Booking Holdings cut its third-quarter revenue by $900 million for a Federal Trade Commission matter involving Priceline, its earnings release shows. That one item is 9.2% of the $9.793 billion of adjusted revenue Booking reported, by our arithmetic.
Revenue as reported fell 1%, to $8.893 billion from $9.008 billion. Adding back the $900 million gives adjusted revenue up 9%. Without the item, revenue would have been $785 million higher than a year earlier instead of $115 million lower, by our arithmetic.
Booking also accrued a $100 million loss for the same matter, bringing the total charge to $1.0 billion. Both items are excluded from its adjusted figures.
Business Pill · Distribution Advantage
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on distribution advantage. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Booking.
The key insight: By our arithmetic, Booking’s $900 million FTC revenue reduction is 9.2% of its $9.793 billion of adjusted revenue, and it is the whole difference between a 9% rise in adjusted revenue and a 1% fall in revenue as reported.
Booking’s 10-Q, filed the same evening, says that in July 2026 FTC staff told Priceline they intended to recommend a complaint against Priceline and a business-to-business affiliate partner asserting “unfair or deceptive business practices related to disclosures, fees, customer support, and billing practices”.
The filing says a settlement has not been agreed and litigation remains possible. It says a negotiated resolution “would be likely to include an agreement by Priceline to pay a certain amount to the FTC directly as well as to provide monetary restitution to certain U.S. consumers”, plus changes to some business practices.
The $900 million is recorded as a reduction in revenue and the $100 million in general and administrative expenses. The 10-Q adds: “The FTC may seek monetary penalties and restitution in excess of these amounts”.
Booking Holdings’ third-quarter revenue as reported (GAAP) and adjusted revenue, 2025 and 2026, $ million, from its earnings release (8-K Exhibit 99.1). The $900 million gap in 2026 is the revenue reduction recorded for the Priceline FTC matter; the subtraction is our arithmetic.
FY26 Guide: ๐น Adjusted Revenue Growth: High Single Digits ๐น Adjusted EBITDA Growth: High Single Digits ๐น Adjusted EPS Growth: High Single Digits
Comments: ๐ธ โWhile geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty may affect near-term travel trends, we remain focused on making travel easier, helping our partners succeed, and investing in our business for the long term.โ
๐ธ โAs AI transforms the ways to discover, plan, and book travel, we continue to make progress integrating AI across our brands, developing AI-native experiences, and collaborating with industry- leading AI platforms.โ
Wall St Engine, an account that posts earnings figures on X, published this Booking card at 21:07 UTC, under four minutes after the filing was accepted on EDGAR. It lists the $900M FTC revenue reduction and $100M accrued loss as excluded from adjusted figures, matching Booking’s release; the estimates it lists are its own citation, which we have not verified. This piece is built from Booking’s filings, not from this post.
What the Underlying Business Did
Gross bookings, which Booking says do not reflect the FTC matter, rose 10% to $54.5 billion, and room nights rose 7% to 345 million. Adjusted EBITDA rose 9% to $4.6 billion, and adjusted earnings per share rose 17% to $4.66; GAAP earnings per share rose 7% to $3.61.
Revenue as reported was 16.3% of gross bookings, against 18.0% for adjusted revenue, by our arithmetic. The 10-Q says the drop in revenue as a share of gross bookings was “primarily due to the impact of the FTC matter”.
A Slower Fourth Quarter
Booking guides fourth-quarter adjusted revenuegrowth of 0% to 2%, and adjusted EBITDA about flat, after 9% in the third quarter. It says “Global travel demand moderated somewhat toward the end of the third quarter”, and that its guidance assumes the effects of the Middle East conflict on travel persist through the end of the year.
For 2026 as a whole, Booking guides adjusted revenuegrowth in the high single digits. Wall St Engine, an account that posts earnings figures on X, listed a consensus estimate of 7.0% for fourth-quarter adjusted revenuegrowth; we have not verified its estimates.
What Booking Says About AI
Glenn Fogel, the chief executive, said: “As AI transforms the ways to discover, plan, and book travel, we continue to make progress integrating AI across our brands, developing AI-native experiences, and collaborating with industry- leading AI platforms”. The release gives no AI revenue or cost figure.
How Each Side Reads These Figures
For readers who see a strong quarter, the figures include gross bookings up 10%, adjusted revenue up 9% and adjusted earnings per share up 17%.
For readers who see caution, the figures include a $1.0 billion FTC charge that the 10-Q says could grow, revenue as reported down 1%, and a fourth-quarter adjusted revenue guide of 0% to 2%. We cite no analysts’ views here.
In its risk-factor section, the 10-Q refers readers to the risk factors in its 2025 annual report, as supplemented by one risk factor in its first-quarter 10-Q, rather than restating them. The FTC matter is described in Note 13 of the financialstatements.
The Structural Read
As we read it, the quarter has two revenue lines because of one item: the third-quarter revenue reconciliation lists a single adjustment, the $900 million FTC item.
As we read it, the FTC matter is a Priceline issue inside a Booking.com-led group: the 10-Q names Priceline and an affiliate partner, and gross bookings, which exclude the item, still rose 10%.
As we read it, the bigger signal for the next quarter is the guide rather than the charge: Booking expects adjusted revenuegrowth of 0% to 2% after 9%, and ties it to softer international travel and the Middle East conflict.
“As AI transforms the ways to discover, plan, and book travel, we continue to make progress integrating AI across our brands, developing AI-native experiences, and collaborating with industry- leading AI platforms.”
Three Implications
FOR INVESTORS TRACKING BOOKING Adjusted revenue rose 9% to $9.793 billion and adjusted earnings per share 17% to $4.66; revenue as reported fell 1% to $8.893 billion after the $900 million FTC reduction.
FOR PRICELINE CUSTOMERS AND REGULATORS The 10-Q says a negotiated resolution would likely include payment to the FTC, restitution to certain U.S. consumers and changes to some business practices; no settlement has been agreed.
FOR READERS FOLLOWING TRAVEL DEMAND Booking guides fourth-quarter adjusted revenuegrowth of 0% to 2% and says global travel demand moderated toward the end of the third quarter.
The framework puts it this way: “Your product stops being the thing companies buy and becomes the thing other systems assume exists.”
As we read it, Fogel’s line about collaborating with industry-leading AI platforms is the question that framework raises for a travel agency: whether AI assistants treat Booking’s inventory as the layer they plan and book through. The framework was published in December 2025 and does not discuss Booking’s third quarter.
The final cost of the FTC matter is not established: no settlement has been agreed, and the 10-Q says the FTC may seek more. The filing does not say how much of the $900 million would go to the FTC and how much to consumers.
The 9.2% share, the $785 million and $115 million changes and the shares of gross bookings are our arithmetic from Booking’s release and 10-Q. We had not heard the earnings call, and we did not contact Booking or Priceline.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
Anthropic’s Reality Check, The Capital Squeeze, & The New World Order
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a growth story. This week it started being priced as a credit story.
Booking’s third quarter carried a $900 million revenue reduction for a Priceline FTC matter, 9.2% of adjusted revenue by our arithmetic, and that one line is the difference between a 9% rise and a 1% fall.
95,000+ executives read Business Engineer for the AI strategy frameworks cited by ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.
A note on sourcing. Every company figure comes from Booking Holdings’ third-quarter 2026 earnings release, filed with the SEC as Exhibit 99.1 to its 8-K of 3 November 2026, and its 10-Q for the quarter, filed the same evening; both were read on EDGAR on 3 November. The estimate is as posted by Wall St Engine on X and is not verified. The 9.2% share, the year-over-year dollar changes and the shares of gross bookings are our arithmetic. We did not contact Booking Holdings or Priceline.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
