Booking Holdings

Travelers booked 54.5 billion dollars of trips last quarter, up 10 percent, and filled 345 million room nights. Leaving out a one time legal charge, revenue was 9.8 billion dollars, up 9 percent. More guests now pay Booking directly instead of paying the hotel at check in, and revenue from those payments jumped 14 percent to 7 billion dollars.

Booking earned 2.7 billion dollars in profit last quarter, keeping about 31 cents of every dollar it brought in. It also spent 2.1 billion dollars buying back its own stock and has 12.4 billion more approved, so each remaining share owns a bigger slice. That is why profit per share, leaving out one time charges, jumped 17 percent, almost twice as fast as sales.

Booking cut 900 million dollars from its reported revenue last quarter and set aside another 100 million dollars over a dispute with the Federal Trade Commission, the government agency that protects shoppers. That is why reported revenue slipped 1 percent to 8.9 billion dollars, even though bookings grew. Legal surprises like this are hard to predict and can take a real bite out of a quarter.

The company expects room nights to grow just 1 to 3 percent in the last three months of the year, down from 7 percent. Trips abroad are cooling while travel close to home holds up, and conflict in the Middle East is disrupting flights and pushing up airfares. Longer term, AI assistants that book trips on their own could try to cut Booking out of the middle.