What Has Happened To Airbnb Stock Since February?
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Shares of Airbnb (ABNB) rose 64.1% from February 12 to November 9, 2026, outpacing the 11.4% return for the S&P 500 over the same dates. Throughout those months, management raised its forecast for 2026 revenue growth across successive quarterly reports, with the latest increase coming on November 5. So how far did Airbnb raise its revenue forecast, and how did the shares respond?
Airbnb Raised Its Revenue Forecast Three Times
Airbnb began the year expecting low double-digit revenue growth for 2026. The company then raised that target to a low- to mid-teens rate on May 7, to at least a mid-teens rate on August 6, and finally to the high teens on November 5.
On August 7, the day after the second raise, the stock posted its largest single-day move of the period, rising 17.4% as the higher forecast eased worries that the conflict in the Middle East would hurt travel demand. The shares advanced another 11.7% on November 6, the day after the third forecast increase. Other travel stocks lagged far behind over the same months: shares of Booking Holdings were down 1.0%, and shares of Expedia were up 14.7%.
Sales At Airbnb Grew Faster Than A Year Ago
The business itself has sped up, which supports those forecasts. Revenue grew 18.9% from a year earlier in the September quarter, against 9.7% growth in the same quarter of 2025. Some of that came from currency: management put the growth at 16% excluding currency moves. Separately, management said its Reserve Now, Pay Later option, which lets guests book without paying upfront, added about 3 percentage points to growth in nights booked in the quarter, a measure separate from revenue.
Airbnb’s stock price has moved further than its sales. At the March 31 close, Airbnb traded at 6.0 times its trailing twelve-month sales, marking the lowest quarter-end multiple since 2020. By the November 9 close, the stock was trading at 8.0 times sales, compared with 3.1 for the S&P 500.
Airbnb’s Twelve-Month Profit Margin Has Barely Moved
Over the twelve months ended September 30, 2026, Airbnb converted 22.5% of its sales into operating profit, compared with 22.6% in the prior twelve-month period. This twelve-month figure held flat even as the operating margin for the September quarter alone rose to 41.5%, up from 39.7% a year earlier. The highest the twelve-month margin has reached at any quarter end since September 2020 is 23%, recorded in September 2023.
The twelve-month figures show that the faster growth has not yet widened the share of each sales dollar that Airbnb keeps as operating profit. Using adjusted EBITDA, a separate measure from operating margin, management raised its full-year margin outlook to about 36% and expects the December-quarter margin to be slightly lower than a year earlier, partly because some marketing spending moved into that quarter. Airbnb’s twelve-month operating margin is the number to watch when the company next reports, which it is expected to do in February 2027.
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