Critical Analysis: Expedia Group (EXPE) & Its Rivals

Expedia Group (NASDAQ:EXPE) is one of 382 publicly-traded companies in the “Hotels, Restaurants & Leisure” industry, but how does it compare to its competitors? We will compare Expedia Group to related businesses based on the strength of its earnings, risk, analyst recommendations, profitability, dividends, institutional ownership and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings for Expedia Group and its competitors, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Expedia Group	2	19	16	0	2.38
Expedia Group Competitors	3806	17282	25595	906	2.50

Expedia Group presently has a consensus target price of $314.68, indicating a potential upside of 21.38%. As a group, “Hotels, Restaurants & Leisure” companies have a potential upside of 58.95%. Given Expedia Group’s competitors stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Expedia Group has less favorable growth aspects than its competitors.

Profitability

This table compares Expedia Group and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Expedia Group	12.98%	91.03%	8.33%
Expedia Group Competitors	3.93%	-40.66%	2.07%

Risk & Volatility

Expedia Group has a beta of 1.39, meaning that its share price is 39% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Expedia Group’s competitors have a beta of 1.44, meaning that their average share price is 44% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

90.8% of Expedia Group shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 48.7% of shares of all “Hotels, Restaurants & Leisure” companies are held by institutional investors. 5.2% of Expedia Group shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 22.3% of shares of all “Hotels, Restaurants & Leisure” companies are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Expedia Group and its competitors gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Expedia Group	$14.73 billion	$1.29 billion	15.13
Expedia Group Competitors	$3.32 billion	$250.20 million	-155.59

Expedia Group has higher revenue and earnings than its competitors. Expedia Group is trading at a higher price-to-earnings ratio than its competitors, indicating that it is currently more expensive than other companies in its industry.

Dividends

Expedia Group pays an annual dividend of $1.92 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.7%. Expedia Group pays out 11.2% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. As a group, “Hotels, Restaurants & Leisure” companies pay a dividend yield of 3.2% and pay out 38.8% of their earnings in the form of a dividend.

Summary

Expedia Group beats its competitors on 8 of the 15 factors compared.

Expedia Group Company Profile

Expedia Group, Inc. operates as an online travel company in the United States and internationally. The company operates through B2C, B2B, and trivago segments. Its B2C segment includes Brand Expedia, a full-service online travel brand offers various travel products and services; Hotels.com for lodging accommodations; Vrbo, an online marketplace for the alternative accommodations; Orbitz, Travelocity, Wotif Group, ebookers, CheapTickets, Hotwire.com and CarRentals.com. The company's B2B segment provides various travel and non-travel companies including airlines, offline travel agents, online retailers, corporate travel management, and financial institutions who leverage its travel technology and tap into its diverse supply to augment their offerings and market Expedia Group rates and availabilities to its travelers. Its trivago segment, a hotel metasearch website, which send referrals to online travel companies and travel service providers from hotel metasearch websites. In addition, the company provides brand advertising through online and offline channels, loyalty programs, mobile apps, and search engine marketing, as well as metasearch, social media, direct and personalized traveler communications on its websites, and through direct e-mail communication with its travelers. The company was formerly known as Expedia, Inc. and changed its name to Expedia Group, Inc. in March 2018. Expedia Group, Inc. was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.