Priceline.com Inc. (NASDAQ: PCLN) is out with its second-quarter earnings report. The travel discount website operator has managed to keep growing beyond the United States to the point that its market value is more than that of every major U.S. airline combined.
Priceline decided to release its earnings on its website rather than pay for a release through PRNewswire or BusinessWire, but here goes. Gross travel bookings for the Group were up 38% to $10.1 billion. The comparable earnings came to be up more than 25% at $508 million, which translates to $9.70 per share. Thomson Reuters was calling for estimates of $9.36 in earnings per share.
Guidance for the coming quarter is for total gross travel bookings growth of 27% to 34% and comparable net income per share of between $15.30 and $16.30. Thomson Reuters has a consensus of $15.86 in earnings per share.
The company also ended the quarter with more than $5.9 billion in cash and short-term securities. We recently named Priceline as one of 12 bull market stocks that seriously needs a stock split.
Priceline shares closed up 0.7% at $933.75, against a 52-week trading range of $553.42 to $940.00. The market cap was right at $46.8 billion. Shares were up 2.6% at almost $960 in the initial reaction in the after-hours trading session.
Going into earnings, Priceline was valued at almost 24 times this year’s expected earnings and at almost 20 times expected 2014 earnings. As a reminder, it has only just recently integrated its KAYAK acquisition, and its Booking.com promotion is still somewhat new to many viewers.
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