Topic: How To Invest

What do you think about Priceline as a stock? Thanks.

Article Excerpt

Priceline, $1,060.56, symbol PCLN on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 52.4 million; Market cap: $56.5 billion; www.priceline.com), is an online travel company that offers airline tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals, vacation packages and cruises. Customers can either buy in the traditional, price-disclosed manner or use the company’s Name Your Own Price service, which lets them make their own offers. Priceline then collects the offers and matches them against its database of seller inventory. The company operates the Priceline.com website, as well as Bookings.com, Agoda.com and RentalCars.com. In 2012, it bought travel search engine Kayak for $1.8 billion. Kayak compiles airline and hotel prices from travel websites and generates considerable traffic for Priceline’s other sites. It also keeps it from having to depend heavily on Google for search traffic. Priceline holds cash of $6.2 billion, or $118.32 a share. Its $3.9 billion of long-term debt is a low 6.9% of its $56.5-billion market cap. The company recently acquired OpenTable, an online restaurant reservation service, and will likely…