No such thing as a free lunch... Especially not for Airbnb, whose untimely pad-rental biz got it exiled to Wall Street's (unpopular) "risky" lunch table. No one's booking travel rentals right now, so Airbnb needs cash — sales could fall 54% this year. So it's rasing $1B in debt, but will pay that back at a 10% interest rate. That's a hefty risk premium compared to Airbnb's less corona-challenged tech peers — Slack also raised $$$ via debt, but with a tinier 0.5% interest.
Last week, on the Real Housewives of OPEC… Oil prices have been tanking on near-zero travel demand. A month ago, oil took its biggest plunge since 1991 on a reality-show worthy spat between Saudi Arabia and Russia (they both jacked up production and flooded the market with oil). Last week, OPEC (13 countries led by Saudi Arabia) and OPEC+ (not a streaming service — a group of 10 other countries led by Russia) agreed to a big production cut of about 23% to bring prices back up. This all goes to show that companies like Exxon and Chevron, whose oil profits depend on oil prices, have little control over their performance — the OPEC+ gang is in charge.