Marriott Case |
| 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 sales are generated from lodging, 46% from contract services and 13% from restaurants. One of the main factors in Marriot’s lodging success has been their strategy to syndicate hotels to limited partners with a three percent management fee and 20% of profits before depreciation and debt service. One of Marriot’s key strategic elements is to optimize the use of debt in the capital structure for which it uses an interest coverage target instead of debt to equity ratio to determine the ideal amount of debt to hold.
Problems: In order to calculate the WACC (hurdle rate) for each division, many different variables need to be analyzed in detail so that the WACC is a good evaluator of the profitability of future projects. A firm can only use its own cost of capital to evaluate projects when the firm is a single product or single division firm. For conglomerate firms such as Marriott, investment projects in different divisions usually do not have the same level of risk thus it is necessary to determine the required return (risk) for each of its division. Moreover, we need to estimate the beta or the asset risk of each division in order to determine the discount rate to use when evaluating investment projects. Marriott needs to
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 sales are generated from lodging, 46% from contract services and 13% from restaurants. One of the main factors in Marriot’s lodging success has been their strategy to syndicate hotels to limited partners with a three percent management fee and 20% of profits before depreciation and debt service. One of Marriot’s key strategic elements is to optimize the use of debt in the capital structure for which it uses an interest coverage target instead of debt to equity ratio to determine the ideal amount of debt to hold.
Problems: In order to calculate the WACC (hurdle rate) for each division, many different variables need to be analyzed in detail so that the WACC is a good evaluator of the profitability of future projects. A firm can only use its own cost of capital to evaluate projects when the firm is a single product or single division firm. For conglomerate firms such as Marriott, investment projects in different divisions usually do not have the same level of risk thus it is necessary to determine the required return (risk) for each of its division. Moreover, we need to estimate the beta or the asset risk of each division in order to determine the discount rate to use when evaluating investment projects. Marriott needs to