Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, December 20. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
05.12.2023 - 20:01 / skift.com / Brian Chesky / Dennis Schaal / Catherine Powell / Dave Stephenson / Ellie Mertz
With critics questioning Airbnb’s growth momentum, Airbnb announced Tuesday that Chief Financial Officer Dave Stephenson will become chief business officer, a newly created position, and VP of Finance Ellie Mertz will become CFO March 1.
Meanwhile, Catherine Powell, who became global head of hosting in July 2020, “has decided to transition to an advisor role and move on from Airbnb later next year,” the company said.
Stephenson will be leading all of the internal teams that reported to Powell other than the community team, and there are no plans to name a successor to Powell.
He will begin his new role as chief business officer January 2, will be a speaker, along with CEO Brian Chesky, on Airbnb’s fourth quarter and full-year 2023 earnings call in February, and Mertz will assume her new CFO March 1. She will be a regular speaker on earnings calls, along with Chesky, instead of Stephenson.
When the CFO transition takes place, Mertz will become a Section 16 officer of the company.
The CFO shuffle comes after some on Wall Street have become bearish about Airbnb after it warned that room night growth would be slowing in the fourth quarter. International expansion, which will be high on Stephenson’s agenda, is a key priority.
In an email to employees, which Airbnb shared with the media Tuesday morning, Chesky characterized Stephenson’s new role as a promotion. Chesky said “Airbnb is at an inflection point” and is ready to “embark as our next chapter as a company.”
Starting January 2, Stephenson will be in charge of expanding Airbnb’s core homes business, and will be charged with pushing international expansion, expanding Airbnb’s host supply, and overseeing corporate development. The heads of Airbnb’s business units in the Americas; Asia Pacific; and Europe, Middle East and Africa will report to Stephenson.
“As Airbnb gets bigger, the CFO’s job gets even more complicated,” said Skift Head of Research Seth Borko in reacting to the news. “In its early startup days, the CFO might prioritize cash management and VC fundraising. But where Airbnb stands today as an $86 billion public company, the CFO’s job is totally different. Public investors are a whole different animal from venture capitalists and the CFO must oversee a complex set of accounting books that are subject to securities law and other strict public company regulations.”
New CFO Ellie Mertz has been at Airbnb since 2013 and has served as its vp of finance since the beginning of 2019. She served as interim CFO for a year starting in February 2018 before Airbnb hired Stephenson as CFO. Chesky’s email to employees credited Mertz with overseeing Airbnb’s IPO.
Catherine Powell became global head of hosting in July 2020 after heading the company’s
Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, December 20. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
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Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, December 6. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
Airbnb recently reminded hosts that it plans to shutter its email alias feature September 30. The feature enables hosts and guests to email and share documents, such as PDFs of property guides, passports and other IDs from their regular emails accounts without having to log into Airbnb.
Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who left his full-time role at the company a year ago, has sold more than $1.37 billion worth of his Class A shares since that time, including more than $1 billion so far in 2023, according to regulatory filings, Bloomberg reported. Gebbia still chairs the non-profit Airbnb.org, but more importantly, he retains the bulk — but not all — of his Class B shares, which now give him 19.8% of Airbnb’s voting power. Together with his two other co-founders, CEO Brian Chesky (30.6%) and Chief Strategy Officer Nathan Blecharczyk (26.9%), they control 77.3% of Airbnb’s voting power.