Cars.com (NYSE:CARS) and Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG) Head-To-Head Review

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for Booking and Cars.com, as reported by MarketBeat.

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

Booking currently has a consensus target price of $6,121.23, suggesting a potential upside of 21.68%. Cars.com has a consensus target price of $17.90, suggesting a potential upside of 65.21%. Given Cars.com’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Cars.com is more favorable than Booking.

Earnings and Valuation

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

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Booking	$26.04 billion	6.23	$5.88 billion	$153.86	32.70
Cars.com	$717.85 million	0.93	$48.19 million	$0.62	17.48

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.

Risk & Volatility

Booking has a beta of 1.35, meaning that its share price is 35% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Cars.com has a beta of 1.76, meaning that its share price is 76% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

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

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

Insider & Institutional Ownership

92.4% of Booking shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 89.2% of Cars.com shares are held by institutional investors. 0.2% of Booking shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.4% of Cars.com 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 Cars.com on 11 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 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.