TripAdvisor Chairman’s Takeover Comments Not a Vote of Confidence
Photo Credit: Greg Maffei's company is the controlling shareholder of TripAdvisor. His comments at a financial conference were less than bullish about the company's prospects. Liberty Media
Skift Take
Greg Maffei made no mention of TripAdvisor playing the long game with its Instant Booking transition. Instead, he almost informally invited bids to acquire TripAdvisor. While the odds seem to be stacked up against Tripadvisor it could still turn things around -- if it gets the time to do so.
TripAdvisor chairman Greg Maffei, who's Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings is the company's controlling shareholder, thinks a potential acquirer might be able to extract more value out of the company's 375 million user base than the market currently ascribes to it.
That wasn't exactly a vote of confidence in TripAdvisor's transition into becoming a hotel-booking site, a changeover that Maffei characterized as "crossing the chasm."
Speaking in his role as CEO of Liberty Media at a financial conference earlier in the week, Maffei asked himself a rhetorical question and then answered it.
"Would potentially another owner of this business see more value in the 375 million unique travel visitors per month? Perhaps. I think that to some degree puts a floor on value."
TripAdvisor's share price increased around six percent Wednesday when a financial analyst Kevin Kopelman of of Cowen Research wrote about Maffei's comments.
Kopelman wrote: "Our thoughts: (1) We view the comments as a
