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Marriott Case |

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| Marriott Case | Cost of Capital | | Facts: Dan Cohrs is preparing the annual hurdle rates for the three divisions of Marriot Corporation (Lodging, Contracts, and Restaurants) which will have a significant impact on the firm’s financial and operating strategies. Marriott’s has been truthful to its operating strategy to remain a premier growth company, Marriott’s sales and earnings per share have doubled over the last four years. In 1987 Marriot’s sales rose 24%, the return on equity was 22% and profits were $223 million. Lodging consisted of 51% of Marriott’s profits, while contracts services and restaurants amounted to 33% and 16% respectively. However, the sales mix is not proportionate to relative profits, where 41% of …show more content…

We calculated the unlevered beta for the contract service division by back-factoring the relationship between the divisional Bu 's. We multiplied each divisional beta with the corresponding weight (we used the percentage that each division contributed to last year’s profits as the corresponding weight) and then subtracted the weighted betas from the overall unlevered beta for Marriott and divided it by the weight of the contract service division to obtain an unlevered beta for the contract service division. It is also interesting to note that the restaurants given for the calculation were mostly fast-food chains while Marriott operates rather middle-level restaurants. The average unlevered betas of the middle-class and upper-class restaurants appeared to be slightly higher than the fast food companies indicating that the overall cost of capital for Marriott 's restaurant division should be slightly higher. We also were given Marriott’s target debt to equity ratios and a tax rate for which we had to adjust the unlevered betas. We estimated Marriott’s future

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