Priceline Powers Internet ETFs

Shares of travel reservations provider Priceline Group Inc PCLN were trading higher by 5.3 percent at time of writing after touching an all-time high earlier following the company's second-quarter earnings report.

To Recap

The company posted quarterly net income of $517 million, or $9.94 per share, compared to $576.5 million, or $10.89 per share, in the year-ago period. On an adjusted basis, the company's earnings came in at $12.45 per share.

Its revenue climbed to $2.28 billion from $2.12 billion. Analysts were expecting earnings of $11.98 per share on revenue of $2.27 billion. The average estimate among 60 Estimize users was for earnings of $12.41 per share and revenue of $2.30 billion.

On To ETFs...

Priceline's ascent to new highs is pushing a pair of Internet exchange traded funds higher as well. The PowerShares NASDAQ Internet Portfolio PNQI and the First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index Fund FDN are the ETFs with the largest Priceline weights and each is flirting with gains of 2 percent.

To this point in Wednesday's session, 24 ETFs have made all-time highs and FDN is one thanks in part to an almost 5.8 percent Priceline allocation. Priceline shows as FDN's third-largest holding, but when combining both classes of Google Inc GOOG stock, Priceline is really the ETF's fourth-largest holding.

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FDN has surged 19.6 percent, more than doubling the returns of the Nasdaq Composite. Priceline has helped, but FDN's big advantages lie in large weights to Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN, Facebook Inc FB and Netflix, Inc. NFLX. The ETF has weights of 10.6 percent, 10.1 percent and 5.3 percent to those stocks, all of which are the largest to those beloved Internet names among all ETFs.

The $231 million PowerShares NASDAQ Internet Portfolio also shows Priceline as its fourth-largest holding, but in the case of this ETF, Priceline commands a weight of almost 9 percent, the biggest weight to that stock among well-known ETFs.

PNQI has also more than doubled the Nasdaq Composite's returns this year, jumping 16.7 percent. The ETF has lagged FDN because the PowerShares offering sports a large weight to Twitter Inc TWTR than its First Trust rival and a stake in Baidu BIDU, two stocks that have recently slumped. FDN does not own shares of Baidu.

In its favor is this: PNQI makes for cost-efficient access to a slew of high-priced stocks. Five of the ETF's top 10 holdings have triple- or quadruple-digit price tags. Amazon, Facebook, Google and Priceline combine for about 37 percent of PNQI's weight.