A hot year for IPOs is getting even hotter. Airbnb is jacking up its IPO price range, valuing itself at up to $42 billion.
A regulatory filing Monday showed the American home rental firm plans to price 51.6 million shares at between $56 and $60 apiece in its market debut later this week. That’s significantly higher than the $44 to $50 range it had targeted earlier. That would give the company a fully diluted valuation of $41.8 billion at the upper end of the range --- more than double the $18 billion it was worth in April in a private fundraising round in the early weeks of the health crisis.
Airbnb has mounted a comeback since then. It initially struggled in the immediate aftermath of the crisis as travel came to a halt. But as lockdowns eased, more travelers chose to book homes instead of hotels.
It has been a bumper year studded with huge IPOs that just saw food delivery startup DoorDash raise its IPO price range last week. But Airbnb’s debut, which would raise up to $3 billion, is one of the largest and most anticipated among them.