Booking.com stock gains favor at Mizuho after ChatGPT checkout shift

Investing.com - Mizuho moved its top pick to Booking.com (NASDAQ: BKNG) from Airbnb (NYSE: ABNB) on Thursday following a report that OpenAI is pulling back from native ChatGPT checkout and pivoting to app-based purchases through partners including Instacart, Expedia and Booking.com.

TheInformation reported Thursday that OpenAI is abandoning on-platform shopping checkout because users research in ChatGPT but do not buy there. Only a few merchants got the feature working, and OpenAI had to onboard them manually, according to the report. The portal lacked sales tax infrastructure as of February, and Shopify confirmed only a dozen of its millions of merchants were live.

Mizuho analyst Lloyd Walmsley said online travel agencies took the biggest slide from AI disruption fears and have the most to gain from a potential wind-back of on-platform checkout risks. The firm said it favors Booking.com as the best of the pure-play online travel agencies and expects the whole space to catch a bid on the news.

The firm said conversion rates are higher on dedicated eCommerce sites and believes the end state will eventually migrate to click-outs and cost-per-click auction models, similar to Google Search. Mizuho said it has heard from Internet investors drawing up shopping lists on the news, with online travel agencies, DoorDash and Google at the top.

Mizuho said Amazon, DoorDash, Zillow and Instacart also stand to gain. Etsy was reportedly subsidizing merchant commissions to seed the ChatGPT checkout experience, according to TheInformation report.

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