Pulling back 7.7% this week, Booking Holdings' NASDAQ:BKNG) five-year decline in earnings may be coming into investors focus

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Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) shareholders might be concerned after seeing the share price drop 11% in the last month. On the bright side the share price is up over the last half decade. However we are not very impressed because the share price is only up 41%, less than the market return of 125%.

While the stock has fallen 7.7% this week, it's worth focusing on the longer term and seeing if the stocks historical returns have been driven by the underlying fundamentals.

View our latest analysis for Booking Holdings

To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.

Booking Holdings' earnings per share are down 25% per year, despite strong share price performance over five years.

This means it's unlikely the market is judging the company based on earnings growth. Since the change in EPS doesn't seem to correlate with the change in share price, it's worth taking a look at other metrics.

It is not great to see that revenue has dropped by 6.0% per year over five years. So it seems one might have to take closer look at earnings and revenue trends to see how they might influence the share price.

The image below shows how earnings and revenue have tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

earnings-and-revenue-growth
earnings-and-revenue-growth

Booking Holdings is well known by investors, and plenty of clever analysts have tried to predict the future profit levels. So it makes a lot of sense to check out what analysts think Booking Holdings will earn in the future (free analyst consensus estimates)

A Different Perspective

Booking Holdings shareholders gained a total return of 1.5% during the year. Unfortunately this falls short of the market return. On the bright side, the longer term returns (running at about 7% a year, over half a decade) look better. Maybe the share price is just taking a breather while the business executes on its growth strategy. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Booking Holdings better, we need to consider many other factors. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for Booking Holdings you should know about.

We will like Booking Holdings better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

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