Boyd Gaming (NYSE:BYD) versus Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG) Head-To-Head Survey

Boyd Gaming (NYSE:BYD) and Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG) are both consumer discretionary companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, dividends, profitability, earnings, valuation, institutional ownership and analyst recommendations.

Risk & Volatility

Boyd Gaming has a beta of 1.06, suggesting that its stock price is 6% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Booking has a beta of 1.07, suggesting that its stock price is 7% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Boyd Gaming and Booking, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Boyd Gaming	0	11	5	1	2.41
Booking	0	8	27	2	2.84

Boyd Gaming currently has a consensus price target of $94.69, indicating a potential upside of 21.71%. Booking has a consensus price target of $236.70, indicating a potential upside of 21.30%. Given Boyd Gaming’s higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe Boyd Gaming is more favorable than Booking.

Dividends

Boyd Gaming pays an annual dividend of $0.80 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.0%. Booking pays an annual dividend of $1.68 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.9%. Boyd Gaming pays out 3.5% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Booking pays out 18.6% 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. Boyd Gaming has increased its dividend for 4 consecutive years and Booking has increased its dividend for 1 consecutive years. Boyd Gaming is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Boyd Gaming and Booking”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Boyd Gaming	$4.09 billion	1.38	$1.84 billion	$22.72	3.42
Booking	$26.92 billion	5.45	$5.40 billion	$9.04	21.59

Booking has higher revenue and earnings than Boyd Gaming. Boyd Gaming is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Booking, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

76.8% of Boyd Gaming shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 92.4% of Booking shares are owned by institutional investors. 22.8% of Boyd Gaming shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.2% of Booking shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Boyd Gaming and Booking’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Boyd Gaming	44.34%	22.52%	8.80%
Booking	25.53%	-102.96%	26.60%

Summary

Booking beats Boyd Gaming on 10 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Boyd Gaming

Boyd Gaming Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a multi-jurisdictional gaming company in Nevada, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The company operates through Las Vegas Locals, Downtown Las Vegas, Midwest & South, and Online segments. It also engages in owning and operating a travel agency. Boyd Gaming Corporation was founded in 1975 and is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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).