Airbnb says it will go public in 2020

Airbnb Inc. said Thursday that it plans to go public in 2020, a long-awaited move by the home-sharing company that is both loved and reviled for its disruption of the hotel business.

Airbnb didn’t give a target date for the initial public offering or say why it thinks the timing is right. Airbnb was valued at $31 billion last year, according to Renaissance Capital, which researches IPOs.

San Francisco-based Airbnb was launched in 2008. Co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia needed some cash, so they put three air mattresses on their floor and set up a website promising a place to sleep and a breakfast. They named their venture AirBed and Breakfast.

Since then, Airbnb has grown into one of the world’s largest home-sharing platforms, rivaled only by Booking .com. Airbnb has more than 7 million listings in 100,000 cities worldwide.

Airbnb has said it was profitable on a pretax basis in 2018 and 2017, but it didn’t release specific numbers. The company said it took in “substantially more than” $1 billion in the second quarter of this year, the second time in its history that quarterly revenue topped $1 billion. Airbnb didn’t say whether it made a quarterly profit. Investors may be cautious after some recent IPO flops. Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft debuted on the market this year but continue to lose money and are trading well below their IPO prices. This week WeWork, which is racking up losses as it opens shared office spaces, delayed its IPO.

Kathleen Smith, a principal with Renaissance Capital, said the difference for Airbnb could be its profitability. Companies that are struggling in the markets have had trouble showing investors a path to profitability, she said. But the overall IPO market is performing well.