One of the standouts of today's morning trading session was Trip.com, which logged a 3.8% performance and outperformed the S&P 500 by 4.0%. The Business Services stock is now trading at $67.7 per share and may still have upside potential because it is still -87.58% under its average target price of $544.98. Analysts have set target prices ranging from $374.046 to $629.863 dollars per share, and have given the stock an average rating of buy.
The market seems to share this optimistic view, since Trip.com has a short interest of only 2.2% (this is the percentage of the share float that is being shorted). Each short position represents an investor's expectation that the price of the stock will decrease in the future.
Short selling involves borrowing shares and then selling them at current market prices. In the successful version of the strategy, the shares are purchased at a lower price at some time in the future. The investor then returns the shares to the lender, and keeps the profit made on the sell/buy transaction.
We can make inferences about the market sentiment surrounding Trip.com by analyzing its rate of institutional ownership. If institutions such as hedge funds and pension funds are the primary shareholders of a corporation, it most likely means that its shares are a good investment according to those institutions' analysts.
At 43.4%, the rate of institutional ownership is average, indicating that a sufficient number of institutions have concluded that it is a stable investment. Beware, however, that the rate of institutional ownership could also indicate an ongoing proxy battle or takeover attempt -- so you should also periodically check the news about a stock whose institutional ownership you are tracking.
Overall, there is mixed market sentiment on Trip.com because its an analyst consensus of strong upside potential, a buy rating, an average amount of shares sold short, and only a small number of institutional investors. Warren Buffett famously said that in the short term, markets are voting mechanisms, but in the long term, they are weighing mechanisms. This means that long term investors should be aware of a stock's fundamentals before committing.
Buffett was one of the fist investors to focus on free cash flow as a yardstick for a company's health. Here are TCOM's recent cash flows:
| Date Reported | Cash Flow from Operations ($ k) | Capital expenditures ($ k) | Free Cash Flow ($ k) | YoY Growth (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 3,098,000 | 85,000 | 3,013,000 | 878.25 |
| 2022 | 380,000 | 72,000 | 308,000 | 3.01 |
| 2021 | 388,000 | 89,000 | 299,000 | 144.69 |
| 2020 | -588,000 | 81,000 | -669,000 | -171.4 |
| 2019 | 1,055,000 | 118,000 | 937,000 | -0.11 |
| 2018 | 1,036,000 | 98,000 | 938,000 |
