Priceline CEO warns of travel slowdown

Despite increasing second-quarter revenue 20 percent from a year ago, Priceline.com Inc. (Nasdaq: PCLN) shares plummeted 15 percent after the company announced its results, which were impacted by Europe”™s fiscal crises.

Norwalk-based Priceline earned $352 million on $1.3 billion in revenue during the quarter. In a conference call, CEO Jeff Boyd said Priceline is observing a broad “deceleration” in travel bookings, adding that he thinks Priceline is offsetting the trend to a degree by gaining market share against rivals.

Boyd said Olympics-related travel bookings did not have a measurable impact on Priceline”™s second quarter results.

“We didn”™t expect to see an impact in our numbers from the Olympics and I think that”™s still true,” Boyd said. “These events that take place in one market across our broad diversified worldwide business don”™t generally have impact that we can discern. To the extent that more people are traveling to London or not traveling to London, perhaps they are traveling somewhere else, so we don”™t see anything there.”

As of June 30, the company had $3.9 billion in cash and equivalents, including $1.9 billion held by international subsidiaries. Priceline said it intends to invest that cash in foreign operations, as it cannot repatriate it to the United States without potentially incurring additional U.S. taxes.