What To Expect From Tripadvisor’s Stock Post Q4?

Tripadvisor (NASDAQ: TRIP), an online travel company providing booking for hotel reservations, transportation, lodging, travel experiences, and restaurants, is scheduled to announce its fiscal fourth-quarter results on Wednesday, February 16. We expect Tripadvisor’s stock to likely see little movement due to mixed Q4 results with revenues coming in line and earnings missing consensus estimates. The travel company saw a solid rebound in travel demand trends in Q3, but traffic on its network remained significantly below 2019 levels. That said, the pandemic-related challenges still continue to add near-term uncertainty to the speed of its recovery, only further amplified by the news of its CEO and co-founder Steve Kaufer leaving the company in 2022.

Our forecast indicates that Tripadvisor’s valuation is at $27 per share, which is marginally lower than the current market price of $28. Look at our interactive dashboard analysis on Tripadvisor Earnings Preview: What To Expect in Q4? for more details.

(1) Revenues expected to come in line with consensus estimates

Trefis estimates Tripadvisor’s Q4 2021 revenues to be around $249 Mil, in line with the consensus estimate. In Q3, TRIP’s revenues doubled from the year-ago quarter to $303 million and also stood at about 71% of 2019’s comparable period. It should be noted that Tripadvisor’s average monthly unique users on its branded websites also improved sequentially quarterly compared to the pre-Covid time frame. By means of showing a comparison to pre-pandemic levels, the company’s monthly unique users in Q3’21 were about 76% of 2019’s comparable period, in comparison to ~70% and 55% of 2019’s comparable periods during Q2 and Q1 of 2021, respectively. In addition, average monthly unique users in Europe increased significantly during Q3, reaching parity with the U.S., compared to the same period in 2019. For the full year 2021, we expect Tripadvisor revenues to rise 52% y-o-y to $917 million.

(2) EPS likely to miss consensus estimates

Tripadvisor’s Q4 2021 earnings per share (EPS) is expected to come in at 7 cents as per Trefis analysis, marginally below the consensus estimate. The company reported earnings at a profit of only 1 cent in Q3 as compared to a loss of 36 cents in the same period last year.

(3) Stock price estimate lower than the current market price

Going by our Tripadvisor’s Valuation, with a revenue per share (RPS) estimate of around $6.84 and a P/S multiple of around 4.0x in fiscal 2021, this translates into a price of $27, which is marginally lower than the current market price of around $28.

It is helpful to see how its peers stack up. TRIP Peers shows how Tripadvisor compares against peers on metrics that matter. You will find other useful comparisons for companies across industries at Peer Comparisons.

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