The Goose Invests @TheGooseInvests

@realEstateTrent A2A is gonna replace everything

@DrWashburne Wasted? The propaganda is why Elon bought this site in the first place

@DeepDishEnjoyer Did he even curtesy like?

@MsVeilMoney They also have Waymo/quantum computing and all kinds of other moonshots

$BKNG: A good business at a price that doesn’t require much heroism Here’s why I’m interested. At its current price around $160, Booking trades at roughly 16 times my working estimate of $10.20 in 2026 adjusted earnings per share. That looks attractive for a business that is still growing, generates substantial cash, and keeps reducing its share count. The growth deserves to come first. Last quarter, room nights increased 5%, revenue grew 8%, and adjusted net income rose 8%. Buybacks helped turn that into 15% growth in adjusted earnings per share. There is more business coming through the platform, more profit being earned, and fewer shares dividing it. Management’s full-year outlook still calls for high-single-digit revenue growth and low-to-mid-teens adjusted EPS growth. My $10.20 estimate is consistent with that outlook, not a specific earnings figure management has promised. So why does this business deserve our money? Think about running a small independent hotel. You can build a website. Getting travelers to find it, trust it, and actually book a room is another problem. Buying advertising yourself means spending money before you know whether it will produce a reservation. Booking earns its commission by bringing you customers and helping the transaction happen. You don’t have to love paying it. It just has to deliver enough business to justify the cost. Booking.com had approximately 4.7 million accommodation properties listed at the end of June. That gives travelers somewhere useful to compare options and gives property owners access to demand they would otherwise have to find themselves. Getting that supply, availability, payment processing, and reservation support working together is a harder business to replace than it looks from the search page. The economics are pretty good, too. Booking generated approximately $9.1 billion in reported free cash flow in 2025, against just $322 million of capital expenditures. It doesn’t need to build another hotel every time more people book through its platform. During the second quarter, it repurchased $3.7 billion of stock. Its average diluted share count was approximately 5.5% lower than a year earlier. The buybacks are amplifying growth, not substituting for it. I wouldn’t assume that repurchase pace continues forever. Customer prepayments affect cash flow, stock compensation isn’t free, and there is real debt on the balance sheet. But a growing business retiring shares at a reasonable valuation is a combination I like. Then there’s AI. I take the threat seriously. An agent could become where people research, compare, and book their trips. Betting that consumers will always open Booking.com first would be a weak thesis. The more useful question is what happens behind that agent. Booking already provides technology that lets partners check availability, process reservations, and manage supported changes without sending the traveler to its website. The interface can change while Booking still participates in the transaction. That doesn’t guarantee today’s margins survive. An AI platform that controls the customer relationship could force Booking to compete harder or share more of the economics. That’s the risk I care about: Booking remains useful, but earns less for being useful. I think its accommodation network and transaction capabilities give it a credible position in that negotiation. I wouldn’t assume they make it untouchable. For now, direct bookings represented a mid-fifties percentage of room nights over the trailing four quarters, similar to the previous year. Marketing expense edged up from 4.6% to 4.7% of gross bookings. Whether customers keep returning, and what Booking pays to acquire them, will tell us more than another impressive travel-planning demo. What are yalls thoughts on $BKNG?

@FinanceJack44 I think Meta’s Muse and/or a potential $AAPL version that runs in messages likely comes and grabs all the normies

@patientinvestor Hmm I wonder when we get RaaS (Robotics as a service) from $AMZN similar to cloud

@ajllama @compliantvc Hate to be the bearer of bad news

@StealthQE4 No energy attacks -> No. Energy attacks!

@AbHomineDeus Honestly I buy this too. Build a website it’s wildly productive. Add stripe. It’ll never do it

@Compound_Kid_ Yeah very similar. It’s priced like AI kills it. AI probably won’t kill it

@Compound_Kid_ The long story short is it makes a lot of money. Multiples are beaten down “because AI”. Actual business hasn’t been impacted by AI and hotels will continue to need their services.

@Jaystopher Cheeto sushi is way better

@0interestrates Counter point (not to the make breakfast burritos at home) eggs are awesome

@eli_lifland 40% feels really high?!?

@sailaunderscore What’s important is you’ve found a way to feel superior to both

@alecsime Best car payment is no car payment!

@TechGuykunle Sure!