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Expedia misses expectations on its latest earnings trip

Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE) did not have a good week. The online travel site, which competes with Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN) for attention, reported abysmal earnings for the fourth quarter this past Thursday. The company suffered a huge loss of $9.60 per share. That's right, $9.60 per share! Kind of rocks your world, doesn't it? And not in a good way. I mean, Expedia's share price closed at $7.74 on Friday.

As you can imagine, there was an accounting issue going on (not that it should make shareholders feel any better, mind you). Expedia took a huge goodwill write-down related to the significant drop in the market capitalization of the business. We're talking $3 billion. Wow. Of course, management adjusted the earnings to represent what Expedia would have made without the charge. That would be $0.22 per share. Unfortunately, that missed expectations by two pennies.

Continue reading Expedia misses expectations on its latest earnings trip

Expedia bound to fly higher

While Expedia Inc.'s (NASDAQ:EXPE) Expedia International, Trip Advisor and Hotels.com are doing very well, the Expedia.com domestic performance has been terrible. But as a writer at Theflyonthewall.com reports, this a great stock to stick with, as the market forces are "too powerful to ignore."

Expedia's international businesses are soaring; bookings were up 28.6% while domestic bookings grew a paltry 2%. The company plans to move aggressively into Japan and India in 2007, two big growth areas.

The Fly points out that Expedia is a "contrarian investment play on the economy" -- when the economy slows, hotel occupancy rates tend to flatten and decline. This gives Hotel.com more inventory to sell, driving up revenue and profits.

The online travel business may be ready for some industry consolidation. Expedia had been spun off from IAC/InterActive Corp. (NASDAQ:IACI) and Orbitz from Cendant. Sabre Management has been saying that some consolidation would be good for the online travel business.

Expedia has built three powerful global franchise names ---Expedia, Hotels.com and TripAdvisor. Investors should come back to this stock.

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Last updated: November 27, 2009: 11:10 PM

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