Expedia Group, Inc. (EXPE)

Executive Summary / Key Takeaways

• The Great Replatforming Payoff: After four years of painful technology unification that meaningfully disrupted Vrbo and Hotels.com, Expedia has completed the foundational work and is now harvesting margin expansion, with B2C EBITDA margins hitting 41% in Q3 2025 (up 4 points year-over-year) driven by marketing leverage and AI-driven operational efficiencies.

• B2B as the Stealth Growth Engine: The B2B segment delivered its 17th consecutive quarter of double-digit bookings growth (26% in Q3), generating 18% revenue growth and insulating the company from U.S. consumer softness while creating a higher-quality, more durable revenue stream that transforms Expedia from pure OTA to travel technology platform.

• AI Integration Delivers Tangible Results: Four consecutive quarters of improved B2C marketing productivity, 20%+ developer productivity gains, and AI-powered features driving record insurance attach rates and higher conversion demonstrate that AI is not just buzzword but a real margin accelerator across products, marketing, and operations.

• Valuation Disconnect Persists: Despite margin expansion, strong free cash flow ($3 billion trailing twelve months), and reinstated dividends, EXPE trades at 10.6x price-to-free-cash-flow and 14.7x EV/EBITDA—significant discounts to Booking Holdings (BKNG) (19.2x P/FCF, 16.4x EV/EBITDA) and Airbnb (ABNB) (15.6x P/FCF, 22.5x EV/EBITDA), suggesting the market has yet to price in the structural improvements.

• Macro Headwinds Remain the Critical Variable: While international markets show strength (Europe double-digit growth, Asia up 20%+), sustained U.S. consumer softness and inbound travel pressure create execution risk that could offset technology-driven gains if macro conditions deteriorate further.

Setting the Scene: From Booking Engine to Travel Platform

Expedia Group, founded in 1996 in Seattle and rebranded from Expedia Inc. in 2018, has evolved far beyond its origins as a simple online travel agency. The company operates a three-legged stool: a consumer business (B2C) serving travelers through brands like Expedia.com, Hotels.com, and Vrbo; a B2B segment powering airlines, travel agencies, and financial institutions with its technology and supply; and trivago, a metasearch advertising business. This structure matters because it diversifies revenue streams and creates cross-platform network effects that pure-play competitors cannot replicate.

The travel industry operates as an oligopoly dominated by Booking Holdings, with Expedia holding the #2 position at approximately 19% market share versus Booking's 35%. The competitive landscape has intensified dramatically, with Google prioritizing its own travel products in search results, airlines and hotels aggressively pushing direct bookings, and Airbnb capturing the alternative accommodation market. Against this backdrop, Expedia's strategic imperative has been to transform from a transaction-dependent OTA into a technology platform that can monetize its infrastructure through multiple channels.

This transformation required a painful but necessary foundation. Beginning in 2020, management unified technology, product, data engineering, and data science teams to build scalable services across business units. The migration of Hotels.com onto the unified Brand Expedia stack in 2022, followed by Vrbo in 2023, "meaningfully disrupted" these brands' performance. This history explains today's results: the margin expansion and B2B acceleration we're witnessing are not cyclical improvements but the harvest of a multi-year replatforming investment that temporarily suppressed growth to enable structural gains.

Technology, Products, and Strategic Differentiation

The unified technology stack represents Expedia's primary moat. The significance lies in its dramatic reduction of cost and time to market for new features while enabling cross-brand functionality that competitors cannot match. The One Key loyalty program, launched in 2023 and expanded to 11 new markets, allows travelers to earn and redeem rewards across Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo—creating a stickier ecosystem that drives direct bookings and reduces reliance on paid marketing channels.

Artificial intelligence integration has moved from experimental to operational. AI-powered property Q&A, guest review summaries, and service agent tools are improving conversion rates and customer satisfaction scores. For developers, AI assistance has reduced cycle times by over 20% on some teams, directly translating to faster feature delivery and lower development costs. In marketing, AI-driven optimization has delivered four consecutive quarters of improved B2C marketing productivity, with direct sales and marketing expenses down 4% while leveraging over 0.5 points as a percentage of gross bookings. This is not theoretical efficiency; it's margin expansion in real-time.

The B2B segment showcases the technology's commercial value. The Rapid API product, which connects Expedia's lodging supply to larger travel partners, grew as the fastest product and largest contributor to B2B's 26% bookings growth. The company has expanded beyond lodging into car rentals through its new Car API, with additional lines of business rolling out later this year. This matters because it transforms Expedia from a competitor to travel providers into an indispensable infrastructure partner, creating recurring revenue streams with higher margins and lower cyclicality than the consumer business.

Product enhancements across brands demonstrate the unified stack's power. Vrbo's new "Loved by Guests" badge and expanded Vrbo Care program strengthen its value proposition as a trusted vacation rental pure play, while partner-funded promotional rates now represent over 20% of bookings—a new capability launched in spring 2025 that drives volume without margin sacrifice. Hotels.com's April 2025 relaunch with new price insights and alerts helped the brand grow at its fastest pace in over two years. These improvements are not isolated wins but symptoms of a platform that can iterate rapidly across its entire brand portfolio.

Financial Performance & Segment Dynamics

Third quarter 2025 results provide compelling evidence that the replatforming investment is paying off. Consolidated gross bookings grew 12% while revenue increased 9% to $4.4 billion, with the gap reflecting book-to-stay timing that will benefit future quarters. Adjusted EBITDA margins expanded meaningfully, driven by operational discipline and volume leverage. The composition of this growth reveals the strategic shift in action.

The B2C segment generated $2.9 billion in revenue (4% growth) but more importantly delivered 41% adjusted EBITDA margins, up 4 full points year-over-year. This margin expansion was not driven by cost-cutting but by marketing leverage—optimizing performance channels, improving metric capabilities, and redeploying spend between channels. Active One Key members grew mid-single digits, driving more repeat and direct bookings that carry lower acquisition costs. The segment's ability to grow room nights high single digits in the U.S., low double digits in EMEA, and high teens in the rest of world while expanding margins demonstrates pricing power and operational efficiency that were impossible before technology unification.

B2B's performance is even more striking. Revenue surged 18% to $1.4 billion, with gross bookings up 26%—the 17th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Adjusted EBITDA margins held steady at 29% as management prioritized investments to support continued expansion. The segment now represents 32% of total revenue, up from 27% in the prior year, and is diversified with 65% of business outside the U.S. This matters because it reduces dependence on the volatile U.S. consumer while leveraging the same technology infrastructure, creating operating leverage that will become more apparent as the segment scales.

trivago's turnaround, with 34% advertising revenue growth, validates the 2023 marketing strategy reset. While small in absolute terms ($137 million quarterly revenue), this recovery demonstrates management's ability to rejuvenate underperforming assets and capture value from metasearch even as Google intensifies competition.

Cash flow generation underscores the business model's quality. Trailing twelve-month free cash flow reached $3 billion, reflecting the asset-light nature of the platform. The company ended Q3 with $6.2 billion in cash and short-term investments against $6.3 billion in total debt, maintaining a leverage ratio of 2x—well within investment-grade parameters. This financial strength enabled the reinstatement of quarterly dividends ($0.40 per share) and $1.4 billion in share repurchases year-to-date, reducing share count by 22% net of dilution over three years.

Outlook, Management Guidance, and Execution Risk

Management's raised full-year guidance signals confidence that the margin expansion trend is sustainable. For Q4 2025, they expect 6-8% gross bookings and revenue growth with approximately 2 points of EBITDA margin expansion. Full-year guidance implies roughly 7% bookings growth, 6-7% revenue growth, and 2 points of margin expansion—meaningful acceleration from the 60 basis points of margin expansion achieved in 2024.

The guidance assumptions reveal management's balanced view of opportunities and risks. They factor in an estimated 1 point benefit from foreign exchange to bookings and 1.5 points to revenue, acknowledging that currency tailwinds are helping results. More importantly, they assume continued momentum in B2B, sustained marketing productivity improvements in B2C, and disciplined cost management. Scott Schenkel explicitly noted that 2026 margin expansion will be "more moderated" than 2025, suggesting management is not overpromising on the pace of efficiency gains.

Execution risk centers on three variables. First, the U.S. consumer remains dynamic and potentially fragile, with management "watching very carefully" for impacts from government shutdowns or economic deterioration. Second, the B2B segment's 26% bookings growth must be sustained against increasing competition from other OTAs and independent B2B providers. Third, international expansion requires continued investment in supply, marketing, and localization—areas where Expedia has historically trailed Booking Holdings.

The guidance's fragility is evident in management's commentary about Q4 moderation. They are lapping last year's 13% bookings and 10% revenue growth in Q4 2024, creating tough comparisons. Additionally, continuing uncertainty around U.S. consumer behavior and inbound travel could pressure results. However, the company's ability to raise guidance despite these headwinds suggests underlying momentum is strong enough to offset macro concerns.

Risks and Asymmetries

The most material risk to the thesis is sustained U.S. consumer weakness. In Q1 2025, soft U.S. demand and declining consumer sentiment drove bookings growth to the low end of guidance. While Q3 showed acceleration, management remains cautious, noting that two-thirds of the consumer business comes from U.S. point-of-sale. If macro pressures intensify, travel behaviors could shift dramatically—shorter booking windows, higher cancellation rates, and downgrades to lower-rate plans (which management is already observing). This would pressure both volume and ADRs, offsetting technology-driven margin gains.

The scale gap versus Booking Holdings creates persistent competitive pressure. Booking's 47% EBITDA margins reflect a user base and inventory scale that Expedia cannot yet match, forcing higher marketing spend per acquisition. While Expedia's B2C marketing productivity has improved, it remains vulnerable to Booking's ability to outspend on performance marketing and brand advertising. If Booking chooses to prioritize market share over margins in key markets, Expedia's growth could slow despite operational improvements.

Tax audit risks present a tangible balance sheet threat. The IRS has proposed $675 million in adjustments for transfer pricing with foreign subsidiaries for 2011-2016, which Expedia is vigorously defending. The Italian tax authorities are pursuing €150 million in withholding taxes for 2017-2023, with Expedia recording a €90 million reserve. While these may not result in final payments, any significant "pay-to-play" requirement or litigation loss could impact the $6.2 billion liquidity position and limit capital return flexibility.

Regulatory and competitive dynamics could disrupt the B2B growth engine. Google Travel's continued product enhancements and prioritization of its own metasearch products threaten trivago's recovery and could increase customer acquisition costs across the portfolio. Airlines and hotels pushing direct bookings with lower rates and enhanced loyalty programs reduce OTA relevance. The sharing economy's growth, led by Airbnb's 7 million listings versus Vrbo's smaller scale, pressures alternative accommodation margins and market share.

On the positive side, an asymmetry exists in international expansion. If Expedia can replicate its U.S. technology and loyalty successes in Europe and Asia, the growth runway extends dramatically. Q3's high-teens room night growth in Asia and double-digit growth in EMEA, combined with B2B's 30% Asia growth, suggests this is achievable. Success here would diversify revenue away from U.S. consumer dependence and justify a valuation re-rating toward Booking's multiples.

Valuation Context

Trading at $255.69 per share, Expedia Group carries a market capitalization of $31.6 billion and enterprise value of $32.0 billion. The valuation metrics reveal a significant disconnect between fundamental improvement and market pricing. The company generated $3 billion in trailing twelve-month free cash flow, placing the price-to-free-cash-flow ratio at 10.6x—substantially below Booking Holdings' 19.2x and Airbnb's 15.6x. Similarly, the price-to-operating-cash-flow ratio of 8.4x compares favorably to Booking's 18.4x.

On an enterprise value basis, Expedia trades at 14.7x EBITDA versus Booking's 16.4x, Airbnb's 22.5x, and Trip.com's (TCOM) 16.7x. This discount persists despite Expedia's return on equity of 53.9% exceeding all three peers (Booking's negative book value makes ROE meaningless, Airbnb's 30.8%, Trip.com's 20.2%). The company's debt-to-equity ratio of 2.5x is manageable given stable cash generation and investment-grade ratings, with interest coverage comfortable at current EBITDA levels.

The reinstated dividend yields 0.63% with a conservative 11.6% payout ratio, providing income while retaining ample capital for growth investments and buybacks. With $1.8 billion remaining on the share repurchase authorization, management has continued reducing share count, down 22% net of dilution over three years. This capital return program, funded by $3 billion in annual free cash flow, demonstrates a mature, shareholder-friendly approach that contrasts favorably with growth-at-all-costs competitors.

The valuation discount appears rooted in three factors: U.S. consumer exposure concerns, the scale gap versus Booking, and memories of the replatforming disruption. However, as B2B approaches one-third of revenue and margins expand sustainably, these concerns should diminish. If management delivers on 2026 margin expansion guidance, the multiple gap should narrow, providing upside even without accelerating growth.

Conclusion

Expedia Group has reached an inflection point where years of painful technology investment are translating into structural margin expansion and diversified growth. The unified platform enables marketing productivity gains that drove B2C EBITDA margins to 41% while powering B2B's 17th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. This is not a cyclical recovery but a strategic transformation from transaction-dependent OTA to travel technology platform.

The investment thesis hinges on whether this margin expansion proves durable and if B2B can maintain its momentum against intensifying competition. The stock's valuation discount to peers appears unwarranted given improving fundamentals, strong cash generation, and disciplined capital returns. However, sustained U.S. consumer weakness or failure to scale international growth could derail the narrative.

The critical variables to monitor are B2B bookings growth sustainability and U.S. consumer demand trends through 2026. If Expedia can deliver moderated but continued margin expansion while growing B2B at mid-teens rates, the valuation gap should close, rewarding patient investors who recognize that the great replatforming is finally paying dividends.