Expedia Inc.'s stock was negatively affected the weekend after president Trump's immigration ban was issued, but the company hasn't seen any "meaningful" trends resulting from the ban thus far, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said.
Speaking during the company's most-recent financial results call on Thursday afternoon, Khosrowshahi said, "We have seen an effect on trading on a short-term basis. The weekend of the executive order, we certainly saw a negative effect on trading."
The president signed an executive order temporarily banning citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. on Jan. 27. The order was suspended by a court earlier this month, a ruling upheld Thursday by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Trump later told reporters at the White House that he would appeal the decision, according to published reports.
Though Expedia's stock was negatively affected that weekend, it does not appear to have had a larger impact thus far, Khosrowshahi said.
"We haven't observed anything meaningful on a trend basis so far, fortunately. We were, frankly, worried about kind of the chaos and all the volatility and uncertainty and effect that it would have on general business trends, and especially travel," he said. "We haven't seen any meaningful effect at this point, which is good news. We'll be watching closely."
Khosrowshahi also answered an analyst's question about Expedia's current portfolio of companies, and said the company will not look to acquire more businesses just based out of necessity.
Between a core OTA business with strong organic growth, regional brands driving profitability, a large-scale corporate brand and growth opportunities with Homeaway in the alternative lodging space and Trivago, "we're very happy about our asset mix at this point," he said.
"We like our portfolio a lot. It's a combination of highly profitable, consistent growth businesses, and then very, very big growth businesses if we execute," Khosrowshahi said. "We will be opportunistic. We're constantly looking for opportunity. We will certainly have deals ahead of us, but at this point, the deals are going to be driven more by opportunity than by necessity."
In the fourth quarter of 2016, Expedia's net income increased 71% to $182.9 million vs. $106.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2015. The company saw a 23% revenue increase from $1.6 billion to $2.1 billion.
Overall in 2016, Expedia saw a 29% increase in net income for a total of $698 million, and a 32% increase in revenue to $8.8 billion.