Reviewing Bed Bath & Beyond (NYSE:BBBY) and Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG)

Bed Bath & Beyond (NYSE:BBBY) and Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG) are both retail/wholesale companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, analyst recommendations, earnings, institutional ownership, dividends, valuation and risk.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

76.3% of Bed Bath & Beyond shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 92.4% of Booking shares are held by institutional investors. 1.6% of Bed Bath & Beyond shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.2% of Booking shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility and Risk

Bed Bath & Beyond has a beta of 2.77, meaning that its share price is 177% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Booking has a beta of 1.39, meaning that its share price is 39% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

Bed Bath & Beyond pays an annual dividend of $0.68 per share and has a dividend yield of 7.0%. Booking pays an annual dividend of $38.40 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.7%. Bed Bath & Beyond pays out -16.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Booking pays out 26.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years. Booking has increased its dividend for 1 consecutive years. Bed Bath & Beyond is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Profitability

This table compares Bed Bath & Beyond and Booking’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Bed Bath & Beyond	-17.86%	-78.27%	-31.94%
Booking	19.23%	-134.19%	24.16%

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Bed Bath & Beyond and Booking, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Bed Bath & Beyond	2	4	2	0	2.00
Booking	0	11	18	3	2.75

Bed Bath & Beyond presently has a consensus target price of $8.86, suggesting a potential downside of 9.33%. Booking has a consensus target price of $5,807.89, suggesting a potential upside of 7.57%. Given Booking’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Booking is more favorable than Bed Bath & Beyond.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Bed Bath & Beyond and Booking”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Bed Bath & Beyond	$1.13 billion	0.50	-$258.80 million	($4.07)	-2.40
Booking	$23.74 billion	7.37	$5.88 billion	$143.79	37.55

Booking has higher revenue and earnings than Bed Bath & Beyond. Bed Bath & Beyond 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 Bed Bath & Beyond on 13 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Bed Bath & Beyond

Beyond, Inc. operates as an online retailer of furniture and home furnishings products in the United States and Canada. The company offers furniture, bedding and bath, patio and outdoor gear, area rugs, tabletop and cookware, décor, storage and organization, small appliances, home improvement, and other products under the Bed Bath & Beyond brand. The company provides its products and services through its e-commerce platform accessible through its mobile application, which includes bedbathandbeyond.com, bedbathandbeyond.ca, and overstockgovernment.com. It also offers businesses advertising products or services on its website; Marketplace, a service that allows its partners to sell their products through third party sites; product sales to international customers using third party logistics providers; and Supplier Oasis, a singular integration point that enables partners to manage their products, inventory, and sales channels, as well as access multi-channel fulfillment services through its distribution network. The company was formerly known as Overstock.com, Inc. and changed its name to Beyond, Inc. in November 2023. Beyond, Inc. was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Midvale, Utah.

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).