Booking Stock Jumps. The Company Expects a Busy Summer Travel Season.
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First-quarter gross bookings rose to $27.3 billion, the highest quarterly amount in Booking’s history.
Dreamstime
Shares of
Booking Holdings
rose Thursday after the online travel agency posted first-quarter earnings and revenue that smashed Wall Street estimates and the company said it was preparing for a “busy summer travel season.”
Booking (ticker: BKNG) shares rose 4.1% to $2,188 on Thursday. They were holding up during a selloff Thursday on Wall Street, particularly in tech stocks.
The company reported first-quarter earnings adjusted earnings of $3.90 a share, compared with a year-earlier adjusted loss of $5.26. Revenue rose to $2.7 billion from $1.14 billion.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had been expecting earnings of 85 cents a share on revenue of $2.53 billion.
Gross bookings in the quarter rose to $27.3 billion — the highest quarterly amount in the company’s history — from $11.94 billion a year earlier.
“Despite an uncertain macroeconomic environment, we have seen continued strengthening of global travel trends so far in the second quarter of 2022, and we are preparing for a busy summer travel season ahead,” said Glenn Fogel, chief executive of Booking Holdings.
The report from Booking Holdings, follows strong first-quarter results from
Expedia
(EXPE) earlier this week, in which it saw gross bookings in the quarter jump 58% to $24.4 billion.
Analysts at J.P. Morgan, led by Doug Anmuth, reiterated their Overweight rating on the shares of Booking Holdings and their $2,900 price target.
“The macro environment remains volatile, but we believe it is more than offset near-term by pent-up travel demand. We also believe the underlying business fundamentals continue to improve, & BKNG is executing well,” Anmuth wrote in a research note.
Citi analysts reiterated their Buy rating on Booking Holdings and raised their price target to $2,800 from $2,600. Citi said Booking was “gaining share of the rebounding travel market globally.”
Write to Joe Woelfel at [email protected]
