The Daily Ten – Airbnb reveals its fears, Pros & Cons of investing in 5 upcoming IPOs, A “mutant building” in Milan is saving energy….
The Daily Ten
1. Airbnb reveals its fears: Google, Mayors and Earthquakes | The Independent
Exclusive: In its IPO prospectus, the accommodation giant spells out the threats to its success – including the lack of a generator at HQ
As Airbnb prepares to sell billions of dollars in shares, the accommodation giant has spelt out the wide range of risks that it faces: from search engines and angry city mayors to earthquakes.
Since the peer-to-peer platform was founded in San Francisco in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk, it has become a dominant force in the hospitality industry.
The company is seeking to attract investors to an initial public offering to raise around $3bn (£2.3bn). As part of the process it is obliged to reveal its “risk register” in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission,
The accommodation giant cites another Californian giant as a prime concern.
2. Hawaii Wants to Lure Visitors—but Keep Out Covid-19—to Revive Its Economy | WSJ
Tourism is pivotal for a state with the highest unemployment rate in the U.S., but it comes with risk
Hawaii is seeking a careful balance as the holiday travel season kicks off: Allow enough visitors to help struggling, tourism-reliant businesses without causing a new wave of coronavirus cases.
The state last month began allowing U.S. visitors to skip a mandatory 14-day quarantine if they get tested for Covid-19 through an approved provider within three days of their flight and the test comes back negative. The change prompted some businesses on the islands to reopen, and many are hoping for a pickup in December.
But…
3. New Jersey’s American Dream Mall Is Still Waiting to Fully Open | The New York Times
After more than 15 years, the Meadowlands complex began a phased opening in late 2019, but before customers could shop at its stores the pandemic hit and completely upended the retail industry.
When the American Dream mall, a massive shopping and entertainment complex next to MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., finally opened its doors to the public last October, its owner, the Triple Five Group, was eager to prove naysayers wrong.
Skepticism had abounded in the 15 years since construction first started on the project, which was initially known as Xanadu Meadowlands and promised extravagances like an indoor ski slope. But the mall cycled through developers and billions of dollars in funding, and faced numerous delays.
4. Thanksgiving on track for a record $6B in US online sales, says Adobe | TechCrunch
As people prepare and eat their Thanksgiving meals, or just “work” on relaxing for the day, some are also going online to get a jump on holiday shopping deals. Adobe, which is following online sales in real time at 80 of the top 100 retailers in the US, covering some 100 million SKUs, says that initial figures indicate that we are on track to break $6 billion in e-commerce sales for Thanksgiving Day. Shopify, meanwhile, said that based on activity of over 1 million merchants on its platform, the average cart price globally was $84.50, and in the US specifically it was $88.30.
Overall, Adobe believes consumers will spend $189.1 billion shopping online this year, in a season that others are also predicting will be strong.
To put Adobe’s $6 billion figure into some context, the overall holiday sales season represents a 33.1% jump on 2019. And last year Adobe said shoppers spent $4.2 billion online on Thanksgiving: this years’s numbers represent a jump of 42.3%. And leading up to today, each day this week had sales of more than $3 billion.
5. Pros and cons of investing in 5 upcoming tech IPOs from Airbnb to Roblox | Fortune
December and January aren’t typically busy months for initial public stock offerings, but this time around, they’ll be an exception. Almost a half dozen well-known tech startups, each already valued privately at over $1 billion, have recently filed for IPOs, including Airbnb, DoorDash, and Roblox.
They’re hoping to take advantage of strong investor appetite for tech stocks, despite the pandemic, and to catch the coat tails of other tech companies that have recently made successful debuts. Shares in cloud database company Snowflake are up 129% since its September IPO and those of data mining company Palantir are up 215% since its September listing.
Here are key details to consider in weighing whether to invest in the latest batch of would-be public tech companies. Financial data is from the first nine months of 2020 unless otherwise indicated.
6. The winners and losers of the pandemic holiday season | Axios
The pandemic has upended Thanksgiving and the shopping season that the holiday kicks off, creating a new crop of economic winners and losers.
The big picture: Just as it has exacerbated inequality in every other facet of American life, the coronavirus pandemic is deepening inequities in the business world, with the biggest and most powerful companies rapidly outpacing the smaller players.
7. London-based Metrikus totals €5.6 million funding as it grows its smart building software platform | EU-Startups
Proptech company Metrikus has announced the completion of its Series A funding, bringing its total raised since its founding in 2019 to around €5.6 million.
Metrikus provides a smart-buildings software platform that gives owners and occupiers a secure, ‘single-pane-of-glass’ view of the operation and performance of their building, allowing managers to plug in any type of sensor and monitor everything from footfall and energy use, to indoor air quality.
This Series A round attracted institutional capital, as well as private investment vehicles. RentaMarkets, the Spanish independent financial services group acted as the underwriter for itself and several other private investment vehicles. One of the principals of an institutional investor , which is working with Metrikus to open up Japan and South Korea, is among the individual investors.
8. Rome airport to allow passengers from the US to skip quarantine | The Verge
But relying on testing alone doesn’t guarantee safety
Rome’s Fiumicino airport plans to welcome passengers from the US without requiring them to quarantine, as long as they test negative for the novel coronavirus multiple times. Fiumicino says it will be the first airport in Europe to offer the “COVID-tested flights,” creating what it calls “safe air corridors” between Italy and the US.
It will test the idea out in December starting with flights from New York’s JFK airport, New Jersey’s Newark Airport, and Georgia’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport. If those flights are successful, similar flights could be made “widely available” by summer 2021, according to Fiumicino.
9. How Property Booms Eat Our Economic Future | WSJ
Growing body of research looking at U.S. and Chinese real-estate markets suggests long booms may drag on productivity of the economy
This October, U.S. housing sales hit their highest level since 2006. China’s residential real-estate investment was up 14% relative to the same month last year. Around the world, many housing markets have shrugged off a colossal economic slump, helped by low interest rates.
In the short term, such investment is a boost to economic activity in a year where headline figures have collapsed. But there are significant downsides. The fact that housing booms can be a longer-term risk to financial stability is well known, but a growing…
10. A ‘mutant building’ in Milan is saving energy and pleasing residents | CNBC
From paintings and literature to music and film, the natural world is an inspiration to many.
Its influence on architecture is also apparent, with a number of interesting developments now integrating plants and trees into their design.
One example of this is the Bosco Verticale, or Vertical Forest, an Italian residential development of two visually striking towers that stand 80 and 112 meters high.
Featured in an episode of CNBC’s “Sustainable Energy” earlier this year, the exteriors of the buildings — which are located in the Porta Nuova area of Milan — are covered in plants and trees.