Booking Holdings Inc. (BKNG) Stock Analysis

Price updated 4 days ago · SEC data refreshed 3 months ago ⓘ · Not investment advice

Booking Holdings Inc.

BKNG Industrials Transportation Services📄 SEC filings ↗ CUSIP 09857L108
Valuation N/A
Long-term trend (200d) 11% below 200-day Risk 62/100 High
▾ What's in the 62/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Fundamental health (43%) 56/100 → +24.0
leverage 80/100 · FCF trend 25/100
Smart money (short interest + insider buying) (31%) 79/100 → +24.8
Macro backdrop (VIX, curve, credit, fear/greed + week-over-week momentum) (26%) 50/100 → +12.9
Total62/100

Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.

💵 Price $173.92 · 4 days ago 📄 Financials SEC EDGAR · refreshed 3 months ago
📍 START HERE

How to read BKNG

We are not publishing an intrinsic value for this one — the section below says exactly why. Everything on this page that comes straight from the filings and the tape is still here; treat the missing valuation as a known gap, not as a verdict on the business.

Where to start — the sections that matter most for this stock
  1. 1 Reported earnings & margins ↓
    What the company actually reported — unaffected by the valuation being held.
  2. 2 Balance sheet & book value ↓
    Assets, liabilities and equity as filed.
  3. 3 Who's selling & betting against it ↓
    Insider and short-interest behaviour needs no valuation model.
Or — what are you trying to decide?
A note on process: fear-driven decisions — including fear of missing out — tend to be the expensive ones. A stock up 10% a day for three days is excitement, not evidence. Whichever reader you are, the data below is there to be checked before anything is decided.
🚀
"It's surging — should I chase it?"
The momentum / FOMO trade. Before you chase, see whether the people who know it best are quietly selling into the rally.
🏷️
"Is it a cheap bargain?"
The deep-value trade. How far below assets and our value it trades — and whether it's cheap for a reason.
ⓘ A share-count quirk blocked the per-share math

The share count we read for BKNG looks wrong — common for multi-class / founder-controlled filers that report shares per share-class. That makes per-share figures (including intrinsic value) misleading, so we suppressed them. The company's total financials below are sound.

What to use instead: Lean on the totals — revenue, net income, cash flow — and the balance sheet. Multi-class share counts are being corrected; once fixed, the per-share valuation returns automatically.

This note is only about the single DCF fair-value number — BKNG's full financial statements, health scores, and written analysis are all below.

ⓘ Why does BKNG trade at $173.92?

Booking Holdings Inc. has 32.6 million shares outstanding. At $173.92 per share, the market values all outstanding BKNG equity at $5.7 billion. That's market capitalization, not enterprise value — enterprise value also accounts for debt and cash — and it matters here because BKNG carries substantial debt. The share price by itself tells you almost nothing — a company can pick any share price by splitting or issuing more shares. What matters is the total value (Market Cap?Market Cap — The total dollar value the market is assigning to the entire company.
Why it matters: This is the number that actually matters when comparing companies. Two companies with the same business but different share counts have the same market cap.
Reference: Mega cap >$200B · Large $10–200B · Mid $2–10B · Small $300M–2B · Micro <$300M
Full explanation →) compared to what the business actually produces. This page values BKNG in Per Share?Per Share — A company-level figure divided by total shares — what one share represents.
Why it matters: Per-share metrics are the only way to fairly compare two companies with different share counts.
Full explanation → economics — what each share represents of the underlying business. Play with the share-price calculator on the homepage →

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Checking filings for failure warnings…
PEER BASKET — TIGHT COMPARABLES

How does BKNG stack up against its closest peers?

We take the 6 same-industry companies most similar to BKNG (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If BKNG is much more expensive on the same yardstick, that's a red flag — unless you have a specific reason it deserves a premium. For a leveraged business, EV/EBIT and FCF yield (both in the table) are usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.

▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?

EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.

EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).

p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.

What peers trade at (p25 / median / p75)
EV / Sales?EV / Sales — For every $1 of yearly revenue, this is how many dollars investors pay to own the whole business (including debt).
Why it matters: Works for pre-profit growth companies where P/E and FCF don't apply. The most apples-to-apples cross-company multiple because it ignores accounting choices.
Reference: 1–3x for mature companies · 4–10x for software/SaaS · 10–20x for hypergrowth · >20x is rare and demanding
Full explanation →		 0.4x / 1.5x / 10.6x

Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 6 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.

Peer-implied value check
$1,211.21
If BKNG traded at the typical (median) peer's EV/Sales multiple, the share price would be about $1,211.21.
Plain English: the stock currently trades at $173.92. That's 85.6% LESS than peer multiples imply — the stock looks cheap vs peers. Either an opportunity, or the market sees something wrong with this name that doesn't apply to peers.

⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.

▾ View peer list (8)
Ticker Company Industry Mcap EV/Sales EV/GPEV/EBIT FCF Yield
GXO GXO Logistics, Inc. Transportation Services $5.8B 0.4x —23.5x 28.0%
GATX GATX CORP Transportation Services $6.0B 10.6x —— 10.3%
GBTG Global Business Travel Group, Inc. Transportation Services $4.9B 2.3x —48.4x 22.9%
RXO RXO, Inc. Transportation Services $4.2B 0.7x —— 0.8%
HAFN Hafnia Ltd Transportation Services $3.8B — 2.7x— —
BWLP BW LPG Ltd Transportation Services $3.0B — —— —
VSEC VSE CORP Engineering Services ·fallback $5.2B 4.9x —61.2x 3.4%
LKQ LKQ CORP Auto Parts Distribution ·fallback $6.9B 0.5x 1.3x7.0x 13.7%
FINANCIAL HEALTH SCREENS

Bankruptcy + quality screens

Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.

Altman Z-Score?Altman Z-Score — A bankruptcy-risk score combining 5 financial ratios into one number. Predictive of bankruptcy within 2 years.
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
2.24
Grey zone

Grey zone — a mixed, inconclusive band under the classic thresholds. A warning to verify the recent trend, not a probability of failure.

The classic Z-score was calibrated on manufacturers. It is less reliable for asset-light or non-manufacturing businesses (broadcasters, media, software, services) and not applicable to banks, REITs, or insurers — for those the coefficients and the asset-turnover term distort the result. Read it as one screening input, not a verdict.

Piotroski-style checks (partial — not a standard F-score)
6 passed · 2 failed · 1 n/a
Partial result, not a standard F-score: 6 of 8 measurable checks passed. 1 of the 9 standard checks couldn't be measured, so this is scored out of 8, not 9 — it isn't comparable to a published F-score.
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
  • ✓ Positive net income
    Net income $5,404.0M in FY2025.
  • ✓ Positive operating cash flow
    Operating cash flow $9,409.0M (was $8,323.0M the prior year).
  • ✓ Cash flow backs up reported profit
    Operating cash flow $9,409.0M vs net income $5,404.0M.
  • ✗ Return on assets improving
    Return on assets 18.5% vs 21.2% a year ago.
    Why this matters: Is the company squeezing more profit out of each dollar of assets than last year? Rising = getting more efficient; falling = the opposite.
  • ✗ Debt load (vs assets)
    Long-term debt is 64.0% of assets vs 59.9% a year ago ($18,736.0M of $29,264.0M assets).
    Why this matters: Rising debt relative to assets means more risk and more cash going to interest instead of shareholders. Falling debt is a sign of strengthening.
  • ✓ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)
    Current ratio 1.33x vs 1.31x a year ago.
  • ✓ Share count (dilution)
    Share count declined 4.2% (34.1M → 32.6M year-over-year), so the no-dilution check passed. (One-year change; the multi-year buyback pace can differ.)
  • · Pricing power (gross margin) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
  • ✓ Sales per asset (asset turnover)
    Asset turnover 0.92x vs 0.86x a year ago.

Missing data is never counted as a pass or a fail — it's shown as n/a and excluded from the denominator. Each check compares the company against its own prior year.

INTERACTIVE — TWEAK YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

What if you assume different inputs?

Here's where we land — and what happens if you change the assumptions. Drag the sliders to set your own Discount Rate?Discount Rate — The annual return you demand for taking single-stock risk instead of buying a safe Treasury or index fund.
Why it matters: Higher discount rate = stricter valuation (a stock has to produce more cash to be worth holding). Lower = more generous.
Reference: 8–12% is standard · 9–10% matches S&P 500 historical return · Below 7% is illogical for single-stock risk
Full explanation → (the annual return you demand for single-stock risk) and terminal growth; the value updates live so you can see whether the stock looks cheaper or richer. The discount rate starts at 10.0%, the figure our model used for BKNG. Open Advanced to also change beta, growth and the rate path.

Note: no headline intrinsic value is published for this stock (the valuation is held for a data-quality reason — see the notes above). The calculator below is a what-if tool: the values it produces are your assumptions played out, not our estimate.

4.5% (risk-free)9-10% normal18% (deep-risk)
0%2-3% (GDP)5% (rarely sustainable)

A full intrinsic value isn't shown for BKNG because the valuation is currently held for a data-quality reason (see the guardrail notes above). The reverse-DCF reading still works — it needs only the price and cash flow — but we won't publish a forward value until the underlying data passes our checks.

For comparison — the revenue growth today's price already assumes
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—

—

⚙ Advanced — tinker with every input (beta, growth, rate path, margin → full intrinsic value)
Where the discount rate comes from — discount rate = risk-free + beta × equity-risk-premium
What you'd earn risk-free from government bonds — the floor under every other rate. Slide it down to model the market expecting rate cuts (value rises); up for higher-for-longer.
The extra yearly return investors demand for owning stocks instead of safe bonds — the price of risk. History runs ~4.5–6.5%; we default to 5.5% (slightly conservative). It's an estimate, not a law — lower it if you think equities are less risky than that.
Inflation reduces the purchasing power of a nominal return: a 9% gain at 3% inflation is about 6% in real terms. The intrinsic value above is already in today's dollars (a nominal DCF carries inflation in both the growth and the discount rate), so this switch does not change the value — it restates the return in real terms.
Higher beta → higher discount rate (sets the rate above). 1.0 = moves with the market.
What you think BKNG can grow revenue for ~5 years, then fades to terminal.
For a pre-profit company: the % of revenue that eventually becomes free cash flow once mature. (Our published value uses the sector norm.)
All inputs start at the values our model used.

    Copy shareable link to this scenario →

    Price$173.92
    Model IVNot applicable — DCF couldn't price this stock. The other valuation lenses on this page (reverse-DCF, peers, sector lens — whichever apply to this filer) carry the read instead.

    A standard DCF?DCF — Discounted Cash Flow — sums up all future cash a business will produce, adjusted for the fact that future dollars are worth less than dollars today.
    Why it matters: It is the most fundamentally honest valuation method when applicable — but only works for companies with predictable, positive cash flow.
    Reference: Best for: mature, profitable businesses. Fails for: pre-profit growth, banks, REITs.
    Full explanation →     valuation is not meaningful for Booking Holdings Inc. due to a data/units issue, likely a multi-class share-count mismatch, which suppresses per-share values. Investors are likely focused on its consistent revenue growth (25.2%/yr over 4 years) and positive operating cash flow, indicating a healthy underlying business despite valuation model limitations. The market is betting on continued expansion in global travel. The #1 quantifiable risk is the rising long-term debt, which has more than doubled.

    ⚠️ Per-share growth boosted by buybacks: the company is retiring 4% of its shares per year, which adds directly to per-share growth on top of business growth. Final per-share growth used by the model: 23.4%/yr.

    As of 3 months ago

    ANATOMY

    Anatomy of a share

    What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.

    BKNG Booking Holdings Inc. stock anatomy showing per-share revenue, operating expenses, free cash flow, and debt
    20.1%
    profit
    Where each $1 of revenue goes
    Net profit — 20.1¢ of every dollar ($165.57/sh — latest fiscal-year net income per share)
    Costs & taxes — 79.9¢ (on $824.69 revenue/sh)
    Net margin = net income ÷ revenue (most recent fiscal year).
    Plain English: each share (at $174) represents $824.69 of revenue per share per year, $165.57 of net income per current share, and $259.63 of free cash flow per share from the latest fiscal year. Each share carries $574.04 of total debt (interest-bearing borrowings, current + long-term).
    What's free cash flow / what do these mean?

    Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.

    Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.

    Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.

    Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.

    MOMENTUM — WHAT'S GETTING BETTER & WORSE

    The trend, in plain numbers (FY2024 → FY2025, latest reported)

    Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.

    ✅ Improving
    • Revenue grew +13% to $26.92B.
    • Free cash flow rose to $8.47B.
    ⚠ Worsening
    • Net income fell -8% to $5.40B.
    WHO

    Management & Leadership

    Glenn Fogel has served as CEO of Booking Holdings Inc. since 2017, also holding the title of President. He has been instrumental in guiding the company's strategy in the global online travel market. David Goulden serves as the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

    Glenn Fogel
    Chief Executive Officer and President
    David Goulden
    Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
    WHAT

    What They Make

    Booking Holdings Inc. provides online travel and related services to consumers and local partners worldwide. They offer services like hotel reservations, airline tickets, rental cars, and restaurant reservations.

    End Markets

    Leisure travelBusiness travelHospitality services

    Revenue Drivers

    Agency commissions
    Merchant revenues
    Advertising and other revenues
    Market Cap: 5.7BBeta: 0.99
    WHY

    Why Is It Priced Like This?

    Why Customers Pay

    Convenient access to diverse travel options
    Competitive pricing for accommodations and flights
    Integrated booking experience
    No discounted-cash-flow value for this filer We aren't publishing a discounted-cash-flow value here: the model's output failed our plausibility checks, so showing it would imply more precision than we have.

    What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.

    The market is likely pricing Booking Holdings based on its consistent revenue growth of 25.2%/yr over four years and its sustained profitability, with net income and operating cash flow positive for the latest five years. Despite the DCF?DCF — Discounted Cash Flow — sums up all future cash a business will produce, adjusted for the fact that future dollars are worth less than dollars today.
    Why it matters: It is the most fundamentally honest valuation method when applicable — but only works for companies with predictable, positive cash flow.
    Reference: Best for: mature, profitable businesses. Fails for: pre-profit growth, banks, REITs.
    Full explanation →     model's inability to produce a reliable intrinsic value?Intrinsic Value — Our DCF model's estimate of what each share is mathematically worth based on projected cash flows.
    Why it matters: Compare to current price. Below IV = potentially undervalued. Above IV = priced for growth that must actually happen.
    Reference: Model-derived; quality depends on data and assumptions.
    Full explanation →     due to data issues, these health signals suggest a robust business with strong underlying performance that investors are willing to pay for, betting on continued expansion in the global travel sector.

    HOW

    Business Model & Valuation

    How They Make Money

    Agency commissions
    Merchant revenues
    Advertising and other revenues

    Free Cash Flow DCF

    Standard FCF DCF: positive free cash flow in a sector suited for cash-flow-based valuation.

    Show advanced inputs
    Revenue Growth25.2%
    Eps Growth55.7%
    Historical Fcf Growth41.0%
    Sector Default6.0%
    Best Estimate19.4%
    Methodblend(70% revenue_cagr, 30% sector)+buyback(4%)
    Growth Basistotal

    What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project its revenue segments independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.

    WHEN

    Maturity & Competitive Position

    Competitive analysis not yet available for this stock.
    WHERE

    Geography & Markets

    Geographic revenue mix not available from current data sources.
    SIGNALS

    Market Signals

    These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.

    Model neutral, tape bearish
    RSI?RSI — Relative Strength Index — a 0-100 momentum gauge. Above 70 = overbought; below 30 = oversold.
    Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
    Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
    Full explanation →     (14)    52.4NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
    MACD?MACD — Moving Average Convergence Divergence — compares a fast and a slow price trend to gauge momentum direction.
    Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
    Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
    Full explanation →    BullishLine above signalThe fast trend is above the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently upward.
    50-Day Average$170.43Price above (+2.0%)Price above its 50-day average = near-term uptrend.
    200-Day Average$194.67Price belowThe 200-day line is the long-term trend divider — above it is generally considered a bull market for the stock.
    50 vs 200 CrossDeath50-day below 200-dayA "death cross" — the medium trend is below the long trend (often read as bearish).

    Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.

    QUALITY

    Data Quality & Risk Flags (3 notes — click to expand/collapse)
    Guardrail Notes (3)
    • Per-share growth boosted by buybacks: the company is retiring 4% of its shares per year, which adds directly to per-share growth on top of business growth. Final per-share growth used by the model: 23.4%/yr.
    • Extreme valuation (P/IV withheld — see the note above); output dominated by data/units issue (often a multi-class share-count mismatch). Suppressed.
    • DATA UNAVAILABLE: per-share values suppressed due to missing/unreliable shares data.
    FINANCIALS

    Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)

    From Booking Holdings Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).

    Income (5yr)

    YearRevenueNet IncomeEPS
    202526.9B5.4B$165.57
    202423.7B5.9B$172.69
    202321.4B4.3B$117.40
    202217.1B3.1B$76.35
    202111.0B1.2B$28.17

    Cash Flow (5yr)

    YearOperating CFCapEx− SBC & adj.Free Cash Flow
    2025 9.4B 322.0M 613.0M 8.5B
    2024 8.3B 429.0M 599.0M 7.3B
    2023 7.3B 345.0M 530.0M 6.5B
    2022 6.6B 368.0M 404.0M 5.8B
    2021 2.8B 304.0M 370.0M 2.1B

    How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). Latest year: 9.4B − 322.0M − 613.0M (SBC & adj.) = 8.5B. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses.

    Balance Sheet

    Total Assets29.3B
    Total Liabilities34.8B
    Equity-5.6B
    Total Debt18.7B
    YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

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    PG
    Methodology by Pouyan Golshani, MD — founder of Gighz. Savng was built by a physician for busy professionals: every number on this page comes from SEC filings (EDGAR) and FINRA data through transparent, rules-based models — no analyst opinions, no hidden inputs. How we calculate every number →
    ⚠️ Not investment advice. Automated model outputs, last refreshed May 30, 2026 (the analysis-refresh date, not the latest filing period). All models have blind spots. Full disclaimer →
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