Somebody out there likes Priceline.com as an investment,
and that somebody is Saudi billionaire Alwaleed Bin Talal, who has put a tidy
$100 million into the stock of the name-your-own-price travel company over
the past six months.
The prince also bought $500 million in Citigroup stock , $450
million in AOL Time Warner for a total of a cool $1 billion
or so.
In a statement issued through his company, Kingdom Holdings., the prince said
he sees Priceline as one of the few Internet companies that “survived the
turbulence witnessed by the Internet arena.” He now owns about 5.4 percent of
the company, whose stock price has lagged that of some of the other online
travel companies.
“The aim was to lower his average share price and the latest plunge in
(Priceline’s) price allowed Prince Alwaleed to bring that average down to a
single digit,” the statement read. “eBay
, two other companies where we have investment stakes, will also
be survivors and will prosper.”
Indeed, Priceline’s stock was up 24 cents at $5.20 in mid-morning trading
today. It has been over $6 several times in the past three months. And that
price lag actually makes Priceline a more attractive takeover opportunity,
according to some analysts.
“With a stock price that is depressed, there is the potential for other
companies to do a deal that could be an accretive deal,” Jake Fuller, an
analyst at Thomas Weisel Partners, was quoted by Reuters as saying.
Alwaleed, a nephew of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, has a personal fortune
estimated at $20 billion, the bulk of which is invested in the United States.