In an amended 13G recently filed with the SEC, Daniel Och’s OZ Capital Management has disclosed a 5.97% ownership stake in Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. (NYSE:HOT). The aggregate amount of shares beneficially owned amounts to 10.17 million, up by about 1.54 million shares from the position reported in the fund’s prior filing on Starwood.
Och-Ziff Capital Management is a hedge fund and global alternative asset management firm established by Daniel S. Och in 1994. The firm pursues a broad range of investment opportunities worldwide through its offices in New York, London, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and Beijing. OZ Capital Management is currently among the largest institutional alternative asset firms in the world, with $46.5 billion in assets under management as of August 1, 2015. Moreover, the firm employs a multi-strategy approach to investing, which consists of merger arbitrage, convertible and derivative arbitrage, equity restructuring, and credit and distressed investments, to name just a few. According to the fund’s most recent 13F filing with the SEC, OZ Capital Management oversees a public equity portfolio with a market value of $30.85 billion as of March 31, with the fund’s top ten holdings accounting for 24.35% of the aforementioned value.
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Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. (NYSE:HOT) is an American hotel and leisure company with more than 1,200 properties in approximately 100 countries. The company owns, operates, and franchises hotels, resorts, and residences under several renowned brands. Starwood announced in April that it planned to explore strategic options and other financial alternatives to increase shareholder value, which in turn fueled speculation of a potential merger with one of its competitors, InterContinental. A potential deal could have created the largest hotel operator in the world, with more than 1 million rooms. However, the board of directors of IHG denied the rumors about a combination of the businesses in late-July. The shares of Starwood have lost nearly 5% since the beginning of the current year, partly owing to InterContinental Hotels Group’s rebuttal of said merger talks.
But the news does not suggest that Starwood has failed to grow its activities and operations. On the contrary, the hotel and leisure company has been continually expanding its operations lately. During the second quarter of the year, the company signed 64 hotel management and franchise contracts, with 49 representing new builds and 15 conversions from other brands. For instance, Starwood together with Atlantic Hotels Group and Civitas Capital Group has recently announced its plans for a 224-room hotel development in Texas, which is set to open in December of 2016. This is just one of the multiple deals that Starwood has carried out over the last few months.
We’ll now take a quick look at Starwood’s financial report for the second quarter of this year so as to shed some light on how the company has been performing recently. Starwood reported revenues of $1.48 billion for the quarter, compared to a figure of $1.54 billion reported a year ago. Likewise, the company posted earnings per share (EPS) from continuing operations of $0.79, compared to $0.80 reported last year. Additionally, Starwood has pinpointed that the management of the company has a clear goal of increasing effectiveness and reducing its costs in the upcoming months. During the second quarter, the company started to implement a previously-announced reorganization plan, which has so far resulted in improved efficiency and higher speed of execution. In addition to that, it has also been mentioned that the company is very serious about driving its organic growth, which might suggest that Starwood is set to grow both organically and through mergers and acquisitions over the coming years.
Doug Silverman and Alexander Klabin’s Senator Investment Group represents the largest shareholder of Starwood within our database, holding an equity stake of 5.65 million shares as of March 31. Of funds that have filed for June 30, Ken Fisher`s Fisher Asset Management holds 193,024 shares, having increased its stake slightly during the second quarter.
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