Airbnb revenue jumps 5% in first quarter

Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi, Julie Hyman, and Myles Udland break down the earnings reports for Airbnb, Doordash, and Coinbase.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: All right, we want to turn to Airbnb as well here this morning. Airbnb bookings, gross bookings up 52% to $10.3 billion and well above estimates. Revenue overall well above estimates, even though the company did post a loss that was wider than had been estimated. And the company's bookings really focused on longer stays. Our Melody Hahm spoke to CEO Brian Chesky.

BRIAN CHESKY: Yeah, gross booking [INAUDIBLE] is up 50%. Most of our net losses are one-time expenses, including paying off debt. Actually, we only lost $59 million in the quarter on an adjusted EBITDA basis. And we lost around a quarter of a billion dollars this time last year. In fact, we were more profitable this year than we were this time two years ago before the pandemic. So I think that what we're demonstrating is we're making metronomic improvements in our operating cost. For example, we have about the same [INAUDIBLE] that you did two years ago, 50% less marketing. So we'll continue to make progress each quarter.

JULIE HYMAN: So the company said that bookings were for stays longer than 28 days. So they saw an increase of 14% in those types of bookings compared with 2019. To me, though, that's sort of the thing that might change the most, right, going into the second half of the year. If people are called back to the offices, for example, they're not maybe going to do those really long stays. What do you think, Brian?

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, speaking of the office, Julie, one thing I think Chesky discussed at length about the earnings call-- and it's very interesting. I'm just trying to put all the pieces together on the rate of recovery for business travel. Chesky noting that business travel has started to pick up a little bit. And he went on to explain, at least in his view-- and certainly he's talking his book here-- that maybe once we go back to the office, when corporate travel starts to rebound, people aren't staying in hotels. Perhaps they just rent a house.

So that is certainly a new way to think about corporate travel. Not sure if I want to stay-- I mean, I like you guys, but a hotel room would be pretty cool. I'm not sure if I'm renting a house as we go back. But nonetheless, that is something to keep in mind. Let's remember here, Marriott CEO Tony Capuano told us last week that some travel-- group travel for corporate is starting to rebound as well.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, I mean, I think Airbnb highlighting that they had stronger revenue than they had in the same quarter two years ago certainly is the kind of positive framework that I think the Street is looking for. I think with the stock as well as-- I guess we'll get to this with DoorDash. There's been some steam taken out of the stock.

You look at where Airbnb was trading right after its IPO and see where it's trading today. And so, I think that kind of makes the story for them maybe, you know, a little bit easier to get through in this quarter. But I think the distortions that you are seeing in Airbnb's business, to me, kind of say, all right, we're going to actually-- even though it's sort of straightforward, right? Travel goes nowhere, company does a lot better.

I think it's still two years out to get a real sense, to your question, Sozzi, about where does Airbnb fit into a mature travel ecosystem with a Marriott and a Hilton and so on and so forth. I think that question is still a couple of years away, because it's going to be such a unique not just 2021, but I think 2022 as well, as we come out of the pandemic and people do all the things they didn't do last year, which we probably underrate the amount of stuff that was postponed in 2020. And I think that's going to be a real-- and obviously a real tailwind for Airbnb this year and next.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, maybe I'll rent a house with you, Myles.

MYLES UDLAND: Only if we can just agree no inflation talk for the whole week.

BRIAN SOZZI: Fair.

JULIE HYMAN: All right, but are you going to order food to that house? That's the question. So that takes us to DoorDash. Sales there almost tripling to $1.1 billion, coming in ahead of estimates, a loss a little bit wider than estimated. DoorDash, you know, there's some additional costs here, additional costs because of the changing of some classifications of employees, the costs also because they introduced a new tiered system for commissions for restaurants. So that's something to factor in as well.

At the same time, the company is gaining an enormous amount of market share. It now controls, according to Bloomberg, 56% of the US food delivery sales. That's as of April. Customers placing 329 million orders in the first quarter, which is an increase of 219%. Those shares up about 8% here this morning. They're down, by the way, almost 50% since their peak in February.

And then, finally, let's talk Coinbase, shall we? Coinbase also coming out after the close there. Sales, $1.8 billion. Now the company had already preannounced, remember, its numbers. So this was in line with the company's guidance, both of these numbers here that you're looking at on your screen. But as you also see, revenue and earnings per share slightly light of what analysts had then predicted relative to what the company itself had predicted.

And I also want to quickly mention the price action in Coinbase shares themselves. Remember, the reference price of the stock was 250. It started trading exactly one month ago today. But the first trade was 381. You see there it didn't go below that reference price, but it's getting closer to there. But it's having a rebound here this morning, Myles.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, very interesting [INAUDIBLE] to look at, in general, as kind of as a proxy, I guess, for the crypto space. Coinbase said a couple of things on the call that I think were really interesting. And I'll be curious to see how they evolve as the crypto ecosystem continues to mature. Coinbase reiterating time and again that they just kind of want to grow the crypto ecosystem.

They don't feel all that threatened by what's happening with, you know, DeFi, with dApps. They talked about some of those things. They were asked about pricing, and the company said they're not trying to compete on price. They're not going to compete or win on price, I think was the exact language they used. And that they don't think there's going to be free trading in the crypto ecosystem, at least not for some time.

There was also-- and it's funny, they did the, let's take some questions from the crowd. That's where we got the answer that Dogecoin is coming on in six to eight weeks. But they also took some questions from Wall Street, which were the standard variety, like, walk me through the 20 basis point margin difference. But there was a 20 basis point margin difference in their business. And the reason was because they saw more trading from the Coinbase Pro users, who traded in higher volume.

So as the price of crypto goes up or down over time, the volume of trading on Coinbase's platform is going to increase slightly negative for the profile, the margin profile there, but I think positive as an indication of where the ecosystem stands. And ultimately, I think Coinbase is something like just a lever to play on the crypto ecosystem. You mentioned, Julie, that we're $100 below that high watermark trade. We're about 40 bucks above where the stock was priced in the private market ahead of the IPO, so the actual IPO reference price.

So call it even, but I think longer term, this is most likely a company that's going to kind of just follow the whims of the crypto ecosystem and, again, why they reiterated that message of we don't want to really care too much. We want to remain agnostic, I suppose, on who the winners are, where customers go, so long as they are just interested in crypto.

JULIE HYMAN: And the company also, by the way, made clear that they're investing. They're in an investment phase, right? They might be making acquisitions. They'll be increasing their various product offerings.