Josh Brown’s ‘best stocks in the market’: Hilton Worldwide

2025-12-30_18-05 • 3m 16s
Frank Holland (Anchor) 00:00.000
We have Josh Brown's best stocks in the market. Josh, take it away.
Josh Brown (CEO) 00:04.880
Uh, yeah. So, we on best stocks in the market list, we've spent a lot of this year talking about travel. It's been the strongest sector of consumer discretionary and by a lot, we've seen restaurant stock stumble. We've seen a lot of other areas of consumer spending be called
Josh Brown (CEO) 00:22.120
into question, but the one thing that never slowed down even for a minute, almost at every segment, every level has been travel. And as a result, on the show, we've been spotlighting best stocks like Marriott, like Expedia, like we did the airlines, we did Delta, we did United.
Josh Brown (CEO) 00:41.080
Today, I want to talk about Hilton. So, Hilton is the same business model as Marriott. People think they're in the hotel business, they're not. They're in the the points business. So, they own none of their approximately none of their hotels. I think they own maybe 40-50 hotels.
Josh Brown (CEO) 00:56.920
The entire chain is owned by developers and franchise And what Hilton does really well is run this asset light sort of like marketing slash loyalty points business and they're making tons of money and you can see in this chart the stock's been a winner all year. That little blip
Josh Brown (CEO) 01:14.640
down was liberation day and that problem was fixed relatively quickly and it has spent most of this year in an uptrend. The stock had incredible earnings just like Marriott in November next earnings reports are not until February. And what we're going to hear in February is that
Josh Brown (CEO) 01:32.240
these companies have just experienced record breaking traffic volumes, rev par, any any metric that you would value these stocks on for this fourth quarter and I think they'll be guiding higher for next year. And I think that's what these charts are telling us. So in the column
Josh Brown (CEO) 01:49.480
we've got specific levels, we've got risk management levels as well. We never go into a name without knowing where we're wrong and where we want to be stopped out. But I do believe that these stocks will remain in uptrends. And there is more than just uh Hilton. This just
Josh Brown (CEO) 02:04.840
happened to have been the one that caught our eye technically. And Frank, we'll be keeping an eye on this group up as we get into next year.
Frank Holland (Anchor) 02:11.600
All right. Um looking at one name on this list, it's Delta. Jim, you're an owner in this one. Uh your view on the travel trade more broadly, we were just talking about weakness in the labor market and some concerns there and also inflation. Does the travel trade continue in 2026
Frank Holland (Anchor) 02:25.360
with these concerns? I think
Jim Lebenthal (Chief Equity Strategist) 02:26.640
it does. I think it does. You know, if I look at Delta as just emblematic and Josh was obviously looking at Hilton. But if I look at Delta, what I see is everything's going right. You got low fuel prices, you've got labor contracts in place, you've got a very high capacity
Jim Lebenthal (Chief Equity Strategist) 02:39.240
utilization and that capacity utilization is at the front of the plane where they make the most money. They're paying down a lot of debt. So if you're going to get bearish on Delta or the travel industry in general, Frank, you got to go back to what I said earlier about you've
Jim Lebenthal (Chief Equity Strategist) 02:52.280
got to see a recession. And if you're going to call for a recession, it's kind of like you're licking your finger in the wind and saying, "Yeah, I I think the wind is going to change here." and blow the other way. There's just no evidence of it happening. Yeah,
Frank Holland (Anchor) 03:02.840
just an anecdote. If you try to get one of those Comfort Plus seats, like they're sold out immediately. Well, they're kind
Jim Lebenthal (Chief Equity Strategist) 03:06.600
of overblown on the minute. anyway They really are overblown. Well, I'm
Frank Holland (Anchor) 03:09.680
I'm pretty tall, so I I need a little leg room, yeah. We got to move
Jim Lebenthal (Chief Equity Strategist) 03:12.560
you a little further up in the cabin, my friend. I'll work on that with you.
Frank Holland (Anchor) 03:15.600
Thank you.