Airbnb shares immediately tradable in Frankfurt

When the rental agency Airbnb goes public on Thursday on Nasdaq, investors will be able to trade the share on the Frankfurt floor at the same time. Immediate inclusion makes this possible.

10 December 2020. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). With the IPO of the U.S. rental broker Airbnb (ISIN US0090661010) a large placement is indicated. After several increases, the shares could be subscribed for at 56 to 60 US dollars, which corresponds to a market valuation of approximately 42 billion US dollars at the peak. Not unusual in the USA: two different share classes are offered, which differ in their voting rights.

Start of trading may take longer

Nasdaq will admit the shares before the start of trading, probably on Wednesday. Also on Wednesday the company will most likely publish the issue price. Start of trading with the first price determination will probably be on Thursday from 14:30 Frankfurt time

The prerequisite is, of course, that the start of trading is successful and that prices are fixed in the USA. By the way, this can take considerably longer than in Germany, since the US stock exchanges use a different procedure for price determination during the IPO. At the Chinese Internet company Alibaba, it took over two hours to find the first price. The Facebook IPO was also turbulent and Snap needed around one hour in 2017. At the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the first price is usually determined after 15 minutes.

Immediately tradable on the Frankfurt floor

Regardless of how one assesses the yield chances of an investment in Airbnb shares and whether one believes in the growth story of the sharing economy - one thing is remarkable in any case: Local investors can trade the shares on the Frankfurt floor directly after the IPO on Nasdaq.

Many foreign shares on offer

Of the 10,500 companies whose shares are traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, only just under 1,000 have their home market in Frankfurt, the rest are foreign stocks. The home market is the stock exchange on which a company has its first listing. It is there that it has usually gone public, and it also complies with its transparency rules. Normally, the traded volume of a share is highest on the home market, where the reference price is set, which the other exchanges use as a benchmark.

The other almost 10,000 shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange have their first listing on another stock exchange and have been included in Frankfurt trading by specialists. These shares are listed on the Quotation Board, which does not entail any further transparency obligations.

The range of companies included is wide and extends from US blue chips such as General Motors to small Taiwanese technology stocks. If the original shares cannot be traded abroad, as is the case with Russian shares, for example, exchange certificates, so-called DRs for Depository Receipts, which represent a deposited share, are often offered instead. A few companies have a dual listing, such as Fiat.

10 December 2020, © Deutsche Börse AG