📌 Company Snapshot
Booking Holdings Inc. is the world’s largest online travel services provider, operating brands like Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Kayak, Rentalcars.com, Cheapflights and OpenTable, serving travelers and hospitality partners globally. It earns primarily through commissions and merchant travel bookings across hotels, flights, rentals, experiences and dining. The company is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, and trades as part of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100.
📊 Most Recent Quarterly Earnings (Q3 2025)
Earnings Date: October 28, 2025 (reported).
Adjusted EPS: $99.50, beating consensus (~$95.8).
Revenue: $9.01 B, beating consensus ($8.7 B).
Year-over-Year Growth: ~13% in revenue and ~19% in adjusted EPS.
Drivers: Gross bookings up ~14%, room nights +8%, and strength across accommodations, flights and experiences. Booking also raised operational savings guidance due to its transformation program.
Upcoming Q4 2025 earnings are expected ~Feb 19–23, 2026 with EPS estimates ~48.6 and revenue ~6.1 B (analyst forecasts).
🏢 Company History & Structure
Founded in 1996 as Priceline.com by Jay S. Walker, the company launched as a travel bargain site and evolved aggressively through acquisitions. It acquired Booking.com in 2005, which became its flagship revenue engine, and later Kayak, Agoda, Cheapflights, Rentalcars, and OpenTable under the 2018 rebrand to Booking Holdings.
Booking Holdings’ business is asset-light, meaning it doesn’t own hotels or airlines but connects travelers with inventory and takes commissions — a model that scales with global travel demand and keeps fixed operating costs relative.
Major competitors include Expedia Group, Airbnb (for vacation rentals), and Trip.com Group in Asia. These rivals differ in portfolio mix and regional strengths, but Booking typically leads in hotel distribution and overall gross bookings.
🌍 Market & Growth Outlook
BKNG operates in the online travel and tourism market, which remains one of the largest digital commerce segments worldwide. Travel demand has rebounded strongly post-pandemic, with leisure and business travel returning to near or above historical norms. Analysts project mid-single to double-digit compound annual growth rates (CAGR) in revenue and EPS over the next 3–5 years (EPS growth ~20% CAGR, revenue ~8–9%).
Structural tailwinds include continued globalization, higher travel frequency (“bleisure” trends), mobile booking penetration, and expansion in ancillary travel products like flights and attractions.
🆚 Competitive Positioning
- Expedia Group: strong alternative with hotels + flights + packages, but smaller global room night count vs BKNG.
- Airbnb: leads in alternative stays (~vacation rentals) but less hotel inventory and B2B partner focus.
- Trip.com: stronger in China/Asia but lower share in Europe/US markets.
Booking’s global breadth, diversified brands and merchant revenue mix (higher-margin merchant bookings vs pure agent commission) give it a competitive edge on both scale and profitability.
👔 Leadership
- Glenn D. Fogel – CEO & President, steering strategic shift toward high-margin merchant revenues and transformation initiatives.
- Robert J. Mylod Jr. – Board Chair. (Note: executive teams evolve, but Fogel remains central to company direction.)
📈 Recent Financial Highlights
Booking’s revenue expanded ~13% year-over-year in Q3 2025 and has grown steadily over the past five years into the mid-$20 B range on a trailing basis. EPS growth has also been strong, reflecting both demand and margin control.
Its asset-light model and technology platform enable high operating leverage in travel upswings; however, FX headwinds and geopolitical volatility can add short-term noise.
📈 Bull Case (high-convection view)
- Dominant global market share in online hotel and travel distribution.
- Strong post-pandemic travel demand with expanding ancillary revenue streams.
- Scalable, high-margin asset-light model with strategic transformation cost savings.
📉 Bear Case
- Travel demand cyclicality (economic downturns can curtail bookings).
- Rising marketing spend and competition from meta-search and platforms like Airbnb/Google.
- Currency volatility and regulatory/legal headwinds (e.g., price transparency requirements).
The stock is in a bullish stage 2 on the monthly and weekly charts. The daily chart is in stage 3 consolidation (neutral) and should reverse in the $5100 – $5200 range. This is a good slow but steady long term stock.
