by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
They all did it, from Salesforce, Uber, and Twitter on down. It was pure magic, a show produced with enormous hype. Now they’re all trying to get out at the same time.
When Airbnb reported a net loss of $1.17 billion for Q1 last week, it also disclosed in its shareholder letter that this loss included a $113 million expense that it expects as it is trying to “exit” an office lease in San Francisco “that we deemed no longer necessary given our restructuring and cost cutting efforts.”
The $113 million expense represents its estimate of the difference between what it would get by subleasing the space to new tenants and what it will have to pay the landlord and related expenses over the remaining term of the lease. But that’s a cheaper way out than letting it sit vacant and paying the landlord until the lease terminates.