Airbnb Q1-2024 financial results

We issued our first quarter 2024 financial results. You can read the details here. Airbnb Co-Founder and CEO Brian Chesky said: 

“We had our best Q1 ever, with 133 million nights and experiences booked, along with double-digit supply growth across all regions. I’m proud of our strong Q1 results and look forward to another record summer travel season.”

Overview of Q1 results

Airbnb had a strong start to 2024. In Q1, Nights and Experiences Booked grew to 133 million. Revenue of $2.1 billion increased 18 percent year-over-year. Q1 net income was $264 million—our most profitable first quarter ever. Adjusted EBITDA of $424 million represented a 20 percent Adjusted EBITDA Margin, up 6 percentage points from the year prior. 

We made significant progress across our strategic priorities in Q1 and will continue to invest in these areas:  

• Making hosting mainstream: We remain focused on making hosting just as popular as traveling on Airbnb. To do this, we’re raising awareness around the benefits of hosting, providing better tools for hosts, and helping them deliver higher quality stays. We’re committed to keeping quality high as we grow supply, and in Q1, we removed thousands of listings that failed to meet our guests’ expectations. Excluding the removal of these listings, active listings excluding experiences grew 17% year-over-year with sustained double-digit supply growth across all regions. We’ll continue raising awareness around hosting and improving the overall host experience in the year ahead. 

• Perfecting the core service: Over the past few years, we’ve rolled out hundreds of improvements to make Airbnb more reliable, affordable, and an overall better service for hosts and guests. In November, we took a huge step forward on reliability with the launch of Guest Favorites, a collection of the most-loved homes on Airbnb based on ratings, reviews, and reliability data. We’re already seeing a positive impact, with over 100 million nights booked at Guest Favorite listings since launch. We’ll continue making it easier for guests to find high-quality and affordable stays on Airbnb. 

• Expanding beyond the core: We continued investing in less mature markets to unlock more growth, and our approach is working. In Q1, growth of gross nights booked on an origin basis in our expansion markets was more than double our core markets on average, but still represents a minority of total nights booked. We remain focused on accelerating growth in more places around the world while also building towards the future of Airbnb. Expanding beyond our core business will be a multi-year journey, and we’ve already started laying the foundation. Last week, we introduced Icons—a new category of extraordinary experiences hosted by the greatest names in music, film, television, art, sports, and more. Icons mark an important next step in helping people understand that Airbnb offers more than accommodations. This will be critical as we begin to expand our offerings in the coming years.

Q1 2024 financial results

Here’s a snapshot of our Q1 2024 results: 

• Q1 revenue was $2.1 billion, up 18% year-over-year. Revenue increased to $2.1 billion in Q1 2024 from $1.8 billion in Q1 2023, primarily driven by solid growth in Nights and Experiences Booked, a modest increase in Average Daily Rate (“ADR”) and the shift in timing of Easter from the second quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of 2024.

• Q1 net income was $264 million, up 126% year-over-year. Net income increased to $264 million in Q1 2024 from $117 million in Q1 2023 primarily due to revenue growth, interest income and cost discipline. In Q1 2024, we delivered a net income margin of 12%—our highest first quarter ever—up from 6% in Q1 2023. 

• Q1 Adjusted EBITDA was $424 million, up 62% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $424 million in Q1 2024 from $262 million in Q1 2023, which demonstrates the continued strength of our business and discipline in managing our cost structure. Adjusted EBITDA Margin was 20% in Q1 2024 compared to 14% in Q1 2023¹.

• Q1 Free Cash Flow was $1.9 billion. In Q1 2024, net cash provided by operating activities was $1.9 billion compared to $1.6 billion in Q1 2023. This increase in year-over-year cash flow was primarily driven by the increase in net income. Our TTM FCF was $4.2 billion, representing a FCF Margin of 41%².

• Q1 share repurchases of $750 million. Our strong cash flow enabled us to repurchase $750 million of our Class A common stock in Q1 2024. Share repurchases for the trailing twelve months totaling $2.5 billion enabled us to reduce our fully diluted share count from 697 million at the end of Q1 2023 to 677 million at the end of Q1 2024. We have a remaining authorization to purchase up to $6 billion of our Class A common stock.

Business highlights

Our strong start to 2024 was driven by a number of positive business highlights: 

• Mobile downloads are accelerating. Nights and Experiences Booked in Q1 2024 increased 9.5% year-over-year, despite the hard comparison from Q1 2023. We were particularly encouraged by the continued growth of app downloads and usage. In the U.S., Airbnb app downloads increased 60% in Q1 compared to the same prior year period. Global nights booked through our mobile app increased 21% year-over-year, representing 54% of total nights booked during the quarter—up from 49% in Q1 2023. 

• Airbnb is uniquely positioned for special events. In April, we had over 500,000 guests stay on Airbnb during the total solar eclipse in North America. We saw more than twice as many nights stayed on Airbnb along the direct path of the eclipse for the event compared to the prior year, with many of these locations in rural areas with no hotels. Turning to the Summer OIympic Games Paris 2024, nights booked for stays during the dates of the Olympics are over five times higher than they were in Paris the same time a year ago. Germany is also seeing a similar trend for the Euro Cup this Summer with nearly double the number of nights booked compared to the same prior year period. We’ve also seen increases in supply to help meet higher demand, including nearly 40% more active listings in Paris in Q1 compared to a year ago. These events highlight how Airbnb helps disperse travel and spread economic benefits by allowing people to stay in local neighborhoods where there are no hotels. 

• Supply growth remains strong. In Q1 2024, our active listings grew 15% compared to Q1 2023. As part of our efforts around quality to ensure we offer the best possible experience for guests, we removed thousands of low-quality listings in Q1. Excluding the impact of these quality-driven removals during the quarter, active listings excluding experiences increased 17% year-over-year. We continued to see double-digit supply increases across all regions, with the highest growth in Asia Pacific and Latin America—the two regions that also had the most year-over-year growth in Nights and Experiences Booked. Consistent with recent quarters, urban and non-urban supply grew at similar rates year-over-year. We also continued to see similar growth in the number of individual and professional hosts and believe the majority of new listings are exclusive to Airbnb.