Tripadvisor Inc (TRIP): Why Greenhaven Bullish On Online Travel Research Firm

Greenhaven Road Capital recently released its Q2 investor letter in which the hedge fund discussed its performance and top positions in the second quarter. According to the letter, the fund is bullish on Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ: TRIP), the world’s largest travel website. Greenhaven founder and portfolio manager Scott Miller believes that the company has the ability to improve its “monetization rates on the $1.3+ trillion in travel spend it influences.” Here are Miller’s comments about Tripadvisor.

TripAdvisor remains the dominant travel research company and maintains the largest installed base for travel apps. The company continues to make progress on their in-destination business for local tours and activities, and has been optimizing ad spending on the hotel business to improve profitability.

We continue to hold the shares as it is entirely plausible that TripAdvisor can improve their monetization rates on the $1.3+ trillion in travel spend it influences.

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Tripadvisor Inc (NASDAQ: TRIP) is a $7.02-billion market cap firm that operates the world’s largest travel research site, offering more than 600 million reviews and opinions about accommodations, airlines, attractions, and restaurants. In addition, TripAdvisor also compares prices from more than 200 hotel booking sites to help travelers to find the best place to stay. For the second quarter of 2018, the company reported solid numbers, with quarterly earnings of $0.41 per share beating the Zacks consensus estimate of $0.39 per share. The company had earnings of $0.38 per share for the same last-year quarter. TripAdvisor reported a quarterly revenue of $433 million, versus $424 million in the same 2017 quarter. The revenue missed the Zacks estimate by 0.71%.

On the stock market this year, Tripadvisor has delivered a strong performance year-to-date. Since the start of the year, the company’s stock has moved up 46.04%. However, the share price has dropped nearly 9% over the past three months. TRIP has a consensus average rating of ‘HOLD’ and a consensus average target price of $49.13, according to analysts polled by FactSet.

Meanwhile, Tripadvisor isn’t a very popular stock among hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey. As of the end of the second quarter of 2018, there were 26 funds in our database with positions in the company.

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