Marriott Corp: the Cost of Capital

Free Cash Flow = Sales Revenues – Operating Costs and Taxes – Required Investments in Operating Capital. Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) is affected by market interest rates, market risk aversion, cost of debt, cost of equity, firm’s debt/equity mix, and firm’s business risk. Therefore, free cash flows and the weighted average cost of capital interact to determine a firm’s value by the following equation:

Manage rather than own hotel assets In 1987, Marriott developed more than $1 billion worth of hotel properties, making it one of the 10 largest commercial real estate developers in the United States. With a fully integrated development process, Marriott identified markets, created development plans, designed projects, and evaluated potential profitability. After development, the company sold the hotel assets to limited partners while retaining operating control as the general partner under a long-term management contract. Management fees typically equaled 3% of revenues plus 20% of the profits before

10. What is the correct capital structure and weighted average cost of capital for discounting the investment’s free cash flow. Assume a 35% tax rate. A correct response requires that you define capital structure and Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) with a formula. When defining a term with a formula be sure that all the variables are also defined.

Marriott is renowned for its elegant and comfortable hotels and resorts. The company caters to a targeted customer base, ranging from the frequent corporate business traveler to the family enjoying their occasional weekend get-away. Marriott has continued its rise in the lodging, contract services, and restaurant industries. The company continuously strives to meet the needs and wants of its customers while strategically maneuvering the rigors of today’s competitive and ever-evolving market of glamorous destinations and convenient services. In order to remain relevant in a highly-competitive environment, Marriott must strike that successful balance of minimizing costs, and gaining and effectively

The idea of repurchasing shares was no stranger to Bill Marriott by January 1980. Almost five million shares of common stock had been repurchased on the open market by Marriott Corporation during 1979 at a total cost of $74 million and an average price of $15.16 in the belief that they were undervalued—a belief that still was not fully reflected in the market price. At $19 5/8, the stock was selling at only six times cash flow per share; and its price/earnings ratio of nine was a far cry from historical multiples as high as fifty times as recently as 1973. Its low price seemed to offer once again an obvious opportunity to benefit shareholders. However,

The mixture of debt-equity mix is important so as to maximize the stock price of the Costco. However, it will be significant to consider the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) as well so that it can evaluate the company targeted capital structure. Cost of capital (OC) may be used by the companies as for long term decision making, so industries that faced to take the important of Cost of capital seriously may not make the right choice by choosing the right project(Gitman’s, ).

In order to find the WACC, we need to find the cost of the components of the capital structure and their proportion in the total capital.

Discounted cash flow analysis in Exhibit 12 We do not know the beta for Interco’s equity. Therefore, it is not possible for us to estimate the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) for Interco. Note that here WACC method is appropriate because Interco is not

2. How does Marriott use its estimate of its cost of capital? Does this make sense?

As Market risk premium I take the “Spread between S& P 500 Composite Returns and Long-Term U.S. Government Bond Returns 1926-1987” from Exhibit 5 as appropriate value.

Moreover, let’s calculate the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC). And in order to calculate it we need to know the capital structure of the company. Knowing the capital structure of the

• Compute a separate cost of capital (WACC) for the lodging business, contract services business and restaurant business.

For this reason, new, or marginal, costs are used in its calculation. WACC is calculated by multiplying the cost of each capital component by its proportional weight and then summing then together. The capital components included in this calculation are a firms after-tax costs of debt, preferred stock, and common stock.

Although, it is true that lower hurdle rates would translate into high growth projects, but including it in Manager’s compensation plan might lead to agency problem where managers may try to manipulate the hurdle rates in order to get the projects through and make money.

WACC calculations entailed several different steps prior to using the actual WACC formula. First, by using CPP’s balance sheet we identified its D/E, by dividing Debt portion by the Equity portion arriving at 2.07, than we calculated D/V – 0.67 and E/V – 0.33. Afterwards, we used comparable firm Wackenhut’s capital structure for our analysis and applied it to our calculations. Wackenhut’s capital structure consisted of 92% equity and 8% debt. Subsequently, we went through the Beta unlevering and then levering process using above capital structure. To unlever, we multiplied given beta of 0.89 by the debt portion of capital structure 0.92, than we relevered the Beta_e=(1+D/E 2.07) * unlevered Beta 0.82 = 2.51. Next step consisted of calculating R_e=R_f+beta_e*MRP= 8.6%(given)+2.51*7.5% (given)=27.41%.