The frenzy surrounding Airbnb’s Wall Street debut began hours before the first trade. As bankers worked to establish an opening price, the number of options contracts changing hands in robotics maker ABB skyrocketed. The apparent flub came down to a single letter: ABB was missing an N in its ticker that would otherwise denote Airbnb.
The rush into ABB was quickly overrun by an avalanche into Airbnb, which more than doubled in value on Thursday in a return to the kind of mammoth pops that came to define the dotcom boom of the late 1990s. By the end of the day, Airbnb was worth $86bn — on par with Goldman Sachs, the bank that helped usher it to market.
The renewed fervour for a piece of highly valued technology IPOs has stirred unease for many investors who remember the dotcom bust with trepidation. Only three other companies raising at least $1bn in the US have climbed more on their first day than Airbnb — and the trio did so between March and June 2000, according to Dealogic. The group included Palm, maker of the PalmPilot mobile device.