Airbnb cofounder Nathan Blecharczyk has cast doubt on the possibility of an initial public offering this year.

"We have already said that we are taking the steps to be ready to go public in 2019. That doesn't mean we will go public in 2019," Blecharczyk told Business Insider.

The travel-services startup, last valued at $31 billion, was expected to hit the market as early as June.

Wall Street has been waiting for the initial public offering of Airbnb, one of the hottest Silicon Valley startups. When Dave Stephenson, a longtime Amazon vice president, joined Airbnb in November, the market's hopes were seemingly confirmed.

The share sale was expected as early as June, TechCrunch reported last year, with an IPO happening in "late 2020" at the latest. But to judge by recent comments from Airbnb's cofounder, the company isn't in a rush to join other tech startups making a market debut in 2019.

"We have already said that we are taking the steps to be ready to go public in 2019. That doesn't mean we will go public in 2019," Nathan Blecharczyk, an Airbnb cofounder, told Business Insider in an email interview.

The 10-year-old startup is a marketplace for travelers seeking accommodation, offering over 6 million places to stay in more than 81,000 cities and 191 countries, according to the company's website.

According to TechCrunch, Airbnb was valued at $31 billion after the second half of its $1 billion Series F round in May 2017 and had revenue of over $1 billion in the third quarter of 2018.

The startup offers over 6 million places to stay in more than 81,000 cities and 191 countries. Gabrielle Lurie/Reuters

"We have not decided if we will go public in 2019, and our focus is on building a 21st-century company, and we're all committed to that goal," Blecharczyk added.

While he did not elaborate on the company's latest thinking about timing, IPOs have been off to a slow start in 2019.

Globally, companies have raised only $5.4 billion this year, down by 78% from the same period a year ago, the South China Morning Post reported last month, citing a report by the global financial-data provider Dealogic.

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A variety of reasons, from the uncertainties of Britain's painfully protracted exit from the European Union to the US-China trade war, have hurt investors' appetite for risk, Dealogic said, per the Post.

In the US, companies aspiring to go public have faced added challenges. The government shutdown early this year limited the staff strength at the Securities and Exchange Commission, slowing the market regulator's review of IPO registration documents.

Many popular stocks like Snap and Spotify lost a lot of value by the year end. Reuters

"It's a direct reflection of the government shutdown," Jackie Kelley, the Americas IPO leader at EY, told CNN last month.

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Further, investors have been shy of risk since the global market sell-off at the end of 2018. Stocks like Snap and Spotify had lost a lot of value by the year's end.

While the rest of the market has since rebounded, "IPO investors are pretty price-sensitive right now," Kathleen Smith, a principal at Renaissance Capital, told CNN.

Other major IPOs expected on Wall Street this year include Uber, Lyft, Slack, and Pinterest.