By Inti Pacheco
For travelers looking to book a flight or hotel room,
Booking.com and Expedia.com look a lot alike. Yet the two fared
very differently when the coronavirus pandemic shut down travel,
thanks to different strategies behind their websites.
Revenue has plunged at both Booking Holdings Inc. and Expedia
Group Inc. this year. Each company moved quickly to raise about $4
billion in the spring to navigate the crisis. Expedia ended the
third quarter with double the debt it started the year with, while
Booking wound up with a bigger cash cushion.
The cash imbalance illustrates how differently the two rivals
operated their online travel services. Expedia often collected cash
upfront from hotel travelers, and when those customers canceled,
the company had to pay them back. By contrast, Booking didn't
charge upfront as often for hotel stays, so had less to refund when
cancellations occurred.
With Covid-19 cases surging, some countries have imposed new
restrictions and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has
advised Americans not to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday. But
executives at Booking and Expedia said earlier this month that they
survived the worst of the pandemic and feel optimistic about news
of promising vaccine candidates. The travel giants have ample cash
reserves and have no plans to change business strategies, they
said.
"If you run out of your cash, it's like if you're a human being
and you run out of blood. You're dead," Booking Chief Executive
Glenn Fogel said in an interview. Early on in the pandemic, he
said, Booking executives started looking at financial models to
estimate how much they needed to survive for one or two years with
no revenue. Booking sold $4 billion worth of bonds in April.
Though revenue plunged over the summer and the company had to
issue some refunds, most of the cash Booking raised in the spring
added to its reserves. Booking had $11.2 billion in cash at Sept.
30, about $4 billion more than it did on March 31.
Expedia, which generated about 80% as much revenue as Booking
did in 2019, held a smaller cash cushion before the crisis and
burned through much of the funds raised in the spring.
Expedia ended the third quarter with about $5.1 billion in cash,
roughly what it held in the first quarter -- but significantly more
debt. Where Booking's net debt -- or total debt minus cash and cash
equivalents -- has decreased by almost half over that time,
Expedia's net debt rose by 73%.
"We knew that things were bad. We didn't know how long they'd be
bad for, " Expedia Chief Executive Peter Kern said in an interview.
"We just wanted to make sure we had ample capital to sustain
ourselves through whatever we could imagine at the time."
Booking operates mainly with an agency model, which means the
company collects a commission from the hotel, which it records as
revenue, only after the customer checks out. While Expedia conducts
some business that way, it gets much of its revenue under the
merchant model, where customers pay up front. On average, it holds
cash for 50 days, analysts say, adding to its reserves and working
capital.
When customers started canceling their plans and asking for
refunds during March and April, Expedia burned through about $2.8
billion of cash, according to Cowen analyst Kevin Kopelman. "A
combination of that cash outflow from returns and the fact that
they were holding on to less excess cash meant that they were
definitely more cash strapped," Mr. Kopelman said.
Expedia secured a $3.2 billion investment from Apollo Global
Management and Silver Lake in April, which gave the private-equity
firms preferred shares and a seat on the board. In July, Expedia
sold $1.25 billion worth of bonds.
Expedia's Mr. Kern said investors know Expedia's business model
carries additional risk and he was pleased with the execution on
the debt. "Paying a little extra, being a little extra defensive so
we could maintain ourselves through this, and then pay it off on
the other side, is a small price to pay," Mr. Kern said.
While they offer similar services and are global players, the
two rivals are stronger in different geographies, which has also
shaped the crisis's impact on their business.
Booking, which also owns Priceline and Kayak, is bigger in
Europe. Early in the summer, as lockdowns there eased, Booking's
business started to recover. Expedia, which also owns Orbitz and
Vrbo, has a bigger U.S. focus and got a lift later in the summer
when travel picked up stateside.
"It's been like a tale of flip flopping stories," said Deutsche
Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley. But investors are more focused on what
these companies will look like in nine or 18 months and looking for
news on vaccines and treatments, Mr. Walmsley said.
Both companies said they don't expect to raise any more cash in
the near future. Executives believe that news of Covid-19 vaccines
will get people more excited about travel. This month, Pfizer Inc.
and Moderna Inc. said competing vaccines they are testing were 95%
and 94.5% effective, respectively.
Even as coronavirus cases rise around the globe, Booking and
Expedia are planning beyond the pandemic.
Expedia had been working on a restructuring before Covid-19, in
February setting plans to cut about 3,000 of its 25,400 jobs. Once
the pandemic hit, executives raised their cost-cutting goals to up
to $750 million from $500 million, Mr. Kern said. The company is
working on new tools that require fewer people in its
customer-service operations.
The company was focused on its cash reserves earlier this year
but the worst is over, Mr. Kern said. "It's not what keeps any of
us up at night," he said.
Booking in August said it would reduce its 26,400 global
workforce by 25% and is developing a new payment product for the
vacation-rental market. "We still have to create new better things
because we have competitors that are doing better," Mr. Fogel
said.
The vacation-rental market relies more on collecting payments
upfront like Expedia, analysts say. But Mr. Fogel said Booking
would quickly pay those funds to homeowners and not rely on that
cash as permanent financing. "It's not the method," he said. "It's
how you treat it."
Write to Inti Pacheco at inti.pacheco@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 21, 2020 05:44 ET (10:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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