Booking Holdings enters its June 2 earnings report with short interest having nearly tripled since late April — and the Street's bullish conviction largely intact but carrying lower price tags.
Short sellers added meaningfully to their positions around the April 28 Q1 earnings release. Before the print, SI against the free float ran at roughly 0.13%. By April 24 it had surged to 3.5%, where it has held ever since. That six-week plateau near 3.55% of the float — with around 27.4 million shares short — represents a structural rebuild, not just a day-trade. The ORTEX short score reflects this steadily creeping higher, reaching 35.9 from 34.7 two weeks ago, with price-momentum deterioration the primary driver.
Despite the rebuilding short book, the borrow market offers little pressure to squeeze. Availability is exceptionally loose at over 4,300% — meaning there are more than forty shares still available to borrow for every one already shorted. Cost to borrow has ticked up about 39% on the week to 0.47% annualised, but that remains firmly in "cheap to short" territory. Options sentiment reinforces the picture: the put/call ratio of 0.78 is just below its 20-day average of 0.79 and only fractionally negative in z-score terms. Demand for downside protection is not elevated ahead of the print.
The broader analyst community kept its Buy-side consensus intact after Q1 but walked down price targets across the board. JPMorgan trimmed its target from $224 to $208, maintaining Overweight. Citi moved from $250 to $225, holding Buy. RBC, TD Cowen, and Evercore ISI Group all cut targets while keeping Outperform or Buy ratings. The net result: the consensus mean price target is around $224, implying roughly 37% upside from the current $163 close. Only Wells Fargo is at Equal-Weight, and Cantor Fitzgerald holds Neutral at $175. The Street is bullish but recalibrating what Booking is worth in a more uncertain travel demand environment. Analyst data is slightly stale — concentrated around April 29 — so the latest changes are approximately four weeks old.
Bulls point to Booking's dominant position in European online travel, its EBITDA discipline even when topline growth slows, and healthy US market momentum outside regions affected by geopolitical disruption. Bears flag declining SEO traffic, margin vulnerability from competition, and a revenue model heavily weighted to transaction fees — leaving the company exposed if consumer travel budgets tighten. EPS surprise scores a relatively high 79th percentile, suggesting the company has consistently beaten estimates, though forward EPS momentum is weak, with the 90-day reading in the 3rd percentile of the universe.
On the insider front, CEO Glenn Fogel sold a combined ~16,700 shares across multiple transactions on April 15, at prices between $183 and $186. CFO Ewout Steenbergen followed with a $1.97 million sale on May 12 at $157.80 — the lowest of the recent cluster, and below where the stock now trades. Both are routine disposition patterns, but the net 90-day insider flow is net selling of approximately $8 million. No insider buying has emerged even as the stock trades more than 15% below the April price levels where the CEO was selling.
Closest peers tell a mixed story this week. EXPE gained 3.7% on the week, tracking close to BKNG's 5.7% recovery. ABNB underperformed, slipping 1.2%. DASH was the week's notable laggard among correlated names, falling 5.3%. The divergence between BKNG and ABNB is worth watching — the two stocks have historically traded closely on global travel demand sentiment.
The last two earnings reactions for BKNG produced modest negative day-one moves of roughly 2%, with five-day losses extending to around 1.5–5.5%. With short interest anchored at its post-Q1 level, the set-up into June 2 is one where a strong beat has limited available relief (borrow is cheap, shorts can wait), while a miss could reinforce the existing short thesis. The key variable to watch is management's commentary on second-half booking pace — specifically whether European leisure demand, which underwrote Q1, continues to hold.
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