Booking Holdings (BKNG) Q2 FY2026 Earnings Call

Bottom line

The sleeper story is that Booking's two most-watched growth engines, Connected Trip attach and US room nights, both decelerated meaningfully this quarter (high teens to low double digits, and an accelerating low-teens streak broken to high single digits), even as headline bookings and EBITDA beat guidance. The obvious headline is a beat-and-raise quarter, but reframe it: management actually trimmed full-year gross bookings guidance because flight ticket growth collapsed from 28% to 4%, meaning the binding constraint right now is airline capacity tied to the Middle East conflict, not core travel demand. The most revealing moment of the call was Glenn's answer on the new AI discovery test: 'I don't have any data to come back to you. Not that I'm sure I would right now', a clear regression from last quarter's quantified (if small-sample) Penny uplift claim. My view changes if Q3 shows Connected Trip growth re-accelerating back toward high-teens territory and management re-discloses the FCF working-capital breakdown they quietly dropped this quarter.

The 30-second version

The flywheel is quietly slowing exactly where it's supposed to be accelerating
Beat-and-raise headline, but the full-year bookings guide actually got trimmed
The AI monetization proof point vanished

What changed this quarter

Metric	Q1'26	Q2'26	Change
Room nights growth (YoY)	6%	5%	Decelerated 100bps YoY but beat guide by ~1pt
Gross bookings growth (reported/cc)	+15% reported	+9% reported / +8% cc, beat guide by ~3pts	Deceleration vs prior-year comp, still beat
Revenue growth (reported/cc)	+16% reported	+8% reported / +7% cc	Sharp deceleration vs Q1 comp
Adjusted EBITDA	~$1.3B, +19% YoY	~$2.6B, +9% YoY, margin +40bps	Growth rate roughly halved YoY
Adjusted EPS	$1.14, +14% YoY	$2.54, +15% YoY, aided by 6% lower share count	EPS growth now outpacing EBITDA growth via buybacks
US room night growth	Low teens, 4th straight accelerating quarter	High single digits, called 'less than last quarter' by mgmt	Deceleration confirmed by management
Connected Trip transaction growth	High teens, ~3x total transaction growth	Low double digits, ~2x total transaction growth	Growth rate roughly cut in half
Flight ticket growth	+28% YoY	+4% YoY	Collapsed, directly drove FY guidance cut
Free cash flow	$3.1B, incl. $1.9B working-capital benefit disclosed	$3.6B, no working-capital breakout given	Higher absolute level but lower disclosure quality
Transformation program savings target	$500-550M annual run-rate	~$650M annual run-rate, +$100M mostly realized 2027	Raised, but real savings pushed to next year

Accountability tracked

3 new promises made5 narrative shifts flagged6 prior promises scored

Inside the full report

The complete write-up covers the full promise ledger with kept/missed calls, disclosure-quality scoring, the metrics-vanished check, verification items, and the questions to ask next quarter.

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Booking Holdings (BKNG)

The 30-second version

What changed this quarter

Accountability tracked

Follow what management promises next