Marriott International has a new 3-year business strategy, which includes adding 300,000 new rooms and returning and as much as $11 billion to shareholders by 2021.
The luxury hotel chain plans to open 1,700 hotels by 2021, with more than 500 hotels (on average) per annum. Marriott hopes that revenue per room would grow at a compounded average rate of between 1% and 3%. The company expects the business expansion to enable it to pay shareholders as much as $9 billion on stock buybacks and nearly $2 billion in dividends over the three years.
It expects its annual diluted earnings to be in the range of $7.65 to $8.50 per share by 2021, which is higher compared to analysts’ average estimate of $7.72 per share (based on Refinitiv data).
Earlier this month, Marriott’s fourth quarter earnings of $1.44 per share surpassed analysts' estimates, but fell short of revenue estimates.
In September, the hotel chain’s Starwood guest reservation data base was hit by a major data breach, which compromised personal data (like name, emailing address, phone numbers and passport numbers) of around 327 million guests.