What happened
Online travel agency (OTA) Booking Holdings (BKNG 1.68%) was enjoying the warmth and sunshine of earnings season on Friday. Following the release of its latest quarterly results, the company's shares were trading more than 9% higher in late-session action. At that point, they were trouncing the essentially flat performance of the S&P 500 index.
So what
After market hours Thursday, Booking Holdings -- a conglomerate of digital travel assets such as Booking.com, Priceline.com, and Kayak.com -- announced its second-quarter earnings. The company earned $5.5 billion, representing a very healthy 27% increase year over year. That was on the back of gross travel bookings that shot 15% higher to just under $40 billion.
Those rises paled in comparison to the improvement in adjusted net income, which zoomed 79% higher to $1.4 billion, or $37.62 per share.
Like other OTAs and businesses in the travel industry, Booking Holdings is reaping the benefits of a busy summer tourism season. More encouragingly, the company expects the industry to set new records in the current third quarter.
NASDAQ: BKNG
Key Data Points
Now what
In its earnings release, Booking Holdings also uttered the two magic words that are captivating stock investors these days: artificial intelligence (AI). It said that it sees great potential in the generative-AI travel assistants it recently announced for its flagship sites Booking.com and Priceline.com.
It's still very early days for AI as a commonplace business tool, and it's hard to judge how implementing it will affect Booking Holdings specifically. It shows that the company is forward-thinking, though, and willing to devote capital and resources to bolstering its technology.
