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I mean:

apple is essentially a proxy with zero skin in the game. They don't manufacture the phones, screens, chips etc...

airlines are proxies, most planes are leased not owned...

Hotels are proxies, most hotel properties are franchises not owned by corporate...

This is not correct. Apple has an inventory, stores, employees in those stores, etc. Likewise, for your other examples, these companies have to hold things on their books like hotel staff, lease payments, building maintenance, etc regardless of demand.

Airbnb is different. When demand drops, their costs directly drop as well since they don't pay hosts for stays that did not happen.

Yes but right now they spend a billion dollars per year on humans doing things. They could tell all or most of them to go home and not come back, and then they wouldnt. But it seems they are placing big bet on this being highly temporary.

The odd thing is that they dont seem to get rid of anyone at all. Most companies use COVID as an excuse for a round of overdue layoffs

I agree this is odd. Given their business, what Airbnb needs 12000+ employees for is beyond me.

Apple spends double digit billions of dollars on capital expenditures a year.

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