Travel recovery boosts Expedia earnings
Yahoo Finance Live's Julie Hyman and Brian Sozzi discuss fourth quarter earnings for Expedia.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: We've got to talk about Expedia as well real quick, that's another mover that we are watching, another company that came out with earnings. And you can see here, this is another that beat on the bottom line but there was a slight miss on the top line as well. And the company talking about the sort of whipsaw that it has seen as a result of COVID-19 and the effect on the travel industry. The CEO of the company talking about you know, that obviously they saw a big depressive effect, then things came back quickly, and then Omicron caused them to go down to some extent again. The shares are trading higher by 2.5% here this morning, Sozz.
BRIAN SOZZI: You know you're still smack in the middle of a pandemic, Julie. One of your key highlights that Expedia put forth, top bullet point for the company, total revenue was down 17% compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. So that is one of their highlights. But I think underscores just the challenges to start the year for many of these travel companies. This is something we heard from earlier in the week over from Trivago, Axel Hefer, the CEO of that company on our network, discussing you know, things remain sluggish out there, it's challenging when it comes to business travel. And I think you're seeing a lot of that within these Expedia results as well.
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, most definitely. I mean, you see a rebound, right? Room nights stayed that were booked on Expedia, up 74%. Sounds great, right? But you compare it, of course, with the prior year that was virtually no travel going on. And the estimate by the way, for those room nights stayed was 97%. So it's interesting that we didn't see the analysts sort of ratchet down their estimates a little bit more going into this report given the effect of Omicron but nonetheless, the stock is not really being punished as a result of all of this. Perhaps because there is this understanding that things are now coming back perhaps and that people are getting back out there?
BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, clearly, I think all these stocks are trading off what could be really a nice, nice summer for the lodging sector.
JULIE HYMAN: Here's hoping. Here's hoping we all get out there and take vacations perhaps, Brian Sozzi. I know.
BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, probably not.
