Airbnb's First Results as a Public Company Show a $4.6 Billion Net Loss for 2020 (February 2021)

From the record. This is a look back at February 2021. The desk wrote it on 11 October 2026 from sources published at the time; Stay Gazette opened in July 2026 and did not report this as it happened.

On 25 February 2021, Airbnb published its first quarterly results as a public company. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2020 was $859 million, down 22% from $1.1 billion a year earlier. Revenue for the whole of 2020 was $3.4 billion, down 30% from $4.8 billion in 2019.

The company also reported a GAAP net loss of $3.9 billion for the quarter and $4.6 billion for the year. It said charges associated with its initial public offering in December 2020, and with the rise in its share price afterward, contributed to both figures. It gave no outlook for the rest of 2021.

Where the net loss came from

The results came in a shareholder letter that Airbnb furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with a Form 8-K dated the same day. Upon the public offering, Airbnb recognized a non-cash stock-based compensation expense of $2.8 billion, which it said reflected much of the stock pay given to employees over several years. The rise in the share price also increased the value of warrants issued with a term loan agreement in April 2020, and Airbnb recorded a non-cash mark-to-market adjustment of $827 million for them in the quarter. A year earlier, the GAAP net loss had been $352 million for the fourth quarter of 2019 and $674 million for 2019.

Airbnb also reported Adjusted EBITDA, a measure that does not follow GAAP and that leaves out stock-based compensation, interest, income taxes, depreciation and other items. It was negative $21 million in the fourth quarter of 2020, compared with negative $276 million a year earlier, and negative $251 million for 2020, compared with negative $253 million for 2019.

CNBC reported that the quarter's revenue beat the $748 million forecast by Refinitiv. It noted that fourth-quarter revenue was also down nearly 36% from $1.34 billion in the third quarter.

What guests booked

Guests booked 46.3 million nights and experiences in the fourth quarter, net of cancellations and alterations, 39% fewer than a year earlier. Gross booking value on the same net basis was $5.9 billion, down 31%. For the full year the figures were 193.2 million nights and experiences, down 41%, and $23.9 billion, down 37%.

The average daily rate, which Airbnb tracks as gross booking value per night and experience booked, was approximately $128 in the quarter, up 13%. On the earnings call, chief financial officer Dave Stephenson said almost all of the increase was mix: more bookings in North America, in entire homes and in less urban areas, each of which carries a higher rate. He said Airbnb was not seeing a material level of year-over-year price increases on the same property.

The letter's comparisons of nights booked, by region and by kind of trip, were made on a different basis, prior to cancellations and alterations:

North America was the most stable region, with nights booked in the quarter close to the levels of the fourth quarter of 2019.
In every region, nights booked for domestic travel exceeded those of the fourth quarter of 2019, though Airbnb said that had not been enough to offset the loss of cross-border travel.
Growth was strongest where guests traveled less than 50 miles.

Airbnb said its business was most affected in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and gave Great Britain, Italy and Germany as examples. It said bookings with lead times of under 30 days were the most resilient, and that stays of at least 28 nights grew compared with the fourth quarter of 2019.

What Airbnb said about hosts

On supply, the letter said active listings and experiences were relatively stable in the fourth quarter compared with the third. Stephenson put the number at about 5.6 million on the call, according to the Motley Fool's transcript, and said Airbnb had not seen a substantial amount of deactivations.

Brian Chesky, Airbnb's co-founder and chief executive, told analysts the company had about 4 million hosts and that 90% of them were individual hosts. He gave a figure for what they earned: “The average host on Airbnb makes under $10,000 a year and they do that by renting out just occasionally.”

The letter set out four aims for 2021, and one was to recruit more hosts, simplify the process of starting and improve hosts' tools and support. On the call Chesky said Airbnb was reducing the steps so that a person could become a host in less than 10 minutes. The company had launched Made possible by Hosts, which the letter called its first large-scale marketing campaign in five years.

The letter returned to the Host Endowment, which Airbnb announced in October 2020 and seeded with 9.2 million of its shares. It said Chesky was putting plans in place to make a personal contribution of Airbnb shares worth over $100 million. It gave no date for the contribution or for a distribution.

The questions on fees and marketing

An analyst from Credit Suisse told the company on the call that its fees seemed fairly minimal, especially for individual hosts, and asked whether it wanted to shift the burden away from the consumer over time. Stephenson answered that Airbnb charged a mix: in some cases a low host fee and a higher guest fee, and for some professional hosts a host-only fee. He said the mix could change over time and that, as Airbnb gave more back to the community in services and capability, it could see opportunities for further increases in its take rate. He added: “But we'd always want to give more back to the community before we would increase that take rate.”

Chesky said on the call that Airbnb did not intend ever again to spend the share of revenue on marketing that it spent in 2019. The letter showed the size of the cut: excluding stock-based compensation, stock-settlement obligations and acquisition-related impacts, sales and marketing expenses were $148 million in the quarter, down 66% from a year earlier.

What Airbnb expected

Airbnb's newsroom post on the results carried Chesky's summary: “Our performance in 2020 showed that Airbnb is resilient and inherently adaptable. Travel is coming back and we are laser-focused on preparing for the travel rebound.”

Airbnb expected the year-over-year decline in revenue in the first quarter of 2021 to be less than that of the fourth quarter of 2020. For the rest of the year it said it could not see far ahead, because the pace of vaccination and its effect on people's willingness to travel were hard to judge, and it did not provide an outlook. Stephenson told analysts that guests were booking in shorter windows, and that bookings for the summer were running later than the usual pattern.

The Gazette Verdict, looking back

Airbnb came through 2020 in better shape than its headline loss suggested, and hosts had more to learn from the plan than from the loss. The letter said two non-cash items contributed to the net loss: $2.8 billion of stock-based compensation at the public offering and an $827 million warrant adjustment. Gross booking value was $23.9 billion in 2020, net of cancellations and alterations, Airbnb reported $3.4 billion of revenue, and the average host, by Chesky's account, made under $10,000 a year. Airbnb protected its own result by cutting costs, with sales and marketing expenses down 66% in the fourth quarter once stock-based compensation and related items were excluded. Its answer to the rebound was to sign up new hosts in under 10 minutes each. A host should have taken two things from it: demand had moved to nearby trips, entire homes and late bookings, and Airbnb was recruiting more hosts.

The other side

The loss was no technicality. Stock-based compensation is pay, the $4.6 billion net loss is the figure under accounting rules, and Adjusted EBITDA is the company's own measure, which leaves it out. Revenue was down 22% in the quarter and nearly 36% below the third quarter, nights and experiences booked were down 39%, and Airbnb would not give an outlook past the first quarter. Nor did new hosts have to hurt existing ones. Listings and experiences held at about 5.6 million, the finance chief said, hosts rented only occasionally, Chesky said, and a campaign that sends guests to hosted homes sends them to existing hosts. Stephenson said Airbnb would want to give the community more before raising its take rate.

What it meant for hosts

For a host in February 2021, nothing in the results changed a fee, a payout or a policy. What they offered was the company's own account of where demand was. Guests were booking close to home, most strongly under 50 miles away, in entire homes and less urban areas, less than 30 days ahead, and in a growing number of stays of 28 nights or more. A host whose calendar and pricing still assumed long lead times and guests crossing borders was planning for a market the letter said had not returned.

The average daily rate was up 13%, but the finance chief put that down to where and what guests booked, so it was no evidence that the same home could charge more. On fees, the company announced no change and ruled none out.

Sources

Airbnb, Inc. (furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission), Shareholder Letter Q4 2020 (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K) (25 February 2021).
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Airbnb, Inc. filing), Airbnb, Inc. Form 8-K, date of report February 25, 2021 (25 February 2021).
Airbnb Newsroom, Airbnb Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Financial Results (25 February 2021).
CNBC, Airbnb reports $3.89 billion loss in first quarterly report since IPO but beats revenue expectations (25 February 2021).
The Motley Fool, Airbnb, Inc. (ABNB) Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript (25 February 2021).

Airbnb's First Results as a Public Company Show a $4.6 Billion Net Loss for 2020