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Comment by kapkapkap | Hacker News Reader

I would surely hope thats after payout to hosts...if not that would set their 'actual' revenue at ~$20million

This is revenue, definitely AFTER. A year ago, they had more than $2 billion dollars in bookings so $250 million is absolutely their net billings.

If the WSJ is correct and their revenue is $250m, this values the company (admittedly growing like crazy) at 40x sales. Seems very rich to me.

That's pretty normal for high-growth companies.

Twitter had something like $300M revenues[0] at it's IPO and, based on the opening share price, was valued at $14B[1]. That's 46x.

Still seems crazy high, but seemingly not out of line with other recent tech valuation multipliers. There are some other insights in these comments that seek to better explain the valuation.

[0] http://www.wired.com/2013/10/twitter-files-for-ipo-2/ [1] http://mashable.com/2014/04/16/weibo-ipo/

40x 2013 Revenue. Probably 20x 2014 revenue.

it's not. revenue is a top line item before expenses. otherwise it would have to be stated as profit.

I believe you are incorrect. See this report from over a year ago which states $2 billion in bookings:

https://www.eduson.tv/blog/airbnb

Hmm, it appears you're right. I was coming from a proper P&L perspective: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_and_loss_statement#Usefu...

I think it still is a proper P&L perspective to label this revenue. Similarities in other markets:

- a payment processor doesn't label all money flowing through the system as revenue, just their cut of it.

- a marketplace like Etsy has gross merchandise sales that tracks how much has been bought on their platform, and revenue just accounts for what they took in

Generally you can only recognize revenue when you are at risk for it. If you are not taking a risk by holding inventory (or guaranteeing a price before selling a service) then you are an agent, not a principal. You can only recognize the revenue that you are at risk for, the rest is "pass-through." This is addressed in the FASB ASC 605-45 (https://thegaappost.com/sec/605-revenue/605-45-principal-age...).

An example: 1) An advertising agency buys media for a client to place ads in, but their contract with the media company says they will only pay for the media if they are paid by their client. In this case they can only recognize their commissions and fees as revenue, not the cost of the media itself. 2) An ad network buys media for a client but has to pay the media company for it whether or not the advertiser pays them. They can generally recognize the cost of the media as revenue, along with their commissions and fees.

AirBnb does not take risk on the portion of the customers' payments that go to the host: if AirBnb is not paid then the host is not paid, so this part of the payment is not recognized as revenue.

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