The TripAdvisor logo is displayed on a tablet.
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Company: Tripadvisor (trip)
Business: Tripadvisor is an online travel company. It uses its brands, technology and skills to combine its global target groups with partners through content, travel instructions and two -sided marketplaces for experiences, accommodations, restaurants and other travel categories. Tripadvisor works via three segments: Tripadvisor brands, Viator and Thefork. The brand tripadvisor segment offers travelers a global online platform to discover, generate and share authentic user-generated content in the form of ratings for goals, interest experiences, experiences, accommodations, restaurants and cruises. The Viator segment offers travelers a comprehensive online marketplace that offers access to over 400,000 experiences and more than 65,000 experience operators. The manual segment offers an online marketplace where guests can discover and book online reservations in around 55,000 restaurants in 11 countries.
Market value: ~ 2.36 billion USD ($ 18.00 per share)
Stock Diagram -iconstock -Igram -Symbol
TripAdvisor shares in 2025
Activist: taxbord value
Property: 9.01%
Average costs: $ 13.92
Activist comment: Starboard is a very successful activist investor and has extensive experiences that help companies concentrate on operational efficiency and margin improvement. The company is known for its excellent care and in favor of performing many of the most successful campaigns. Starboard carried out a total of 158 former activist campaigns in its history and achieved an average return of 22.34% compared to 13.18% for the Russell 2000 during the same period.
What happens
Starboard intends to deal with the management and the board of Tripadvisor in relation to the value added options.
Behind the scenes
Tripadvisor is the operator of three online platforms that are intended to improve the experience of travel planning. His Legacy business Tripadvisor.com is the largest platform for travel guides in the world, with 300 million monthly visitors and more than one billion reviews and sales of 900 million dollars. Viator, a quickly scaling booking platform for tours and other travel experiences, will probably generate sales of well over 900 million US dollars this year. After all, Thefork is a restaurant reservation platform that is today the largest market for online feeder reservations in Europe and is expected to achieve more than 200 million US dollars this year. Although the company has a trio market -leading company, it is still with a strong discount: around seven -time profits before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization compared to low to medium teenagers for colleagues and even higher multipliers for TripAdvisor.
There are some explanations behind this interruption. Since its expedition of Expedia in 2011 and until a few months ago, Tripadvisor had a bad government: a controlled property of Liberty Media Corp, a two -class structure and a weak shareholder protection like a standard of voting rights. This was reflected in the choice of directors at the 2025 annual conference, in which three directors received a large number of votes from the TripAdvisor and former CEO from Liberty Media Gregory Maffei, which received over 60% source votes. Small, controlled companies are not very good, and that was exactly that. However, all of this changed in April 2025, when Tripadvisor bought back Liberty Media's control position and consequently collapsed the dual class structure. While TripAdvisor's share price has valued since then, it is probably still a hangover from Liberty Media's years of control. Second, the decline in the core name tag from Tripadvisor, in which the sales framework from 2023 to 2024, has dropped by 7.95%, is certainly a factor. If the TripAdvisor business were the company's only segment, this evaluation could be justified. But Viator makes as much income as TripAdvisor and grows with double -digit prices. Thefork also grows on high single -digit digits, has a turnover of $ 200 million, $ 65 million on EBITDA and can reach the margins of more than 20% on a scale. While Tripadvisor achieved a year in the decline in sales, it is still a market leader with a turnover of 900 million US dollars and an EBITDA of $ 250 million, whereby the company is expecting a return on growth this year.
Enter Starboard in which a 13D has been announced that it took a position of 9.01% in Tripadvisor and intends to meet the board and the company's management team regarding potential creating options. As is typical of a taxboard investment, there are several levers that unlock the value. The first and perhaps most likely plan is the status quo, which is extremely rare for an activist and taxboard. However, if TripAdvisor returns to sales growth and the other two segments continue to increase sales and margins, it may only have very little to do here, except observing how the shares increase when the market understands the company better. If growth in Tripadvisor does not occur, there is the possibility to do it differently and focus more on the end result than on the top line. Here taxboard was very valuable to help companies. Third, while the three companies have some strategic synergies, if not operative, they are managed independently and can really show the sum of the parts value by selling only one segment. This is not something for the starboard in general and does not use it here. But Thefork is a very strategic capital in a room that is ripe: Resy to Amex, open to the Priceline Group (now booking stocks), and seven rooms to Doordash are just a few examples. These business typically started with medium to high -level income. Five times from sales for the actions would be an assessment of $ 1 billion, approximately 40% of the total company value of TripAdvisor, although only about 10% of the total turnover of the company and 5% of the EBITDA accounts for. After all, there is a potential value for artificial intelligence. With hundreds of millions of users and 25 years of history, Tripadvisor has very valuable and unique data that could be very valuable for AI providers. In addition, the company has recently announced partnerships with confusion and Openai, but the conditions of these business are not public.
After all, there is the potential sale of the entire company. While taxboard is not a “Sell-The-Company” activist, an activist will end a company in pseudo-play, and every potential buyer who has kicked the tires will suddenly arouse his interest. There were interested potential buyers here. In February 2024, Tripadvisor announced the formation of a special committee for evaluating proposals for potential transactions. During the Liberty Referral Procedure, Tripadvisor announced that he received several acquisition offers, and another offer by a strategic buyer appeared at 18 to 19 US dollars per share in early 2025. Since then, the results of the Q1 have been better than expected, the future instructions have improved and the share has so far increased by more than 20%. If the interest then gave, there is no reason why it shouldn't exist now. A sale of the company is not the agenda of the taxboard, but the company is an economic animal with trust in its investors. If an undesirable offer occurs, the company will encourage the company to accept it if the activist believes that it is in the best long -term interest of shareholders.
With an activist like Starboard engagement, it would not be silent to mention the shareholders at Tripadvisor's latest annual meeting. Three directors received at least 45% with Jeremy Philips and chairman Gregory Maffei, who received 56.8% or 69.3%. Since the company does not have a majority voice standard in undisputed elections, all three directors remain on the board. One could see that and assume that taxboard aims at these three directors for a potential proxy fight. While taxboard is not a stranger for a proxy fight and will go there if necessary, we do not believe that this is the case here. First, most of the reasons for the defensive voices are no longer relevant, and Maffei, who received most of the source voices-is a respected operator. Similar to Starboard, Maffei is an economic animal that prioritizes the shareholder return and is probably aligned with a taxboard in order to recognize the current undervaluation and value creation of the company. We believe that Starboard could give a lot of value here with the execution of the board, but it seems more like a partnership than a battle.
Ken Squire is the founder and president of 13D monitor, an institutional research service for shareholders, and the founder and portfolio manager of the 13D Activist Fund, an investment fund that invests in an activist 13D investment. Tripadvisor belongs in the fund.