Yahoo

AI demand fuels a travel booking stock boom: How to spot AI's next under-the-radar winners

Explore stocks on Coinbase

Yahoo Finance Markets and Data Editor Jared Blikre takes a look at the travel sector's recent market performance, highlighting how AI demand and AI adoption are playing crucial roles.

00:00 Speaker A

I've broken down travel into four different sections. We got booking platforms in white, and that's actually the top performer right here. We have airlines in green, then I've got cruises in blue. And then finally, hotels. Hotels really never got off the dime the way these other industries did. So we got Trivago, that's up 73% in the upper left. That is a platform. Then we've got Expedia, Make My Trip, all three of those are platforms. ULCC, that's Frontier, so we got airlines mixed in there too. Airbnb and booking. But if you notice there, five out of the top six are platforms, and then we get United, then we get Delta Air. You can see Widom over the last three months is down almost 8%. Uh, CHH, that's Choice Hotel, slightly negative. Uh, even Hilton and Marriott, they're just barely green here. And so what this sets up is kind of a framework for evaluating which companies are going to participate in the AI boom, not the picks and shovels, not the companies that are uh directly or even slightly indirectly involved in the AI build out and the data centers and all that kind of stuff. I'm talking about the 400 or so S&P 500 companies that are just really doing their own thing and at one point or another, they're going to have to use AI to compete. Here's a test. What to spot in these under the radar AI stocks. So proof, first we want to see that AI is clearly improving something important to the business. What doesn't count, well, we're embracing AI. Kind of a vague statement and that's what a lot of companies are doing right now. Then materiality, we want to see this show up in the financial statements. The gains have to be large enough to show up in profits or cash flow that is flowing through to the bottom line. Um, and if you hear on an on an earnings call, a company that's really not uh disclosing big numbers or how AI has affected their bottom line, they give you a small pilot or an anecdote, that doesn't count. Then you take a look at expectations and this is where Wall Street comes in. Um, is Wall Street kind of jumping on the bandwagon? Are earnings estimates for this company going up or down? What doesn't count is if Wall Street is already very bullish on them. Doesn't mean that Wall Street is going to be wrong, but we're looking for some value plays right here. And the final one, probably the most important of all, is price. Uh, if this stock, if you're looking at a stock and it's already up 100% over the last three months or six months, that's probably not going to make the grade here. You want to look for something that's a little bit undervalued. And it's not just travel. As I said, this is a case study that we're looking at here. This can be applied to a lot of other industries. The game going forward is not going to just going to be who's in the AI buildout and who's doing it best. It's going to be those companies who are able to incorporate AI into their business model and show investors, uh, what the money is do or what AI is doing to attract the money. and then also maybe for these value plays, get something that's a little bit unloved by Wall Street and investors.

Mobilize your Website
View Site in Mobile | Classic
Share by: