According to the World Travel and Tourism Council the tourism sector loses million jobs a day globally due to the coronavirus. The situation is not better in the U.S. because according to DoL 10 million Americans lost their job. Expedia Group(NASDAQ: EXPE) is the biggest online travel agent in the USA,in front of Booking (BKNG).
Shares of Expedia Group (NASDAQ:EXPE) fell as much as 9% in trading Thursday as investors started to dump travel stocks again. At 3:00 p.m. EDT today, shares were still down 8%.
What to do with EXPE?
Expedia shares are down from $97 at the beggining of the March, which means that it lost 50% of its value. Even bigger problem in my eyes is the fact that EXPE started falling one month before, from $121 in February. Investors started losing the confidence just a couple of days after the conference call with Barry Diller. His words at the start reasured investors that Expedia is going in the right direction, but few days later share price lost its power and it is continuously decreasing since.
The biggest Expedia’s contender at the moment is Booking.com and I am sure Booking stock is a better bid in the long run as they are reportedly having more cash on hands. Expe was already a bloated company, and COVID-19 is not helping at all. Main market for Expedia is USA and no one knows when wil the U.S. market recover. On the other hand Booking is a household name all around the world. Since Asia is already recovering Booking can expect increase in booking from Far East.
Stay-at-home orders across the U.S. are not helping EXPE, and I am sure the price will drop again. The $27 price tag is not unrealistic in my eyes, especially if things do not change in the Q2.
Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Google Ads). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
