Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG) and Coupang (NYSE:CPNG) Financial Review

Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG) and Coupang (NYSE:CPNG) are both large-cap retail/wholesale companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, earnings, valuation, analyst recommendations, dividends, profitability and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Booking and Coupang, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Booking	0	8	28	1	2.81
Coupang	2	5	4	0	2.18

Booking presently has a consensus price target of $227.14, indicating a potential upside of 37.84%. Coupang has a consensus price target of $26.92, indicating a potential upside of 63.80%. Given Coupang’s higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Coupang is more favorable than Booking.

Risk & Volatility

Booking has a beta of 1.08, suggesting that its stock price is 8% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Coupang has a beta of 1.12, suggesting that its stock price is 12% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Booking and Coupang”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Booking	$26.92 billion	4.74	$5.40 billion	$7.60	21.68
Coupang	$34.53 billion	0.85	$208.00 million	($0.09)	-182.61

Booking has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Coupang. Coupang is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Booking, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Booking and Coupang’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Booking	22.23%	-117.14%	25.85%
Coupang	-0.47%	-3.67%	-0.92%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

92.4% of Booking shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 83.7% of Coupang shares are held by institutional investors. 0.2% of Booking shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 12.8% of Coupang shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Booking beats Coupang on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Booking

Booking Holdings Inc, formerly The Priceline Group Inc., is a provider of travel and restaurant online reservation and related services. The Company, through its online travel companies (OTCs), connects consumers wishing to make travel reservations with providers of travel services across the world. It offers consumers an array of accommodation reservations (including hotels, bed and breakfasts, hostels, apartments, vacation rentals and other properties) through its Booking.com, priceline.com and agoda.com brands. Its other brands include KAYAK, Rentalcars.com and OpenTable, Inc. (OpenTable). As of December 31, 2016, Booking.com offered accommodation reservation services for over 1,115,000 properties in over 220 countries and territories on its various Websites and in over 40 languages, which included over 568,000 vacation rental properties (updated property counts were available on the Booking.com Website).

About Coupang

Coupang, Inc., together with its subsidiaries owns and operates retail business through its mobile applications and Internet websites primarily in South Korea. The company operates through Product Commerce and Developing Offerings segments. It sells various products and services in the categories of home goods and décor products, apparel, beauty products, fresh food and groceries, sporting goods, electronics, and everyday consumables, as well as travel, and restaurant order and delivery services. In addition, the company offers Rocket Fresh, which offers fresh groceries; Coupang Eats, a restaurant ordering and delivery services; and Coupang Play, an online content streaming services, as well as advertising products. It also performs operations and support services in the United States, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China, Japan, and India. Coupang, Inc. was incorporated in 2010 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.