Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG) Stock Price & How to Invest
Last updated July 2026
Short answer
You can invest in Booking Holdings (BKNG) by buying shares or fractional shares at any major broker, through an ETF that holds it, or as one holding in a thematic basket. BKNG is the world's largest online travel platform by gross bookings, generating ~$26.9 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025 (up 13% year over year) and ~$9.1 billion in free cash flow, sustained by a two-sided marketplace network effect spanning Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, and OpenTable across more than 220 countries. The company pairs that scale with a disciplined capital return program (roughly $6.4 billion in buybacks and a growing quarterly dividend in 2025), and management has guided for low-double-digit constant-currency revenue growth and mid-teens adjusted EPS growth in 2026. The single biggest risk is that a global macro slowdown, a resurgence of travel disruptions, or AI-native competitors could compress both booking volumes and the premium valuation the market has historically assigned to BKNG.
BKNG stock price
As of 2026-07-24, Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG) last closed at $177.46, down 21.2% over the past year. Over the past 52 weeks it has traded between $154.13 and $228.83.
Prices are daily closing prices from Yahoo Finance and may be delayed. For the live quote, check your broker or Booking Holdings Inc. Common St's investor relations page. Walnut is informational, not investment advice.
What does Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG) do?
Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, is the world's leading provider of online travel and related services. The company operates five primary consumer-facing brands: Booking.com (accommodation and travel reservations), Priceline (discount travel), Agoda (Asia-Pacific focused travel), KAYAK (travel search and comparison), and OpenTable (restaurant reservations and management). It derives revenue primarily from commission-based and merchant-model travel reservation services, along with payment facilitation, advertising, travel insurance offerings, and restaurant management tools, serving consumers and travel partners across more than 220 countries and territories. The merchant model, in which Booking collects payment upfront and remits to the property, has been growing faster than the traditional agency model and represented the majority of revenue in recent quarters.
Founded in 1997 as Priceline.com and later renamed Booking Holdings after acquiring Booking.com in 2005, the company transformed from a U.S.-focused discount travel site into a globally diversified travel marketplace through a series of strategic acquisitions including Agoda (2007), KAYAK (2013), and OpenTable (2014). Glenn Fogel has served as Chief Executive Officer since 2017 and has led the company through post-pandemic recovery, a multi-brand AI integration push, and a Transformation Program targeting more than $500 million in annual run-rate cost savings. In early 2026, the company executed a 25-for-1 forward stock split to broaden retail accessibility, and the board raised the quarterly dividend by approximately 9.4% to $10.50 per share (pre-split equivalent).
What's driving Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG)?
Durable marketplace network effects
Booking.com's two-sided marketplace connects hundreds of millions of travelers with roughly 31 million accommodation listings, a scale that reinforces itself each quarter. More travelers attract more suppliers, and more suppliers attract more travelers, making the platform increasingly difficult to displace. Gross bookings reached ~$186 billion in 2025, a 25-year compounding result that new entrants cannot replicate quickly.
AI and Connected Trip vision
Management is investing heavily in generative AI to build a 'Connected Trip' experience that links accommodations, flights, car rentals, and dining into a single personalized itinerary. Early AI-driven tools improved conversion and personalization, contributing to Q1 2025 beating the high end of guidance. If the Connected Trip vision scales, it could raise average revenue per traveler and reduce reliance on paid search channels.
Transformation Program driving margin expansion
A company-wide Transformation Program exceeded targets, delivering approximately $550 million in annual run-rate savings against the 2024 expense base, with full realization expected by end of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA margins expanded to ~36.9% in 2025 from 35.0% in 2024. Management has guided for adjusted EBITDA growth to outpace revenue growth in 2026, pointing to continued operating leverage.
Aggressive capital returns amplifying per-share growth
Booking returned approximately $6.4 billion via share repurchases in fiscal 2025, reducing shares outstanding by roughly 3.5% year over year. Combined with a growing quarterly dividend and management's 2026 guidance for mid-teens adjusted EPS growth, the capital allocation strategy is designed to compound per-share value even if top-line growth stays in the low-to-mid teens. The 25-for-1 stock split effective April 2026 also broadens the potential investor base.
What are the risks to Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG)?
The most acute downside scenario is a synchronized global recession or major geopolitical event that sharply curtails leisure and business travel, as Booking's revenue is nearly entirely travel-volume-dependent with significant European exposure. AI-native travel assistants backed by large technology platforms (Google, Apple, or emerging startups) could disintermediate traditional online travel agencies by answering and booking trips without a separate platform visit, threatening Booking's customer acquisition economics. Regulatory pressure from the EU's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, along with evolving data-privacy regimes, adds compliance costs and could restrict certain competitive practices that have historically benefited large platforms. Foreign currency headwinds are also a persistent drag, as the bulk of Booking's business is denominated in euros and other non-dollar currencies, while it reports in U.S. dollars.
How is Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG) valued? (approximate, 2026-06-27)
A simple financial snapshot. These are approximations and refresh quarterly; for current figures see Booking Holdings Inc. Common St's investor relations page or your broker.
- Revenue (FY2025): ~$26.9 billion
- Revenue (TTM, as of Q1 2026): ~$27.7 billion
- Adjusted EBITDA (FY2025): ~$9.9 billion (~36.9% margin)
- Net Income (FY2025): ~$5.4 billion (~20.1% net margin)
- Free Cash Flow (FY2025): ~$9.1 billion
- Trailing P/E (TTM): ~21 to 25x (sources vary by date; approximately 31% below BKNG's own 10-year median)
- Forward P/E: ~16x (based on consensus estimates)
- EV/EBITDA: ~13x
Booking's trailing P/E has compressed meaningfully from its 10-year median of roughly 31x, sitting in the low-to-mid 20s as of mid-June 2026, which some analytical frameworks flag as modestly below historical fair value for a business growing revenue in the low double digits and expanding margins. The forward P/E of roughly 16x reflects analyst expectations for continued EPS growth in the mid-teens, driven by buybacks and the Transformation Program savings, and looks relatively undemanding for a company with a ~34% free cash flow margin. Investors should weigh this against the possibility that consensus estimates are optimistic if macro conditions weaken or competitive intensity from AI-native platforms accelerates.
Which ETFs hold Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG)?
What themes does Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG) fit?
These are the investment theses BKNG naturally fits into. Each links to a full theme guide listing every other stock that belongs and the ETFs commonly used as a passive proxy.
Who competes with Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG)?
Full-service online travel agencies: Expedia Group (EXPE)
Expedia operates Hotels.com, Vrbo, Orbitz, and other brands, offering a comparable breadth of accommodations, flights, and car rentals. It competes directly with Booking.com and Priceline on hotel inventory and loyalty programs, and has been investing in a unified platform strategy to drive repeat bookings. Booking Holdings has generally outpaced Expedia on room-night growth and margin over recent years, but Expedia remains the closest apples-to-apples rival in scope and scale.
Alternative accommodation platforms: Airbnb (ABNB)
Airbnb dominates the short-term rental and experiences category, appealing to travelers seeking non-hotel stays and longer-duration trips. While Booking.com also lists over 31 million accommodation options including apartments and homes, Airbnb's brand loyalty among hosts and guests in the alternative accommodation segment creates direct competition for a fast-growing share of travel spend. Airbnb's asset-light model and strong consumer brand make it a durable competitive presence even as Booking expands its own alternative listings.
Travel metasearch and tech platforms: Google, KAYAK (owned by BKNG), Tripadvisor
Google's travel search, hotel booking, and flight comparison tools sit at the very top of the travel research funnel and represent both a distribution partner and an existential competitive threat to OTAs. Because Booking.com pays significant sums in performance marketing to Google, any shift in Google's algorithm or pricing could affect customer acquisition costs materially. KAYAK is owned by Booking Holdings itself, but Tripadvisor and other metasearch players also compete for the same upper-funnel traveler intent.
Regional and Asia-Pacific OTAs: Trip.com Group (TCOM), Traveloka
Trip.com Group is the dominant OTA in China and has been expanding aggressively across Asia and internationally, competing with Agoda in Southeast Asia and with Booking.com in Europe. As Asia-Pacific travel volumes continue to recover and grow, these regional specialists represent meaningful competition for Booking's Agoda brand and its ambitions to grow share in high-growth Asian markets.
What stocks are similar to Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG)?
Other names that show up alongside BKNG in the same themes. Worth a look if you're thinking about diversification within a single thesis rather than concentration on one ticker.
Also fits Travel and tourism. Airbnb is the dominant short-term rental and alternative-accommodation platform; takes a service fee on every stay and is a pure-play on leisure travel demand.
Also fits Travel and tourism. Expedia Group runs Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo; the second-largest Western online travel platform behind Booking, monetizing bookings across lodging and flights.
Also fits Travel and tourism. Marriott is the largest hotel company by rooms, with an asset-light franchise and management model and the Bonvoy loyalty program spanning luxury to economy brands.
Also fits Travel and tourism. Hilton is a top global hotel operator with a fee-driven franchise model across Hilton, Waldorf, and Hampton brands; earnings track room demand without owning the buildings.
How to invest in Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG)
There are three common ways to get BKNG exposure. Buy shares (or fractional shares) directly at any major broker. Hold an ETF that includes it (XLY, COWZ), which spreads the position across many companies. Or build it into a focused thematic basket, so BKNG sits alongside other stocks that express the same thesis.
Walnut takes the basket route. Describe a thesis where BKNG fits (for example “AI infrastructure” or “dividend-growth large-caps”) and the AI proposes 5 to 6 constituents with target weights. You review the plan and fund it through your own broker when you're ready.
New to this? Start with how to invest in stocks, see how to analyze a stock with AI, or compare the best AI stock analyzers.
The bottom line on Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG)
Booking Holdings is right now the dominant global online travel intermediary, converting ~$186 billion in annual gross bookings into ~$9.9 billion of adjusted EBITDA at a ~36.9% margin in 2025. If you believe that cross-border leisure and business travel will keep compounding, that Booking's two-sided marketplace network effect and AI-powered Connected Trip vision make it structurally difficult to displace, and that aggressive buybacks will continue to amplify per-share earnings growth, the question becomes sizing and overlap with other travel or consumer-internet holdings in a portfolio, not timing. The risk is that a deep global recession, a major travel disruption event, or a well-capitalized AI-native travel assistant erodes Booking's customer acquisition advantage faster than its cost savings program can offset.
More on Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG)
Whether BKNG is worth buying today depends more on your time horizon and what you already hold than on any single call. We walk through valuation, what would have to go right, and the risks in is BKNG a buy?, and where the stock could go from here in the BKNG stock forecast.
For income investors, whether BKNG pays a dividend and how the payout looks is covered in does BKNG pay a dividend? And to weigh BKNG against a peer, read the full side-by-side comparisons: BKNG vs ABNB and BKNG vs EXPE.
Build a basket around BKNG with Walnut
Use Booking Holdings Inc. Common St as one constituent in a thematic basket Walnut's AI helps you assemble. Describe a thesis you believe in, the AI proposes the holdings and weights, and you approve before any broker order.
FAQ
What does Booking Holdings do?
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Booking Holdings operates five major travel and dining brands: Booking.com (the world's largest accommodation reservation platform), Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, and OpenTable. It earns revenue primarily by charging commissions or merchant spreads when travelers book hotels, flights, rental cars, and experiences, and also generates income from advertising and restaurant management services across more than 220 countries.
Is BKNG a good stock to buy right now?
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Whether BKNG fits a portfolio depends on individual goals, time horizon, and existing travel or tech exposure. The company has strong free cash flow (~$9.1 billion in 2025), expanding margins, and management guiding for mid-teens adjusted EPS growth in 2026. Its trailing P/E is below its own 10-year median. But macro slowdowns, AI disruption risks, and currency headwinds are real. This is a description, not a recommendation.
Does BKNG pay a dividend?
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Yes. Booking Holdings initiated a quarterly dividend and has been growing it. For fiscal 2025, the company paid approximately $9.60 per share (pre-split equivalent), and the board raised the quarterly dividend roughly 9.4% to $10.50 per share for Q1 2026. After the 25-for-1 stock split effective April 2026, the per-share dividend amount is proportionally adjusted. The dividend yield is modest (roughly 1%), as BKNG prioritizes share buybacks for capital return.
Who are Booking Holdings's main competitors?
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BKNG's primary competitors include Expedia Group (Hotels.com, Vrbo, Orbitz) in the full-service OTA space, Airbnb in alternative accommodations, Google in travel search and metasearch, and Trip.com Group in the Asia-Pacific region. Each competes on different dimensions: Expedia on breadth, Airbnb on alternative lodging brand loyalty, Google on upper-funnel discovery, and Trip.com on regional scale in Asia.
Is BKNG overvalued?
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At a trailing P/E of roughly 21 to 25x (sources vary by date) and a forward P/E of approximately 16x as of mid-2026, BKNG is trading about 31% below its own 10-year median P/E. Some analytical frameworks characterize it as modestly undervalued relative to its history. However, valuation is always relative to growth expectations and risk, and a macro deterioration or AI disruption to its customer acquisition model could make current multiples look less attractive.
What happened with the BKNG stock split?
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Booking Holdings executed a 25-for-1 forward stock split effective April 2, 2026, with split-adjusted trading beginning April 6, 2026. Every existing shareholder received 24 additional shares for each share held. The split does not change the underlying business value or market capitalization but lowers the nominal per-share price, making shares more accessible to a broader range of retail investors who could not or did not purchase fractional shares.
How does Booking Holdings make money?
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Booking Holdings earns revenue through two main models: a merchant model (where it collects payment from travelers upfront and remits to the property, keeping a spread) and an agency model (where it charges a commission to the supplier after the stay). Merchant revenues have been growing faster and represented the majority of Q1 2025 revenue. The company also generates advertising revenue through KAYAK and restaurant software fees through OpenTable.
What is Booking Holdings's Connected Trip strategy?
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The Connected Trip is Booking Holdings's vision to bundle accommodations, flights, car rentals, dining, and experiences into a single AI-powered itinerary, reducing friction and keeping travelers inside its ecosystem rather than using multiple apps. The strategy aims to raise average revenue per user, improve loyalty, and reduce dependence on paid search channels like Google. AI-driven personalization and agentic booking tools are central to how management plans to execute it.
Walnut is informational, not investment advice. Financial figures on this page are approximations; always verify current numbers with Booking Holdings Inc. Common St's investor relations page or your broker before making investment decisions.