05:35 AM EDT, 05/23/2024 (MT Newswires) -- CFRA, an independent research provider, has provided MT Newswires with the following research alert. Analysts at CFRA have summarized their opinion as follows:
Our target price of USD66 (from USD60) is an implied 2024 P/E of 23x (peer mean: 19.3x) on our projected earnings per ADS (EPADS) growth of 34.9% (peer average: 31.7%). Decent revenue growth (+29.4% Y/Y to CNY11.9 bln coming from all business segments), improved scale efficiency, and positive affiliate contributions (vs. losses in Q1 2023) drove 27.8% Y/Y growth in TCOM's Q1 2024 EPADS to CNY6.62, beating our estimate. TCOM will benefit from the growth of the domestic and global travel industry, in our view, aided by its expansion to lower-tier cities in China, widening partnership coverage, AI driven platform efficiency, and strong brand proposition. We think these factors will support a full recovery of TCOM's outbound air ticket and hotel bookings to 2019's level by end-2024 (Q4 2023: 80%). We also expect improved operating leverage and stronger higher-margin outbound sales to drive net margin expansion in 2024/2025. We lift our 2024/2025 EPADS estimates to CNY20.50/CNY24.62 (from CNY18.60/CNY20.83).