Mark your calendars for the ultimate real estate experiences with Inman’s upcoming events! Dive into the future at Connect Miami, immerse in luxury at Luxury Connect, and converge with industry leaders at Inman Connect Las Vegas. Discover more and join the industry’s best at inman.com/events.
Airbnb lost $349 million in the fourth quarter despite ongoing growth in booking value, nights booked and other metrics that show the largest short-term rental platform continued its meteoric rise last year, according to its earnings release on Tuesday.
The company said the net loss for the quarter was a result of one-time tax expenses that cost over $1 billion in the quarter. Without that expense, the company said it would have inked a $489 million profit.
The company earned $9.9 billion in total revenue for the year, nearly half of which was company profit. That is more than double the total revenue the company earned in 2019, before the pandemic upended travel.
Airbnb’s yearly profit of $4.8 billion was 156 percent more than its profit in 2022 and a marked rise from when the company lost $674 million in 2019.
“I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish this past year and there’s more to come,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said on a call with investors on Tuesday.
Without the tax expense, Airbnb said it would have had its most profitable fourth quarter ever, driven by a rise in overall bookings and an increase in first-time bookers.
Brian Chesky | Airbnb CEO
The total number of nights and experiences booked rose 12 percent in the quarter. The company said that hosts who drive the platform added 1.2 million active listings in 2023, up 18 percent from a year earlier.
Chesky continued his focus on organic expansion moving forward, particularly through adding supply in international markets.
In the middle of the year, Airbnb said it had its eye on expanding overseas and tapping into underperforming markets. It said bookings are accelerating in some international markets and that it’s gearing up to apply the strategy in Latin American markets and parts of Europe and Asia.
The company generated $3.8 billion in free cashflow, which gives it the power to acquire other companies to help fuel its growth. But that’s not the focus for Airbnb, Chesky said.
“It’s always going to be build then partner then buy,” Chesky said, “probably in that order.”
Instead, Chesky said Airbnb will lean into recent advancements in artificial intelligence to improve the user experience on the platform and, eventually, expand outside of travel.
“I believe that we can build one of the leading and most innovative AI interfaces ever created,” Chesky said, noting how some of the world’s most profitable businesses, Amazon and Apple, have expanded far beyond their original products. “We have a platform that was built for one vertical, short-term stays.”
He said AI — specifically using existing models offered through Microsoft, Google and Meta — could allow Airbnb to expand its reach and offerings.
“That would allow us to go from a single-vertical company to a cross-vertical company,” Chesky said. “Most of the largest tech companies aren’t a single-vertical.”
The timeline for expansion outside short-term rentals isn’t clear.
In the meantime, company leaders stressed their focus on international expansion, grabbing travel market share from the hotel industry and improving reliability for travelers.
The company said it expects to pull in $2.03 billion to $2.07 billion in the first quarter of 2024, which would be a growth of 12.7 percent to 15 percent compared to a year before.
