Why Cooper Investors is Bearish on Booking Holdings (BKNG) Stock?

Cooper Investors, an independently-owned investment firm, recently published its first-quarter Global Equities Fund (Hedged) commentary – a copy of which can be downloaded here. During the first quarter of 2020, the Cooper Investors Global Equities Fund (Hedged) returned -18.98%, while the benchmark MSCI ACWI was down 19.97%.

In the said letter, Cooper Investors highlighted a few stocks and Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) is one of them. Booking Holdings is the world’s leader in online travel. Year-to-date, BKNG stock lost 30% and on April 30th it had a closing price of $1480.57. Its market cap is of $59.1 billion. Here is what Cooper Investors said:

“With the impacts of COVID-19 being felt most acutely in the travel industry we took the decision to reduce our exposure to this sector and exit our investment in Booking Holdings. As the leading global online travel agency bookings will be an increasingly important partner to the hotel industry as these markets recover. However the extreme levels of uncertainty around government imposed travel bans and potential damage to consumer and business sentiment on travel led us to focus capital elsewhere.”

In Q4 2019, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on BKNG stock decreased by about 15% from the previous quarter (see the chart here).

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.