Booking Holdings' buybacks keep increasing each shareholder's ownership share every quarter without any additional purchases. x.com
Philip
Founder & CEO of Intrinsiqq, Value & Growth Investor
Booking Holdings looks ridiculously cheap against its own history, and its business and moat inspire much more confidence than Uber's even with AI risk. Its P/FCF is 11.94, versus a ten-year median of 18.85. x.com
Mastercard, AutoZone, Booking, Apple, Caterpillar, ADP and Fair Isaac are buyback machines, among the best stocks to own, because each has consistently reduced its share count. That raises each shareholder's ownership stake every quarter without lifting a finger. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com
Booking Holdings' stock split is a topping sign, as stock splits generally are. A split attracts retail flow that minimizes damage on down days, such as one that would otherwise have been about a $300 drop. x.com x.com
Booking Holdings is a great business at a nice discount and one of the best ways to play an end to the war and the reopening of the Middle East, as @vijaythirumalai argues. It is a best-in-class asset-light travel business trading at about 16x earnings with roughly 15% EPS growth and a near-10% free cash flow yield, with limited AI disruption risk, unlike Uber with autonomy. The war has created some overhang. Lower prices would be even better for the long term. x.com
AI price-comparison risk to Booking Holdings is a big nothing burger, since Google and Google Maps have offered comparisons for ages. Personal checks find Google showing no better price than Booking about two-thirds of the time, and saving a few euros is not worth another spam account or the lost time. Having all bookings in one app is also far more convenient than digging through a messy Gmail inbox. x.com x.com
AI agents threaten Booking Holdings' margins. That view could change if the company adapts, pivots and proves otherwise. x.com
Airbnb is finally getting respect for one of the largest moats around. It is founder-led and innovating, buys back 2-3% of its float a year with a very high free-cash-flow margin, and shows consistent growth across all key and emerging markets. x.com
Slide Insurance looks too cheap at 4.4 times trailing earnings for a company growing 48% a year with 35% net margins and virtually no debt. Strong cash flow funds heavy buybacks, over 10% of shares in the past year, plus a new first dividend. Even if net income stays flat, buybacks at about 4 times earnings would sharply reduce the float and support the price. x.com x.com
Booking Holdings and Expedia look like a secular short with capped upside as their take rates come under pressure, though probably not within the next 60 days. As with Salesforce, the argument that they could simply run headless will be raised, and the market knows it from SaaS. Take rates should compress first where barriers to bringing inventory online are lowest; the platforms would then respond with aggressive marketing and margin dilution, extending their growth runway somewhat. x.com
Royal Caribbean's latest move looks like diworsification of the already difficult cruise industry, because owning travel assets is a bad model. Booking and royalty-style franchisers such as Marriott and Hilton, which avoid owning those assets, are the better way to play travel. x.com