Investment and Debt Capacity

In the open market share repurchase, the firm may or may not declare the repurchase. Depending on the market condition and the firm’s position in the industry, the firm can decide when and how many

* a.  Determining the allocation of amounts paid to the repurchased shares and other elements of the repurchase transaction

The repurchase program increases the shareholder’s value. This is because of a rise in the price of the shares of the original shareholders.

A buyback allows companies to invest in themselves. By reducing the number of shares outstanding on the market, buybacks increase the proportion of shares a company owns. Buybacks can be carried out in two ways:

Table 7 in the detailed analysis above shows the summary of the Discounted Cash Flow analysis performed for each of the four potential properties considered for investment. From the chart below, we observe that of the four properties, TFB has the maximum increase in reversion value at the end of the holding period, i.e. 10years. On a primarily income generation potential basis, Alison Green, with a Net Present value of the future rents at $734.29 looks attractive among the four options. Looking at the Investment ranks of the four properties with Simple returns and Discounted returns variables, Alison

- A firm has a market value equal to its book value. Currently, the firm has excess cash of $1,200 and other assets of $10,800. Equity is worth $12,000. The firm has 750 shares of stock outstanding and net income of $775. What will the new earnings per share be if the firm uses its excess cash to complete a stock repurchase?

Repurchasing shares with a 40% debt to total capital ratio would increase shareholder value, however repurchasing shares with an 80% debt to total capital ratio would significantly decrease shareholder value and therefore would not be advisable. Increasing debt increases shareholder value to a certain point. As this proforma shows, the point of diminishing return is somewhere between 40% and 80%.

Since firms incur the re-purchase option by offering $20 cash for each stock bought back, the number of outstanding shares will be reduced. The Earnings per share will increase leading to an increased stock price.

According to the American Hotel and Lodging Association, in the year 1900, there were fewer than 10,000 hotels in the US which provided 750,000 to 850,000 rooms. The 2004 figures show that there are 47, 584 hotel properties in the US with 15 rooms or more. There are currently 4,415,696 guestrooms available. The industry had sales of $105.3 billion in 2003, which places average revenue per room at $50.42 with an average occupancy rate

The hotel chain, Astor Lodge and Suites, Inc., operates 250 properties in 10 western and Rocky Mountain states. The company’s customer base primarily comprises business travelers. In addition, the locations of the properties surround airports, large regional shopping centers, and major highways close to suburban industrial sites as well as office complexes. Projections of 2005 fiscal year forecast a fifth consecutive year of a gross loss for the firm. The estimates include an anticipated $422.6 million in company lodging revenues but a net loss of $15.7 million for 2005. As a result, Joseph James, president and CEO of Astor Lodge and Suites, Inc., initiated a challenging goal for executive management to devise a strategy achieving net profits in two years and sustaining positive growth in the future.

Hilton Hotels is one of the biggest players in the US lodging industry. It contributes to about 9% of the total rooms in US lodging market. It has presence in over 78 countries with more than 2500 hotels. Lodging industry is highly capital intensive industry, so to reduce capital expenditure Hilton Hotels opted for self-owned Hotels as well as franchising model with the real estate owners. One of the key features of lodging industry is low switching costs for customers. There is very little margin to differentiate from the major competitors in the industry which include Marriott international, IHG, Accor etc.

The following case analysis portraits the use of capital asset pricing model to compute the weighted average cost of capital for Marriott and each of its divisions. The flow of events below is following a string of different evaluations, each of which is assessed separately.

4. Analysis: Open the Forte Hotel Data (Conjoint, 3 Analysis) data set in My Marketing Engineering, which has competed Steps 5 and 6 in the Tutorial for you. Follow Step 7 in the Tutorial, ((ME>XL==>Conjoint==>Run Analysis) and assess the viability of the four specific hotel concepts that Forte is exploring for the State College area. Base this evaluation on the preferences of a sample of 40 business travelers on that sheet (Exhibit 2) and the cost estimates summarized in Exhibit 3. The base cost to build each hotel room (without the attributes and options listed in Exhibit 3) is expected to be about $40,000 for a 150- to 200-room hotel, regardless of the mix of room

Another factor for management to consider would involve the clientele effects. Presently the Wrigley family controls 21% of common shares and 58% of Class B common stock. Assuming the Wrigley family do not sell any shares, the repurchase will raising their voting control from 46.6% to a majority control over voting rights at 50.6% (see appendix2.2). This isn’t deemed significant as the Wrigley family already previously possessed majority of voting rights

Shares outstanding decrease as the firm takes on more debt. The reason being is that the firm buys back shares with the newly acquired cash from issuing debt.