Contrasting Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG) & Cars.com (NYSE:CARS)

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and price targets for Cars.com and Booking, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Cars.com	0	3	4	0	2.57
Booking	0	10	22	3	2.80

Cars.com currently has a consensus target price of $17.90, indicating a potential upside of 60.75%. Booking has a consensus target price of $6,121.23, indicating a potential upside of 23.91%. Given Cars.com’s higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Cars.com is more favorable than Booking.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

89.2% of Cars.com shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 92.4% of Booking shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.4% of Cars.com shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.2% of Booking shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Risk and Volatility

Cars.com has a beta of 1.74, meaning that its share price is 74% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Booking has a beta of 1.34, meaning that its share price is 34% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Cars.com	5.71%	17.43%	7.91%
Booking	19.37%	-134.86%	25.39%

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Cars.com and Booking”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Cars.com	$717.85 million	0.95	$48.19 million	$0.62	17.96
Booking	$26.04 billion	6.12	$5.88 billion	$153.86	32.11

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

Summary

Booking beats Cars.com on 11 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Cars.com

Cars.com Inc., through its subsidiaries, operates as a digital automotive marketplace that connects local car dealers to consumers in the United States. The company offers a suite of digital solutions that creates connections between individuals researching cars or looking to purchase a car with car dealerships and automotive original equipment manufacturers. It also sells online subscription advertising products to car dealerships by its direct sales force, as well as through its affiliate sales channel. In addition, the company sells display advertising to national advertisers. Further, it offers online automotive marketplace service that connects buyers and sellers through Cars.com, Auto.com, DealerRater.com, NewCars.com, PickupTrucks.com, DealerInspire.com, and LaunchDigitalMarketing.com Websites. Its platform hosts approximately 4.9 million new and used vehicle listings and serves approximately 20,000 franchise and independent car dealers. Cars.com Inc. was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

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).