Contrasting Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG) and Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (NASDAQ:RRGB)

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (NASDAQ:RRGB) and Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG) are both consumer discretionary companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their risk, dividends, earnings, profitability, valuation, institutional ownership and analyst recommendations.

Volatility & Risk

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers has a beta of 2.44, suggesting that its share price is 144% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Booking has a beta of 1.07, suggesting that its share price is 7% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Booking, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Red Robin Gourmet Burgers	1	1	2	0	2.25
Booking	0	9	25	3	2.84

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers currently has a consensus price target of $8.33, suggesting a potential upside of 8.88%. Booking has a consensus price target of $236.98, suggesting a potential upside of 45.20%. Given Booking’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Booking is more favorable than Red Robin Gourmet Burgers.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

84.0% of Red Robin Gourmet Burgers shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 92.4% of Booking shares are owned by institutional investors. 4.1% of Red Robin Gourmet Burgers shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.2% of Booking shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Booking”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Red Robin Gourmet Burgers	$1.21 billion	0.12	-$23.28 million	($1.69)	-4.53
Booking	$26.92 billion	4.56	$5.40 billion	$9.04	18.05

Booking has higher revenue and earnings than Red Robin Gourmet Burgers. Red Robin Gourmet Burgers 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 Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Booking’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Red Robin Gourmet Burgers	-2.55%	N/A	-2.65%
Booking	25.53%	-102.96%	26.60%

Summary

Booking beats Red Robin Gourmet Burgers on 12 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Red Robin Gourmet Burgers

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, develops, operates, and franchises casual-dining restaurants, in North America and one Canadian province. Its restaurants primarily offer burgers and pizza, appetizers, salads, soups, other entrees, desserts, wings, milkshakes, alcoholic and non-alcoholic specialty drinks, cocktails, wine, and beers. The company was founded in 1969 and is based in Englewood, Colorado.

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).