Summary of Significant Accounting Policies

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2023

Summary of Significant Accounting Policies

Recent Adopted Accounting Policies

As of January 1, 2023, we adopted the new guidance related to recognizing and measuring contract assets and contract liabilities from contracts with customers acquired in a business combination. The new guidance requires acquiring entities to apply Topic 606 to recognize and measure contract assets and contract liabilities in a business combination as compared to current GAAP where an acquirer generally recognizes such items at fair value on the acquisition date. The adoption of this new guidance had no impact on our consolidated financial statements.

Significant Accounting Policies

Below are the significant accounting policies with interim disclosure requirements. For a comprehensive description of our accounting policies, refer to our 2022 Form 10-K.

Revenue

Prepaid Merchant Bookings. We classify payments made to suppliers in advance of Vrbo performance obligations as prepaid merchant bookings included within prepaid and other current assets. Prepaid merchant bookings was $396 million as of September 30, 2023 and $480 million as of December 31, 2022.

Deferred Merchant Bookings. We classify cash payments received in advance of our performance obligations as deferred merchant bookings. At December 31, 2022, $6.2 billion of advance cash payments was reported within deferred merchant bookings, $5.2 billion of which was recognized resulting in $856 million of revenue during the nine months ended September 30, 2023. At September 30, 2023, the related balance was $7.5 billion.

At December 31, 2022, $961 million of deferred loyalty rewards was reported within deferred merchant bookings, $775 million of which was recognized within revenue during the nine months ended September 30, 2023. At September 30, 2023, the related balance was $897 million.

Deferred Revenue. At December 31, 2022, $163 million was recorded as deferred revenue, $114 million of which was recognized as revenue during the nine months ended September 30, 2023. At September 30, 2023, the related balance was $167 million.

Practical Expedients and Exemptions. We have used the portfolio approach to account for our loyalty points as the rewards programs share similar characteristics within each program in relation to the value provided to the traveler and their breakage patterns. Using this portfolio approach is not expected to differ materially from applying the guidance to individual contracts. However, we will continue to assess and refine, if necessary, how a portfolio within each rewards program is defined.

We do not disclose the value of unsatisfied performance obligations for (i) contracts with an original expected length of one year or less and (ii) contracts for which we recognize revenue at the amount to which we have the right to invoice for services performed.

Cash, Restricted Cash, and Cash Equivalents

Our cash and cash equivalents include cash and liquid financial instruments, including money market funds and term deposit investments, with maturities of three months or less when purchased. Restricted cash includes cash and cash equivalents that is restricted through legal contracts, regulations or our intention to use the cash for a specific purpose. Our restricted cash primarily relates to certain traveler deposits and to a lesser extent collateral for office leases. The following table reconciles cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash reported in our consolidated balance sheets to the total amount presented in our consolidated statements of cash flows:


	September 30, 2023		December 31, 2022
	(in millions)
Cash and cash equivalents	$	5,056	$	4,096
Restricted cash and cash equivalents	1,436		1,755

Total cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash and cash equivalents in the consolidated statements of cash flows	$	6,492	$	5,851

Accounts Receivable and AllowancesAccounts receivable are generally due within thirty days and are recorded net of an allowance for expected uncollectible amounts. We consider accounts outstanding longer than the contractual payment terms as past due. The risk characteristics we generally review when analyzing our accounts receivable pools primarily include the type of receivable (for example, credit card vs hotel collect), collection terms and historical or expected credit loss patterns. For each pool, we make estimates of expected credit losses for our allowance by considering a number of factors, including the length of time trade accounts receivable are past due, previous loss history continually updated for new collections data, the credit quality of our customers, current economic conditions, reasonable and supportable forecasts of future economic conditions and other factors that may affect our ability to collect from customers. The provision for estimated credit losses is recorded as cost of revenue in our consolidated statements of operations. During the nine months ended September 30, 2023, we recorded approximately $30 million of incremental allowance for expected uncollectible accounts, offset by $18 million of write-offs.