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EXPE heads into its November 5 earnings with short sellers holding their rebuilt position and the Street turning more cautious on valuation, even as the stock adds a further leg to a difficult month.
The short interest picture is largely unchanged from last week's note. Bears have not added materially since the sharp rebuild around September 23 to 24, when shares short jumped from roughly 5 million to over 6.3 million. That position has held. Short interest is at 5.1% of free float, fractionally down from the 5.27% reported on September 30. The borrow market remains wide open: availability is at 1,158%, meaning there are roughly twelve shares available for every one currently borrowed, and the cost to borrow is just 0.48%. Shorts face no friction here. Options positioning has eased from its most defensive levels. The put/call ratio is at 1.29, below its 20-day average of 1.33 and slightly under the 52-week high of 1.39 hit in late September. That is still a put-heavy book, but the intensity of hedging demand has pulled back a notch.
The Street's direction has turned more cautious this week, with Wells Fargo cutting its target from $307 to $275 on October 7 while holding an Equal-Weight rating. That puts Wells Fargo close to where the stock trades now, at $260. Truist Securities trimmed its target from $309 to $288 last week, also keeping a Hold. Against that, BTIG reiterated its Buy rating and $400 target on October 6. The consensus remains a hold with a mean target of $338, which implies meaningful upside from current levels. However, the recent direction of travel among hold-rated analysts is clearly lower. The bear case centres on slowing bookings growth, with third-quarter guidance of just 5% to 7% year-on-year against 12% in the prior quarter, concentrated US consumer exposure, and structurally lower economics from the B2B mix shift. Bulls point to a business generating $119.6 billion in gross bookings, expanding EBITDA margins, 25% advertising growth, and a B2B segment with over 60% of volume outside the US. At roughly 11x trailing earnings and 7.5x EV/EBITDA, valuation has compressed: the price-to-book multiple has dropped by 2.3 points over the past month, a notable re-rating lower. The EPS surprise factor score ranks in the 86th percentile, suggesting the company has a strong track record of beating estimates even when guidance is soft.
Wikipedia page-view data, tracked by the Wikimedia Foundation, shows retail attention running about 1.2 standard deviations above Expedia's own 90-day average. None of the alt-data series tracked has been measured to lead Expedia's reported financials, so this is context rather than a signal for the November 5 print.
Among close peers, BKNG fell 2.9% on the week, roughly in line with Expedia's 2.4% decline. ABNB gained 2.2% and DASH added 3.5%, suggesting the drag on EXPE and BKNG is more specific to the core online travel booking model than a broad sector move. The two previous earnings prints both saw Expedia fall on the day, down 2.8% and 1.8% respectively, before recovering over the following five days, with five-day gains of 2.7% and 4.3%.
With 29 days to the next print, the key tension is whether the Wells Fargo target cut and the soft bookings guidance have already been absorbed into the price, or whether further analyst revisions lower keep sellers in control into November.
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