Diamonds and Dogs

5/9/18

TripAdvisor (TRIP) travelling higher. The online travel company is up 22% not far from a 52 week high following better than expected earnings. Sales beat as well, but only grew 1.6% to $378 million. TripAdvisor has stabilized its core hotel-booking business, which has dragged down the company's financials in recent quarters due in part to struggles around monetizing site visitors who use smartphones. The company also boosted its outlook for the rest of 2018, saying that it expects some EBITDA growth after previously projecting that earnings would be flat compared to 2017.

Walmart (WMT) is flipping out. The largest US retailer is down 3% after agreeing to pay $16 billion for a roughly 77 percent stake in Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart. This is Walmart's largest-ever deal, an effort to compete with rival Amazon.com in an important growth market, India. Amazon now holds about 27 percent of India's burgeoning e-commerce market, where Walmart only operates 21 cash-and-carry wholesale stores.