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Holiday rental platform Airbnb launched a $6bn share buyback programme on Tuesday as it said 2024 would be an “inflection point” to “reinvent” the company by branching out from its core business.
After having spent three years fine-tuning its holiday rentals and experiences business, Airbnb said it would push into new areas as part of a “multiyear journey” that would help drive growth.
The company has faced increased scrutiny from regulators as its popularity has grown, including in New York, which imposed a de facto ban on short-term rentals in September. Airbnb has not quantified the impact of the ban on its financials.
The share buyback scheme comes on top of an existing programme under which Airbnb purchased $2.25bn of its own stock in 2023, the company said as part of its earnings report.
Buybacks have allowed Airbnb to offset the impact of employee share awards vesting. At the end of December, Airbnb’s fully diluted share count had fallen to 676mn from 694mn at the end of the previous year.
Airbnb shares, up about 25 per cent in the past 12 months, rose almost 7 per cent in after-hours trading.
Airbnb’s revenue growth has been slowing in recent quarters after getting a healthy boost from the pent-up travel demand that was unleashed as the coronavirus pandemic receded.
Fourth-quarter revenue of $2.2bn was up 17 per cent from the year before, the slowest pace of growth for any quarter in 2023 and largely in line with analyst expectations. Revenue growth is expected to dip to between 12 per cent and 14 per cent in the current quarter.
Airbnb registered a surprise net loss of $349mn in the fourth quarter, largely the result of about $1bn in one-off tax charges related to a long- running dispute with the Italian authorities that it settled last year.
Stripping out the impact of the charges, adjusted net income was $489mn, ahead of analyst forecasts for $450mn.
The number of nights and experiences booked rose 12 per cent to a record for the final quarter of 98.8mn, with guest demand strong in all regions, “especially among first-time bookers”, Airbnb said.
The number of long-term stays of 28 days or more also continued to grow, and the number of trips lasting three months or longer rose almost 20 per cent compared with the same period last year, the company said.
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of $738mn beat forecasts for $646mn, helped by “discipline in managing our cost structure”, Airbnb said.
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