Booking Holdings 10-Q 2025-03-31

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-Q

(Mark One)

☒ QUARTERLY REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the quarterly period ended March 31, 2025

OR

☐ TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the transition period from to

Commission File Number: 1-36691

Booking Holdings Inc.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

800 Connecticut Avenue

Norwalk, Connecticut 06854

(Address of principal executive offices) (Zip Code)

Registrant's telephone number, including area code: (203) 299-8000

Former name, former address and former fiscal year, if changed since last report: N/A

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of "large accelerated filer," "accelerated filer," "smaller reporting company," and "emerging growth company" in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ☒

Number of shares of Common Stock outstanding at April 21, 2025:

Booking Holdings Inc.

Form 10-Q

For the Three Months Ended March 31, 2025

PART I — FINANCIAL INFORMATION

Booking Holdings Inc.

CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

(In millions, except share and per share data)

See Notes to Unaudited Consolidated Financial Statements.

Booking Holdings Inc.

UNAUDITED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS

(In millions, except share and per share data)

See Notes to Unaudited Consolidated Financial Statements.

Booking Holdings Inc.

UNAUDITED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME

(In millions)

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The following discussion should be read in conjunction with our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, including Part I, Item 1A "Risk Factors," as well as our Unaudited Consolidated Financial Statements and accompanying notes and the Section entitled "Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. The information on our websites is not a part of this Quarterly Report and is not incorporated herein by reference.

We evaluate certain operating and financial measures on both an as-reported and constant currency basis. We calculate constant currency based on the predominant transactional currency in each country, converting our current-year period results in currencies other than U.S. Dollars using the corresponding prior-year period monthly average exchange rates.

Overview

Our mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. We aim to provide consumers with a best-in-class experience offering the travel choices they want, with tailored planning, payment, language, and other options, seamlessly connecting them with our travel service provider partners. We offer these services through five primary consumer-facing brands: Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, and OpenTable. See Note 14 to our Unaudited Consolidated Financial Statements for segment reporting and geographic information.

We derive substantially all of our revenues from enabling consumers to make travel service reservations. We also earn revenues from advertising services, restaurant reservation and management services, travel-related insurance offerings, and other services.

Trends

Our global room nights in 2024 increased 9% year-over-year driven primarily by healthy travel demand in Europe and Asia. We saw the booking window expand in 2024 compared to 2023, which benefited year-over-year room night growth. In the first quarter of 2025, global room nights increased 7% year-over-year, driven primarily by increased travel demand in Europe and Asia.

While our first quarter results were strong, we are closely monitoring the uncertain geopolitical and macroeconomic environment and the potential impact it may have on global travel demand. We cannot predict how evolving conditions may affect consumer spending and behavior, travel patterns, our partners, or our ability to conduct our business. At this time, we believe our diversified global portfolio of leading travel brands, flexible platforms, and our strong financial position would help us to navigate a range of economic scenarios. We continue to take a long-term view, staying focused on delivering value to our travelers and partners, maintaining disciplined cost management, and making strategic investments as appropriate.

Quarterly Room Nights and Change versus the prior year

The cancellation rate in the first quarter of 2025 was slightly higher than the first quarter of 2024. Because we recognize revenues from bookings when the traveler checks in, our reported revenues are not at risk of being reversed due to cancellations. Increases in cancellation rates can negatively impact our marketing efficiency as a result of incurring performance marketing expenses at the time a booking is made even though that booking could be canceled in the future if it was booked under a flexible cancellation policy.

In the first quarter of 2025, our global average daily rates ("ADRs") on a constant currency basis were approximately 1% higher than the prior year. Our global ADRs were negatively impacted by a higher mix of room nights from Asia, which is a lower ADR region. Excluding the changes in regional mix, our global ADRs on a constant currency basis increased year-over-year by about 2%. The year-over-year increase in our global ADRs on a constant currency basis has resulted in constant currency accommodation gross bookings growing faster than our room nights in the first quarter of 2025. It is difficult to predict what the trend in industry ADRs will be in the future.

We focus on relentless innovation to grow our business by providing a best-in-class user experience with intuitive, easy-to-use online platforms that aim to exceed the expectations of consumers. We have a long-term strategy to create an ideal traveler experience, offering our customers relevant options and connections at the times and in the language they want them, making trips booked with us seamless, easy, and valuable. We refer to this as the "Connected Trip." The goal of our Connected Trip vision is to offer a differentiated and personalized online travel planning, booking, payment, and in-trip experience for each trip, enhanced by a robust loyalty program that provides value to travelers and partners across all trips. We believe these efforts will help improve traveler loyalty, frequency, and mix of direct bookings over time. We believe these improvements will benefit revenue growth and marketing efficiency in the future, however, to the extent our non-accommodation services have lower margins and increase as a percentage of our total business, our operating margins may be negatively affected.

Our mobile app is an important platform for experiencing the Connected Trip since the app travels with the traveler. The mix of our room nights booked on a mobile app in the first quarter of 2025 was a mid-fifties percentage, up from a low-fifties percentage in the first quarter of 2024. The significant majority of room nights booked on our mobile apps are direct, and we continue to see favorable repeat direct booking behavior from consumers in our mobile apps, which allow us more opportunities to engage directly with consumers. The revenues earned on a transaction on a mobile app may be less than a typical desktop transaction as we see different consumer purchasing patterns across devices. For example, accommodation reservations made on a mobile app typically are for shorter lengths of stay and have lower accommodation ADRs.

As part of our strategy to provide more payment options to consumers and travel service providers, increase the number and variety of our accommodations, and enable our long-term Connected Trip strategy, Booking.com increasingly processes transactions on a merchant basis, where it facilitates payments from travelers for the services provided. This allows Booking.com to process transactions for travel service providers and to increase its ability to offer secure and flexible transaction terms to consumers, such as the form, currency, and timing of payment. The mix of our total gross bookings generated on a merchant basis was 67% in the first quarter of 2025, an increase from 59% in the first quarter of 2024. We believe that expanding these types of service offerings will benefit consumers and travel service providers, as well as our gross bookings, room night, and earnings growth rates. However, this results in additional expenses for personnel, payment processing, chargebacks (including those related to fraud), and other expenses related to these transactions, which are recorded in "Personnel" expenses and "Sales and other expenses" in our Unaudited Consolidated Statements of Operations, as well as associated incremental revenues (e.g., payment card rebates), which are recorded in "Merchant revenues." To the extent more of our business is generated on a merchant basis, we incur a greater level of these merchant-related expenses, which negatively impacts our operating margins despite increases in associated incremental revenues. Over the trailing twelve months ended March 31, 2025, the incremental revenues from facilitating payments were greater than the associated incremental variable expenses.

We have established widely-used and recognized brands through marke

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We have exposure to several types of market risk, including changes in interest rates, foreign currency exchange rates, and equity prices. See Part II, Item 7A, Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024 for additional information on our policies and how we manage our exposure to such risks.

See Note 9 to our Unaudited Consolidated Financial Statements for information about our convertible senior notes due in May 2025 (the "May 2025 Notes") and other debt. Excluding the effect on the fair value of our convertible senior notes, a hypothetical 100 basis point (1.0%) decrease in interest rates, at March 31, 2025, would have resulted in an increase of approximately $900 million in the estimated fair value of our nonconvertible debt. Our convertible senior notes are more sensitive to the market price volatility of our equity shares than changes in interest rates. The fair value of the convertible senior notes will likely increase as the market price of our equity shares increase and will likely decrease as the market price of our equity shares fall. The May 2025 Notes are currently convertible at the option of the holder.

We face exposure to movements in foreign currency exchange rates as the financial results and the financial condition of our businesses outside of the U.S., which represent a substantial majority of our financial results, are translated from local currencies (principally Euros and British Pounds Sterling) into U.S. Dollars. For example, our total gross bookings increased by 7% for the three months ended March 31, 2025 as compared to the three months ended March 31, 2024, but without the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates our total gross bookings increased year-over-year on a constant currency basis by approximately 10%. Our total revenues increased by 8% for the three months ended March 31, 2025 as compared to the three months ended March 31, 2024, but without the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates, our total revenues increased year-over-year on a constant currency basis by approximately 10%. See Notes 9 and 15 to our Unaudited Consolidated Financial Statements and Item 2, Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations for additional information about foreign currency transaction gains and losses, changes in foreign currency exchange rates, the impact of such changes on the increase in our revenues and operating margins, and our designation of certain portions of our Euro-denominated debt as a hedge of the foreign currency exposure of the net investment in certain Euro functional currency subsidiaries.

See Notes 5 and 6 to our Unaudited Consolidated Financial Statements for information about our investments in equity securities of publicly-traded companies and private entities. A hypothetical 10% decrease in the fair values at March 31, 2025 of our investments in equity securities of publicly-traded companies and private entities would have resulted in a loss, before tax, of approximately $55 million being recognized in net income.

Under the supervision and with the participation of management, including our principal executive officer and our principal financial officer, we conducted an evaluation of our disclosure controls and procedures, as such a term is defined under Exchange Act Rule 13a-15(e). Based on this evaluation, our principal executive officer and our principal financial officer concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were effective as of the end of the period covered by this report.

We continue to monitor changes related to the ongoing implementation of the integration and upgrade of financial systems and processes to determine the impact on internal control over financial reporting (as such term is defined in Exchange Act Rule 13a-15(f)). No change in our internal control over financial reporting occurred during the three months ended March 31, 2025 that materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

PART II - OTHER INFORMATION

Item 1. Legal Proceedings

A description of any material legal proceedings to which we are a party, and updates thereto, is included in Note 13 to our Unaudited Consolidated Financial Statements included in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended March 31, 2025, and is incorporated into this Part II, Item 1 by reference thereto.

Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, and the trading price of our common stock. For a discussion of such risks, please refer to Part I, Item 1A, Risk Factors in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024.

Item 2. Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities and Use of Proceeds

The following table sets forth information relating to repurchases of our equity securities during the three months ended March 31, 2025:

ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES

(1) These amounts exclude the 1% excise tax mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act on share repurchases.

(2) Pursuant to a stock repurchase program announced on February 23, 2023, whereby we were authorized to repurchase up to $20 billion of our common stock.

(3) In the first quarter of 2025, the Board of Directors authorized a program to repurchase up to $20 billion of our common stock.

(4) Pursuant to a general authorization, not publicly announced, whereby we are authorized to repurchase shares of our common stock to satisfy employee withholding tax obligations related to stock-based compensation. The table above does not include adjustments during the three months ended March 31, 2025 to previously withheld share amounts that reflect changes to the estimates of employee tax withholding obligations.

The exhibits listed below are filed as part of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q.

+ Indicates a management contract or compensatory plan or arrangement.

(a) Previously filed as an exhibit to the Current Report on Form 8-K filed on February 21, 2018 and incorporated herein by reference.

(b) Previously filed as an exhibit to the Current Report on Form 8-K filed on June 4, 2021 and incorporated herein by reference.

(c) Previously filed as an exhibit to the Current Report on Form 8-K filed on April 22, 2024 and incorporated herein by reference.

SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned thereunto duly authorized.