Just caught something interesting in the market right now. You know how stock splits usually signal confidence? Well, Booking Holdings announced a 25-to-1 split back in February and the stock actually tanked more than 5% since then. Most people are panicking about AI disrupting travel bookings, but I think they're missing the bigger picture here.

Let me break down why this might actually be one of the cheap shares to buy at the moment. Everyone's worried that AI chatbots will let people book flights and hotels without needing Booking anymore. Fair concern on the surface, but here's what most investors aren't thinking about: Booking has 4.4 million properties across 220 countries. That's not something you replicate overnight. Those boutique hotels, independent operators—they depend on Booking for visibility and bookings management. That moat is real.

What's more interesting is their Connected Trip strategy. When customers book multiple parts of a trip through Booking's platform, that's where the real stickiness happens. Last year those transactions grew in the high 20% range. That's not just booking a hotel—that's flights, rental cars, activities, restaurants through OpenTable. AI might help you plan a trip, but executing across all those services? That's where Booking's network advantage shows up.

Here's the financial part that makes this compelling. 2025 revenue grew 13%, room nights up 8%. But the real story is the cost-cutting program they started in late 2024—that drove 20% bottom-line growth. With share buybacks on top of that, EPS jumped 22%. Management is guiding for 15% EPS growth going forward, and they're still planning to invest heavily in AI and international expansion.

So you're looking at a company growing earnings 15% annually, and the stock is trading at a forward P/E of around 14. That's genuinely cheap shares to buy territory when you consider the growth rate. The PEG ratio is under 1, which is the kind of valuation you don't see on quality businesses every day.

The data advantage matters too. Booking has decades of customer booking data plus information from millions of property operators. That's first-party data that companies trying to build AI travel tools from scratch simply don't have. It's increasingly hard to compete against that.

I get why people are nervous about AI disruption. It's a legitimate concern to think about. But Booking's competitive position, their data, their supply-side network—those things aren't going away. Meanwhile the market is pricing in worst-case scenarios. If you're looking for cheap shares to buy with real competitive moats and solid growth, this one's worth a serious look right now.

The stock split usually signals management confidence in future growth, and historically that's paid off. Since 2010, stocks returned 18.3% on average in the 12 months after a split versus 13.3% for the S&P 500. Worth keeping on your radar if you're hunting for undervalued opportunities.