Using the case study and matrices assignment attached, write a financial analysis of the business in the case study.
Your Case Study: Historical Financial Analysis Assignment paper must include:
1. Historical Financial Statements (Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows) from the 3 most current years for the firm. These should be downloaded from the SEC website. The financial statements must include horizontal (shown between the years) and vertical analysis (shown to the right of the last year of historical data).
2. Ratio analysis for the ratios shown on Table 1 in the Guide to Case Analysis (CA) of the textbook:
a. Profitability ratios
b. Liquidity ratios
c. Leverage ratios
d. Activity ratios
e. Price-to-earnings ratio
f. The changes between years are included in the calculations.
3. Competitor ratios to compare with the ratios that were calculated in item 2. These should be included on the same tab as the ratio analysis for the firm.
4. Financial analysis should include comparisons to the firm’s main competitor as well as to the industry. How does the financial position of the firm influence the strategic direction of the company? This section should not be used to define what each ratio is rather it should clearly provide analysis based on the calculations as to the strategic choices and implications of the firm’s financial position. A compare and contrast with the main competitor should be included in this section of narrative.
Attached are also options to download SEC Financial Data into Excel Spreadsheets.
BUSI 690
Options to Download SEC Financial Data into Excel Spreadsheets:
There are two ways to pull financial data in Excel format from the SEC site, depending on how recent the information is.
OPTION 1: For filings that are a year or two old
· Go to www.sec.gov.
· In the Filings & Forms box, click on Search for Company Filings.
· Then click on Company or fund name, ticker symbol, CIK (Central Index Key), file number, state, country, or SIC (Standard Industrial Classification).
· Enter either a company name or ticker symbol into the appropriate box. (Note: it may be easier to use a ticker symbol because this guarantees you have the right company.) Choose Find Companies.
· On the next screen, select the appropriate filing or filter by filing type (10-K).
· Newer filings have two button options: Documents and Interactive Data. Select Interactive Data if that is an option.
· Once in Interactive Data, select financial statements. A drop-down box will appear in the left-hand column. Select the statement that you want. Then, click View Excel Document above the left-hand column.
·
OPTION 2: For older filings
· Follow the steps in Option 1 to get to the company filing screen. Since Interactive Data will not be available, click on Documents.
· There will be several options. Find the link containing the full filing. This is usually the first link but not always. For a 10-K filing look for a link titled 10-K.
· Open Excel. Click on the Data tab in the ribbon and select From Web, the second icon from the left.
· A web browser will open up. Copy the link from the company 10-K and insert it into the New Web Query browser that opened up. Click Go to be taken to the filing. (Note: The browser sometimes runs slow.)
· Find the financial tables you wish to import. Above the tables you should see a yellow box with a black arrow pointing to the right. Click on each box corresponding with each financial table that you wish to import. The box will turn green with a check mark.
· Once all desired tables are selected, click the Import button at the bottom right of the web browser.
· You will be taken back into the Excel spreadsheet with an Import Data box open. To import the data, select either a cell in the existing worksheet or New Worksheet and click OK.
· Data will be uploaded into Excel. Note that this process does a poor job of formatting the tables. Brackets indicating negativity and currency symbols are often placed in adjacent cells, necessitating manual entry. For year-over-year analysis across multiple filings be careful to ensure that financial sheet items line up with one another.
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CASE 1
Airbnb in 2020
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John D. Varlaro
Johnson & Wales University
John E. Gamble
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
Airbnb was started in 2008 when Brian Chesky and a friend decided to rent their apartment to guests for a local convention. To accommodate the guests, they used air mattresses and referred to it as the “Air Bed & Breakfast.” It was that weekend when the idea—and the potential viability—of a peer-to-peer room-sharing business model was born. During its 12-year existence, Airbnb has experienced immense growth and success. With a planned IPO at some point during 2020, Airbnb had been in a strong position to continue revolutionizing the hotel and tourism industry through its business model that allowed hosts to offer spare rooms or entire homes to potential guests in a peer-reviewed digital marketplace; yet, a global pandemic in the first half of 2020 seemed ready to derail Airbnb’s success.
In 2018, the room-sharing company was in approximately 190 countries with more than 4 million listed properties and had an estimated valuation of $31 billion. By 2020, Airbnb had entered over 220 countries with more than 7 million locations. Airbnb’s business model has been successful by leveraging what is known as the sharing economy. As it grew, however, Airbnb’s business model was met with resistance. City officials and owners and operators of hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts complained that, unlike traditional brick-and-mortar establishments that were subject to regulations and taxation, Airbnb hosts were able to circumvent and avoid such liabilities due to participation in Airbnb’s digital marketplace. In other instances, Airbnb hosts had encountered legal issues due to city and state ordinances governing hotels and apartment leases. Yet, an existential crisis for Airbnb now loomed due to the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Many hosts were using Airbnb revenue to either subsidize their mortgage payments or had purchased properties that depended solely on the revenue driven through booked accommodations. As people across the world sheltered in-place and travel restrictions were implemented to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, Airbnb and its hosts were left to navigate an uncertain travel and accommodation market with a business model that depends on everyday people sharing their own, at times, private homes.
OVERVIEW OF ACCOMMODATION MARKET
Hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts competed within the larger, tourist accommodation market. All businesses operating within this sector offered lodging but were differentiated by their amenities. Hotels and motels were defined as larger facilities accommodating guests in single or multiple rooms. Motels specifically offered smaller rooms with direct parking lot access from the unit and amenities such as laundry facilities to travelers who were using their own transportation. Motels might also be located closer to roadways, providing guests quicker and more convenient access to highways. It was also not uncommon for motel guests to segment a longer road trip as they commuted to a vacation destination, thereby potentially staying at several motels during their travel. Hotels, however, invested heavily in additional amenities as they competed for all segments of travelers. Amenities, including on-premise spa facilities and fine dining, were often offered by the hotel. Further, properties offering spectacular views, bolstering a hotel as the vacation destination, may contribute to significant operating costs. In total, wages, property, and utilities, as well as purchases such as food, accounted for 78 percent of the industry’s total costs—see Exhibit 1 . The primary market segments of hotels and motels are presented in Exhibit 2 .
Copyright ©2021 by John D. Varlaro and John E. Gamble. All rights reserved.
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EXHIBIT 1
Hotel, Motel, and Bed & Breakfast Industry Estimated Costs as Percentage of Revenue, 2020
Table Summary: Summary
Costs
Hotels/Motels
Bed & Breakfasts
Wages
26%
28%
Purchases
18%
12%
Depreciation
9%
5%
Marketing
2%
2%
Rent and Utilities
7%
10%
Other
27%
40%
Source: www.ibisworld.com.
EXHIBIT 2
Major Market Segments for Hotels/Motels in the US, 2020
Table Summary: Summary
Market Segment
Hotels
Recreation
70%*
Business
18%
Other, including meetings
12%
Total
100%
*17% of recreational travel within the US was attributed to international travelers.
Source: www.ibisworld.com.
Bed and breakfasts, however, were much smaller, usually where owner-operators offered a couple of rooms within their own home to accommodate guests. The environment of the bed and breakfast—one of a cozy, home-like ambiance—was what the guest desired when booking a room. Contrasted with the hotel or motel, a bed and breakfast offered a more personalized, quieter atmosphere. Further, many bed and breakfast establishments were in rural areas where the investment to establish a larger hotel may have been cost prohibitive, yet the location itself could be an attraction to tourists. In these areas individuals invested in a home and property, possibly with a historical background, to offer a bed and breakfast with great allure and ambience for the guests’ experiences. Thus, the bed and breakfast competed through offering an ambiance associated with a more rural, slower pace through which travelers connected with their hosts and the surrounding community.
While differing in size and target consumer, all hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts were subject to city, state, and federal regulations. These regulations covered areas such as the physical property and food safety, access for persons with disabilities, and even alcohol distribution. Owners and operators were subject to paying fees for different licenses to operate. Due to operating as a business, these properties and the associated revenues were also subject to state and federal taxation.
In addition to regulations, the need to construct physical locations prevented hotels and motels from expanding quickly, especially in new international markets. Larger chains tended to expand by purchasing pre-existing physical locations or through mergers and acquisitions, such as Marriott International Inc.’s acquisition of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide in 2016.
A BUSINESS MODEL FOR THE SHARING, HEALTHY ECONOMY
Startup companies have been functioning in a space commonly referred to as the “sharing economy” for several years. According to Chesky, the previous model for the economy was based on ownership. 1 Thus, operating a business first necessitated ownership of the assets required to do business. Any spare capacity the business faced—either within production or service—was a direct result of the purchase of hard assets in the daily activity of conducting business.
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Airbnb and other similar companies, however, operated through offering a technological platform, where individuals with spare capacity could offer their services. By leveraging the ubiquitous usage of smartphones and the continual decrease in technology costs, these companies provided a platform for individuals to instantly share a number of resources. Thus, a homeowner with a spare room could offer it for rent, or the car owner with spare time could offer his or her services a couple of nights a week as a taxi service. The individual simply signed up through the platform and began to offer the service or resource. The company then charged a small transaction fee as the service between both users was facilitated.
Within its business model, Airbnb received a percentage of what the host received for the room. For Airbnb, its revenues were decoupled from the considerable operating expenses of traditional lodging establishments and provided it with significantly smaller operating costs than hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts. Rather than expenses related to owning and operating real estate properties, Airbnb’s expenses were that of a technology company. Airbnb’s business model, therefore, was based on the revenue-cost-margin structure of an online marketplace, rather than a lodging establishment. With an estimated 11 percent fee per room stay, it was reported that Airbnb achieved profitability for a first time in 2016, 2 and in 2017 Airbnb announced in an annual investors’ meeting that the company had recorded nearly $3 billion in revenue and earned over $90 million in profit. 3
A CHANGE IN THE CONSUMER EXPERIENCE
Airbnb, however, had not just been leveraging technology. It had also leveraged the change in how the current consumer interacted with businesses. In conjunction with this change seemed to be how the consumer had deemphasized ownership. Instead of focusing on ownership, consumers seemed to prefer sharing or renting. Other startup companies have been targeting these segments through subscription-based services and on-demand help. From luxury watches to clothing, experiencing—and not owning—assets seemed to be on the rise. Citing a more experiential-based economy, Chesky believed Airbnb guests desired a community and a closer relationship with the host—and there seemed to be support for this assertion. 4 A recent Goldman Sachs study showed that, once someone used Airbnb, their preference for a traditional accommodation was greatly reduced. 5 The appeal of the company’s value proposition with customers had allowed it to readily raise capital to support its growth, including an $850 million cash infusion in 2016 that raised its estimated valuation to $30 billion. A comparison of Airbnb’s 2018 and 2020 estimated market capitalization to the world’s largest hoteliers is presented in Exhibit 3 .
EXHIBIT 3
Market Capitalization Comparison, 2018 to 2020 (in billions)
Table Summary: Summary
Competitor
Market Capitalization, 2018
Market Capitalization, 2020
Marriot International Inc.
$49
$29
Airbnb
$31
$26
Hilton Worldwide Holdings.
$25
$21
Intercontinental Hotels Group
$11
$8
Source: Yahoo Finance (accessed April 2018 and May 2020); “Airbnb Announces It Won’t Go Public in 2018,” Business Insider, http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-announces-it-wont-go-public-in-2018-2018-2 (accessed April 20, 2018); “Airbnb Raises $1 Billion to Stockpile Cash in Pandemic,” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/technology/airbnb-coronavirus-valuation.html (accessed May 21, 2020).
Recognizing this shift in consumer preference, traditional brick-and-mortar operators responded. Hilton was considering offering a hostel-like option to travelers. 6 Other entrepreneurs were constructing urban properties to specifically leverage Airbnb’s platform and offer rooms only to Airbnb users, such as in Japan 7 where rent and hotel costs were extremely high.
To govern the community of hosts and guests, Airbnb instituted a rating system. Popularized by companies such as Amazon, eBay, and Yelp, peer-to-peer ratings helped police quality. Both guests and hosts rated each other in Airbnb. This approach incentivized hosts to provide quality service, while encouraging guests to leave a property as they found it. Further, the peer-to-peer rating system greatly minimized the otherwise significant task and expense of Airbnb employees assessing and rating each individual participant within Airbnb’s platform.
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NOT PLAYING BY THE SAME RULES
Local and global businesses criticized Airbnb for what they claimed were unfair business practices and lobbied lawmakers to force the company to comply with lodging regulations. These concerns illuminated how, due to its business model, Airbnb and its users seemed not to abide by these same regulations. This could have been concerning on many levels. For the guest, regulations exist for protection from unsafe accommodations. Fire codes and occupation limits all exist to prevent injury and death. Laws also exist to prevent discrimination, as traditional brick-and-mortar accommodations are barred from not providing lodging to guests based on race and other protected classes, but there seemed to be evidence that Airbnb guests had faced such discrimination from hosts. 8
Hosts might also expose themselves to legal and financial problems from accommodating guests. There had been stories of hosts needing to evict guests who would not leave, and, due to local ordinances, the guests were actually protected as apartment lessees. Other stories highlighted rooms and homes being damaged by huge parties given by Airbnb guests. Hosts might also be exposed to liability issues in the instance of an injury or even a death of a guest.
Finally, there were accusations of businesses using Airbnb’s marketplace to own and operate accommodations without obtaining the proper licenses. These locations appeared to be individuals on the surface but were actually businesses. And, because of Airbnb’s platform, these pseudo-businesses could operate and generate revenue without meeting regulations or claiming revenues for taxation.
Airbnb continued to respond to some of these issues. Airbnb released a report in 2015 detailing both discrimination on its platform and how it would be mitigated. Airbnb also settled its lawsuit with San Francisco in early 2017. The city was demanding Airbnb enforce a city regulation requiring host registration or incur significant fines. As part of the settlement, Airbnb agreed to offer more information on its hosts within the city. 9 And in 2018, Airbnb began partnering with local municipalities to help collect taxes automatically for rentals within their jurisdictions, helping to potentially recoup millions in lost tax revenue. 10 , 11
Recognizing that countries and local municipalities were responding to the local business owner and their constituents’ concerns, Chesky and Airbnb had focused on mobilizing and advocating for consumers and business owners who utilize the app. Airbnb’s website provided support for guests and hosts who wished to advocate for the site. A focal point of the advocacy emphasized how those particularly hit hard at the height of the recession in 2009 relied on Airbnb to establish a revenue stream and prevent the inevitable foreclosure and bankruptcy. “We wish to be regulated; this would legitimize us,” Chesky remarked to Trevor Noah in an interview on The Daily Show. 12
A BUSINESS MODEL FOR THE COVID ECONOMY
In 2019, Airbnb finally announced that the long-awaited IPO would occur during 2020, and Airbnb’s revenues were estimated to reach over $2 billion—see Exhibit 4 . However, Airbnb dampened expectations with the announcement that it had experienced a net loss of over $300 million through September 2019 due to increases in operating costs. 13 Then, in the spring of 2020, the pandemic and efforts by the subsequent state and local governments to stop the spread of COVID-19 presented a significant threat to Airbnb and its business model. Instead of preparing for the IPO, Airbnb had to raise $2 billion in private equity funding and debt to support operations during the pandemic. 14 , 15 And in May 2020, Airbnb announced 1900 employees, or about one quarter of the workforce, would be let go. 16
EXHIBIT 4
Airbnb Estimated Revenue and Bookings Growth, 2010–2020 (in millions)
Table Summary: Summary
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Estimated Revenue
$6
$44
$132
$264
$436
$675
$945
$1,229
$1,536
$1,843
$2,12
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