Airbnb’s Paradox: Profits v. Growth

One of the internet’s corporate success stories of the past decade, Airbnb, is suddenly in need of an overhaul. Its stock plunged 11% this week—dragging it down 15% for the year—after executives acknowledged a slowdown among U.S. consumers had hurt its growth. 

The slowdown crystallizes a paradox about Airbnb’s performance. Its 11% expected growth rate this year is by far the lowest among a group of 14 consumer internet companies of its generation and size. And yet Airbnb’s free cash flow per employee ($621,000) is the second-best among those companies, after only the cash-printing machine known as Meta Platforms, according to my analysis. (I looked at consumer internet companies with greater than $10 billion market caps that went public after 2010.)