As the short-term rental business struggles with a dramatic drop in bookings due to the coronavirus pandemic, Airbnb reduced its internal valuation to $26 billion, the Financial Times announced Thursday.
According to PitchBook, that's a 16 percent decline from the $31 billion valuation Airbnb got in its most recent private funding round.
Chief executive officer Brian Chesky told staff of the latest valuation at a company-wide meeting on Thursday, the Financial Times said.
The company has held talks with new and current investors to explore late-stage funding round, the Financial Times, which first published the news, reported. FT added that no concrete decisions have been taken yet.
Last week, a source told Reuters that Airbnb had a phone meeting with bankers to discuss expanding an existing $1 billion lending facility, and that the startup's revenue in 2019 had reached $4.8 billion.
The short-term rental company said earlier that it was allocating $250 million to help cover losses suffered by hosts in response to travel bans and an increase in requests for cancellations.
Data from the holiday rental market analysis company AirDNA showed that Airbnb bookings in Beijing fell by 96 percent from January to March as the virus spread across China, while bookings in Rome, Italy, and Seoul, South Korea, saw declines of 41 percent and 46 percent - and the economic effect could continue for months.
Airbnb had already suffered ahead of the outbreak, officially losing $322 million in the first nine months of 2019 compared to a profit of $200 million in the same timeframe a year ago.
Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk founded the Silicon Valley startup unicorn in 2008. The business reports it has 4,500,000 listings in 191 countries in over 65,000 locations. In 15 founding rounds, Airbnb received $4.4 billion.
Airbnb hosts are searching for alternatives to their normal operations and have started listing their properties on other rival sites like Willow and Trulio, a move that could spell Airbnb trouble. This year's pandemic and other setbacks could postpone its initial public offering (IPO) until 2021.
Earlier this week, Chesky told hosts that the company's business would bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had weathered crises before. "We will survive this storm," Chesky said in his message on camera. "Together, we are going to get through this," he said.
Meanwhile, Airbnb has successfully lobbied Congress to pass a tax exemption package and loan-related legislation targeted at its property manager clients, which the company said could be benefiting some hosts.
