous opportunity, but that valuation did not leave significant upside,” Sanderson writes. “Since this time, premiums for growth leaders have expanded further and Airbnb shares are already up $54 year to date. While the continued multiple expansion raises the risk profile, we do not expect market conditions will change in the near term. We consider this the largest risk to an aggressive call ahead of the first-ever report for the company.”
On Monday, Airbnb shares are up fractionally, at $201.44.
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