Marriott Corporation: the Cost of Capital

1. To begin, assume that it is now January 1, 1993, and that each bond in Table 1 matures on December 31 of the year listed. Further, assumes that each bond has $1,000 par value, each had a 30-year maturity when it was issued, and the bonds currently have a 10 percent required nominal rate or return.

Bethesda, Maryland is the headquarters of Marriott International Incorporate. This unique organization transpired from a root beer stand in 1927 into a world-renowned hospitality hotel chain in 1957. Information provided will focus on the evolution of the root beer stand into the Marriott International Incorporate vast hospitality empire. Today, the Marriott hospitality industry has 5,756 hotels with 30 brands in 118 countries with 1.1 million rooms. Additionally, the Marriott generated $14 billion in revenue during 2016 and had over 85 million combined loyalty members between the Marriott and Starwood Preferred Guest reward programs. Furthermore, Marriott partnered with Universal Music Group to bring their rewards member’s additional

Although this investment class can be considered the most conservative of the three, the low yield of government bonds in the past 10 years does not lend a comparative metric against many other investment opportunities (Jacobs, 2012). The fixed rate of these instruments allows for a guaranteed return, but should only be utilized at a point in an investing cycle when risk is higher than potential income growth. The 25% allocation that is invested in this class is positioned to provide a long term guaranteed investment, with the possible that these lower rates will not rise significantly in the next few years.

Marriott Corporation began from root bear stand, and developed to be the leading supplier of food services and leading logging company in the U.S. The leading parts of the business were lodging, contract services, and restaurants. Their intentions regarding the business strategy was to focus on employees and customer satisfaction. In that way, they can remain the leading growth company. The financial strategies used were:

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

a) It is advisable to manage than to own as it is consistent with the growth strategy. In this manner, mar riot can attract additional capital that gives it an opportunity to even invest more in the future, share the risks with limited partners. The partnership can be of great benefit as it is a good way of saving on taxes.

D* = 3.59/1.053 = 3.41 years Learning Objective: 11-02 Compute the duration of bonds; and use duration to measure interest rate sensitivity.

According to the newspaper, the Rf (risk free-rate) for a long-term Government of Canada Bonds is 5.82%. The RM (return on the market) as the geometric average for Market Index is 10.2%. For the accuracy reason, we chose to use the geometric average for both long-term government bonds and market portfolio.

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 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.

In this case, the Partner’s Treasury Department has computed all the portfolios for minimum level of risk with different types of assets, more specifically, adding Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), Commodities or both, from an undefined approach. Since the results are identical as calculated from Mean-Variance Theory, they should be the optimal portfolios for each target level of return. Therefore a graph with efficient frontier, which represents the optimal portfolios with different assets, is constructed based on Exhibit 5 to 8 for comparison. [Appendix B] Technically, any portfolio on the efficient frontier is an optimized portfolio and is indifferent from each other in terms of risk/return trade off.

b. Generate a graph or table showing how the bond’s present value changes for semi-annually compounded interest rates between 1% and 15%.

To properly analyze fixed-income securities, we established six major factors to consider. First is the security’s depth of the market. Have there been significant changes in the market since the financial crisis? The second factor is the main players in the market. This includes issuers and buyers of the financial instrument along with any other servicing institutions. The third reason, the purpose of the investment. Fourth is the current condition of the financial instrument’s secondary market. How active is it? Are there transaction costs? How are the instruments priced? The fifth factor is the risks in the investments. Last but not least is the sixth reason which is the financial instrument’s valuation. How should intrinsic value be

As we can see from the table, we set the interest rate of borrowing at 9.5% .

TABLE NUMBER 1). 2). 3). 4). 5). 6). 7). 8). 9). TITLE LIST OF INVESTMENT BANKS LIST OF MUTUAL FUNDS LIST OF TIME SERIES TESTS CARRIED