Can Booking Holdings’ Stock Still Gain Despite Near-Term Variant Risk?

Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), the world’s largest online travel agency that offers services from lodging to airline tickets to car rental, has increased 11% over the last twenty-one trading days (one month) and currently stands at around $2366. It should be noted that the broader S&P500 returned a marginal decline during the same period. JPMorgan and RBC Capital Markets have increased their rating for BKNG, which led to the stock trending higher in the last five days. Particularly, JPM pointed at BKNG’s investment in alternate accommodation, payments, flights, and merchandising to help it gain a share of the broader travel market in the long term. While RBC pointed to BKNG’s underappreciated structurally higher profitability, as compared to the pre-pandemic levels, to be a win for the company.

Fear of the new Omicron variant prompted the U.S. to consider tightening travel rules, like requiring all air travelers entering the country to show a negative Covid-19 test performed within one day of departure. However, early signs that the variant may be causing milder symptoms than the previous strains, is a temporary sigh of relief for the travel industry – although it’s still too soon to tell for certain.

Now, is BKNG stock poised to grow further? Based on our machine learning analysis of trends in the stock price over the last ten years, there is a 54% chance of a rise in BKNG stock over the next month (twenty-one trading days). See our analysis on BKNG Stock Chance Of Rise for more details.

And if you are considering BKNG stock as an investment option over a longer time frame, you can explore our forecast for BKNG’s Valuation. 

[1] Returns of 11% or higher over five-day period in 31 times out of 2516 (1%); Stock rose in the next five days in 17 of these 31 instances (55%)

[2] Returns of 5.4% or higher over ten-day period in 502 times out of 2516 (20%); Stock rose in the next ten days in 254 of these 502 instances (51%)

[3] Returns of 1.1% or higher over twenty-one-day period in 1340 times out of 2515 (53%); Stock rose in the next twenty-one days in 729 of these 1340 instances (54%)

Also, Booking Holdings Peer Comparisons summarizes how the company fares against peers on metrics that matter.

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[1] Month-to-date and year-to-date as of 12/22/2021
[2] Cumulative total returns since 

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