Skift Take
Stocks go up and stocks go down. That's one of the perils of being a public company and exposing yourself to such pressures. Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel expresses a commitment to focus on the long term regardless of short-term complications. If Airbnb goes public, it would have to deal with a similar dynamic.
The sky seemed to be falling for online travel in October and November after Expedia Group and Booking Holdings reported third quarter results, and their stock prices plummeted around 16 percent and 13 percent, respectively. The pessimism was based on missed estimates, rising costs, and fears about the hyper-competitive environment, including the up-and-coming Airbnb.
Suddenly, the obituary writers at Bloomberg were bemoaning that "growth is getting harder to come by in online travel."
However, for now, at least, it appears as though the grim prognosis that many were making about the future of online travel agencies was perhaps too wide-ranging. While Expedia continued to face an uphill battle in integrating its 2015 HomeAway acquisition and Expedia's Trivago unit is still trying to get back on course in 2018, Booking Holdings finished off the year in fine shape.
An 18-year company veteran, Glenn Fogel, who became CEO on January 1, 2017, shrugged off the share price decline after the third quarter report. Booking Holdings' stock was closed Tuesday at more than $2,162 per share, within shouting distance of its all-time high.
"It's a very foolish thing for somebody to look day to day at how your stock price is going," Fogel said last week during an interview at Skift headquarters in New York Cit
