Would you rather invest in a $1B / year company that has a 10% profit margin and is growing 10% YoY
or
A company that is doing $1B / year with a 10% loss due to investment in growth but is growing at 30% YoY?
Both options are reasonable investment strategies but for folks who will take a gamble to have a bigger pie, #1 is pretty reasonable. Especially if you can later cut costs and still have that 10% profit margin.
When Amazon spent years and years not making a profit, I understood: They were investing in infrastructure and taking on new industries. They could make a profit any time they wanted by simply not re-investing any further.
Tesla, SpaceX, and many other companies necessarily have to invest heavily in the early days to build out their infrastructure and capabilities. I understand completely why they might not be profitable for years and yet still be good long-term investments.
With Airbnb, I struggle to understand what they're investing in. There's no inventory. They own no real estate. That's supposed to be the genius of the business model. And yet they keep losing hundreds of millions each year.
When you say they're investing in growth, what exactly are they investing in? What am I missing? What are they doing that costs $3B a year, and how does their cost-to-revenue ratio improve as the business scales?
From where I'm sitting, it looks like the more business they do, the more money they lose.
Good points. The most direct answer is that in the last 2 years they invested heavily in Airbnb Experiences. If they skipped this, they would probably be profitable.
Both options are reasonable investment strategies but for folks who will take a gamble to have a bigger pie, #1 is pretty reasonable. Especially if you can later cut costs and still have that 10% profit margin.