Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call November 2, 2023 4:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Glenn Fogel - Chief Executive Officer

David Goulden - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Mark Mahaney - Evercore

Justin Post - Bank of America

Kevin Kopelman - TD Cowen

Lloyd Walmsley - UBS

Doug Anmuth - JPMorgan

Lee Horowitz - Deutsche Bank

Eric Sheridan - Goldman Sachs

Ron Josey - Citigroup

John Colantuoni - Jefferies

Operator

Welcome to Booking Holdings Third Quarter 2023 Conference Call. Booking Holdings would like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are not subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict.

Therefore, actual results may differ materially from those expressed, implied or forecasted in any such forward-looking statements. Expressions of future goals or expectations and similar expressions reflecting something other than historical fact are intended to identify forward-looking statements. For a list of factors that could cause Booking Holdings' actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the Safe Harbor statements at the end of Booking Holdings' earnings press release as well as Booking Holdings' most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Unless required by law, Booking Holdings undertakes no obligation to undertake publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. A copy of Booking Holdings' earnings press release, together with an accompanying financial and statistical supplement, is available in the For Investors section of Booking Holdings' website, www.bookingholdings.com.

And now, I'd like to introduce Booking Holdings speakers for this afternoon, Glenn Fogel and David Goulden. Go ahead, gentlemen.

Glenn Fogel

Thank you, and welcome to Booking Holdings' third quarter conference call. I'm joined this afternoon by our CFO, David Goulden.

I'm encouraged by the strong results we are reporting today and by the strong leisure travel demand environment that we continue to see. In the third quarter, our traveler customers booked 276 million, or more than a quarter of a billion room nights, which was an increase of 15% year-over-year, and we had gross bookings of $40 billion, which was an increase of 24% year-over-year.

Room night growth versus 2019 was 24% in Q3. Both room nights and gross bookings were record quarterly amounts for the company, and both came in ahead of our previous expectations. Third quarter revenue of $7.3 billion grew 21% and adjusted EBITDA of $3.3 billion increased 24%, both versus Q3 last year, and both exceeded our prior expectations.