In October 2020 in the post WTF Happened in 2008 I correctly predicted that any decline of Airbnb’s rental business due to Covid would be temporary:
Supposedly, Covid has hurt Airbnb and the rental market, but I predict it will be temporary and things will quickly go back to how they were pre-Covid. There is simply too much demand and not enough supply in many of these urban areas.
And from the post New York is Not Dead/Dying, part 3 I also said that the purported decline of the NYC rental and real estate market attributable to Covid, was negligible and would be short-lived:
NYC prices had already been in decline since 2016-2018. Prices fell 3% since the start of 2020 for the most expensive of zip codes (some did not fall though), but it is impossible to disentangle how much of that is directly due to Covid, versus the underlying trend. Maybe only 1% is due to Covid. Either way, it is not much.
And in 2015 I predictied that Airbnb would be worth $80 billion.
Everything keeps going up, the cries of ‘bubble’ ignored. Looking at $80 billion valuation for air BNB (which would make it more valuable than Priceline), $100 billion uber, and $50 billion Snapchat. $50-100 billion seems to be the upper limit, after which the pressure to IPO is too strong.
Airnbn is now worth $80 billion…its highest valuation ever, even higher than before Covid. So much for that media narrative of Covid dooming Airbnb, This is why you should never take financial advice from the media. The media was hoping Airbnb would fail because Airbnb rentals are believed to be causing housing shortages in major metropolitan areas and prices to rise, and yet again the liberal media comes up short.
I highly recommended Airbnb stock, and believe it will join the $500+ billion club along with Facebook and others. Same for Palantir, which also recently went public and will be worth $500 billion soon, compared $50 billion now.
Stock prices will keep going up, rent and college tuition keep going up despite classes being online, virus cases keep going up despite vaccine…more shutdowns, more masks, and lockdowns. Everything will keep going up. Tesla soon to be $3000/share and worth $2-4 trillion within a few years. Amazon stock soon $7,000/share.
And what about the Disney losing money because of park closures? I remember during Feb-May endless headlines about how Disney is losing millions of dollars a day due to park closures. Disney parks are still closed or partially closed yet Disney stock surged to new highs on a another quarter of blowout earnings–media narrative wrong again.
Disney Stock Surges to All-Time Highs on Streaming Momentum, Massive Content Pipeline
Shares of Disney popped more than 13% Friday, as investors cheered the Mouse House’s monster-size content flex outlined at its 2020 investor day for stepped-up push to accelerate its global direct-to-consumer streaming offensive.
Disney stock closed at an all-time high of $175.72 (up 13.6%), pushing the company’s market cap to just over $318 billion. To date this year, the company’s shares are up 21%. Netflix shares were in slightly negative territory most of the day, presumably on fears of greater competition from Disney, before a late rally to end the day up 0.4%.
The reality is, no one cares about theme parks…as the link indicates, all of the value is in the intellectual property and digital distribution. Disney could close all its parks and resorts and the stock would probably go up due Disney saving money by reducing its headcount.