The Buzz
Priceline (and Shatner) can't be stopped: Stock up 4%
May 10, 2013: 12:42 PM ET
The man. The myth. The legend. Priceline continues to produce solid earnings ... and fun commercials with William Shatner.
Raise your hand if you thought that Priceline (PCLN) shares would be falling Friday. I did.
The online travel stock has been red hot this year. And even though it reported strong first-quarter earnings after the bell Thursday, its outlook was a bit conservative. The stock dipped after hours Thursday as a result.
But shares popped 4% Friday to a new 52-week high. It just goes to show that you can't short the Shat ... or Kaley Cuoco for that matter. ("The Big Bang Theory" star is now appearing in ads with William Shatner as the Negotiator's long-lost daughter.)
Traders on StockTwits were largely bullish as well, despite the muted forecast from the company.
seviay
$GOOG $PCLN assuming no splits, who wins the race to $1000?
Ha! It does seem like Priceline, which now trades near $770, is in a race with Google (GOOG) on the way to $1000 a share. Google still has the lead though. It hit a new all-time high of $880 on Friday.
WallStreetBean
$PCLN "benefiting from stability in its core European market and continues to gain share in global hotel bookings" http://stks.co/jV2B Bullish
Stability in Europe may seem like an oxymoron. But Priceline has done a great job there thanks to its Booking.com unit. Priceline has even begun a separate Shatner-less advertising campaign for the Booking.com brand in the United States.
Other traders noted that in this bull market, you can't afford to bet against a momentum stock for long ... especially if Wall Street analysts are defending the stock.
stkcon
$PCLN getting a chorus of upgrades after yesterday's earnings and moving big.
mytfine
Defense!! Defense!! BTFD at any price. It's an equity and if it's red you MUST BUY $PCLN
xtremezz
@mytfine $PCLN Wouldn't be the first stock to lower guidance and hit a 52w high soon after.
Very true. As I wrote yesterday, many investors seem scared to miss out on more gains in the market. And I like that BTFD acronym. I assume that B is for Buy. T is The. And D is Dip. But what does the F stand for? Fleeting? Fading? Fast? Oh. Right. #sarcasm
Still, not everyone is a Priceline bull.
wisdom_trade
$PCLN is Bubble not worth $730 go down to $400 same Apple Bearish
Could Priceline suffer the fate of Apple (AAPL), which has fallen more than 35% since hitting an all-time high last September? That's tough to say. Apple, after all, was a relatively cheap stock that has started to lose favor on Wall Street because the fundamentals don't appear to be as strong as tougher competition has emerged.
Priceline still is getting the benefit of the doubt. Analysts continue to raise their earnings forecasts. But the stock does trade at 20 times 2013 profit projections. That isn't cheap. But considering that analysts are predicting earnings growth of about 20% this year and in 2014, it's not terribly expensive either.
What's more, Priceline trades at just a slight premium to smaller competitor Expedia (EXPE) and a discount to Orbitz (OWW), Travelzoo (TZOO) and TripAdvisor (TRIP). And Priceline is set to become an even bigger giant in the industry with its looming purchase of travel software company Kayak (KYAK).
Time for Reader Comment of the Week! I try not to single out colleagues too often. But I don't have rules like radio stations that prohibit fellow employees from participating in contests. After all, the only "prize" one gets from winning Reader Comment of the Week is the knowledge that I liked one of your pithy tweets and am willing to share it with the world (or those who read the Friday Best of StockTwits feature and my Twitter feed) But isn't that enough?
Anyway, some of us here at CNNMoney felt that the FT's characterization of Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows 8 as a consumer failure ala New Coke was a bit harsh. But I did tweet that for many Windows users, XP is still considered among the best versions. David Goldman, who wrote our piece on the Windows 8 fixes, followed with a very amusing soft drink analogy of his own.
@LaMonicaBuzz Does that make Windows Vista Diet Pineapple Fanta?—
David Goldman (@DavidGoldmanCNN) May 07, 2013
Ha! Well, it looks as if Coca-Cola (KO) actually doesn't make a diet version of Pineapple Fanta. Vista users probably wish Microsoft had done likewise.
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New Internet bubble? Not so fast
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul R. La Monica. Other than Time Warner, the parent of CNNMoney, Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie, La Monica does not own positions in any individual stocks.
Call them the dot-com survivors.
AOL (AOL), Amazon.com (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), Priceline (PCLN) and Yahoo (YHOO) were all major players at the height of Internet insanity in the late 1990s. They are all still around today MORE
Paul R. La Monica - Jan 3, 2013 12:46 PM ET -
Priceline falling over fiscal cliff? Stock down 5%
William Shatner's Priceline Negotiator character famously plunged off a cliff in a TV ad earlier this year. Despite fears of his untimely demise, he miraculously survived. But now it looks like shares of Priceline (PCLN) are falling off the fiscal cliff ... and it's not as clear just yet if they'll bounce back as quickly as the Shat.
Priceline's stock lost 5% Monday after Deutsche Bank downgraded it from a "buy" MORE
Paul R. La Monica - Dec 10, 2012 12:23 PM ET -
Priceline the next Google? That's not good.
Momentum is fickle. Investors in Google (GOOG) and Chipotle (CMG) both learned that the hard way after each company reported results that missed forecasts on Thursday.
Now investors are trying to figure out what other Wall Street darlings could be ripe for a fall. Traders on StockTwits zeroed in on Priceline (PCLN). And shares of the online travel leader were down more than 4% Friday following a nearly 3% drop Thursday. MORE
Paul R. La Monica - Oct 19, 2012 11:59 AM ET -
Priceline shares fall: Europe needs the Negotiator
Another victim of Europe's debt crisis: Priceline.
The online travel company's booking volume slowed substantially from a year earlier sending Priceline's stock plunging.
Priceline's (PCLN) gross bookings still grew, but at a much more modest pace. In the second quarter of this year, bookings grew 26.8% -- the slowest growth rate since the second quarter of 2009 and far below last year's 69% surge.
Investors punished the company's stock, with shares falling 17% MORE
Ben Rooney - Aug 8, 2012 4:15 PM ET
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