Airbnb raised its 2026 revenue-growth forecast Nov. 5, 2026, and authorized an additional share repurchase program of up to $12 billion, expanding its capital-return capacity as quarterly bookings accelerated.
A higher target and more repurchase capacity
The travel platform’s third-quarter update projects full-year revenue growth in the high teens. Its August earnings update had forecast growth of at least the midteens. These are management expectations, not completed annual results.
The new authorization covers Airbnb’s Class A common stock. It permits additional repurchases; it does not mean the company has already spent $12 billion buying shares.
Support costs fall as bookings rise
Airbnb reported revenue growth of 19% to about $4.9 billion for the quarter and net income of $1.9 billion. Reuters reported that nights and seats booked rose 16% to 155 million, a booking-volume measure covering stays and service bookings, not revenue or individual travelers.
The company also reported that approximately 40% of all customer-support issues were resolved without a human agent during the quarter, up from a third in the preceding quarter. Customer-support cost per booking fell more than 17% from a year earlier, which Airbnb attributed largely to improvements in its AI assistant.
Those are company-reported operating metrics, not an independent assessment of support quality or a measure of jobs eliminated. They put service-delivery costs alongside booking growth in the company’s latest account of its operating performance.