Airbnb Chooses the Nasdaq As Its IPO Venue

In August, Airbnb executives announced the company was beginning its public journey, albeit confidentially. Since then, the company has released news on its IPO valuation but little else. On Oct. 27, Airbnb officially shared that it's choosing the Nasdaq for its stock IPO, shunning the NYSE in a noteworthy maneuver. 

Since Airbnb filed its IPO confidentially, we don't have a firm date for its market debut. However, reports suggest the company is planning to release the date sometime after the November presidential election, and that Airbnb stock could be available as soon as December.

With a confidential filing, a company doesn't reveal how many shares it's offering to investors right off the bat. This means we can't garner a per-share price from a projected IPO valuation. However, we know that Airbnb expects to raise $3 billion over the course of its IPO—which would make this the largest release on the Nasdaq since Facebook's IPO in 2012. 

Facebook's drop on the public market was a flop, and that's made things tough for the Nasdaq in the years since. Billion-dollar IPOs have often opted instead for the NYSE, as was the case for the Berkshire-backed Snowflake IPO, which was worth $3.86 billion.

Despite Airbnb's valuation falling by $13 billion since 2017 and the company laying off one-quarter of its workforce in the early days of the pandemic, investors seem eager to hop onto the Airbnb IPO bandwagon. There's no official ticker in sight, but we'll know it as soon as the company makes its S-1 registration statement with the SEC publicly available.

It's been a tough week for the stock market. COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing throughout the U.S., and the highly controversial presidential election is just days away.

Today, the Nasdaq Composite has fallen 426.48 points, marking its second steep fall this week. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq 100 is down 456.19 points, the NYSE Composite is down 402.45 points, and the Dow Jones has dipped 943.24 points. All are down by around three percent.

Search for the ticker symbol "QQQ" and you'll find the only robust Nasdaq ETF. The Invesco QQQ Trust ETF reflects the Nasdaq 100, a group of the strongest non-financial companies within the Nasdaq Composite, which houses more than 2,500 companies. At the top of QQQ are Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.

QQQ has been around since 1999 and its assets under management exceed $130 billion. Its annual dividend yield of 0.60 percent and modest expense ratio of 0.20 percent make it possible for investors to incur a one-year return of more than 50 percent. Since Airbnb is a non-financial company, it may very well land on the Nasdaq 100 one day—but first, it has to get through the IPO wringer.