Hilton IPO Arrives at a Fair Price

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By Jon C. Ogg Published

Waikiki

Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. has now formally priced its initial public offering of 117,640,624 shares of common stock at $20.00 per share. This pricing is rather fair considering that the price range was last indicated at $18 to $21 before tightening up. Hilton will trade under the ticker “HLT” on the New York Stock Exchange. We would note that this deal was slightly up-sized due to demand.

Hilton Worldwide itself is offering 64,102,564 of the shares and 53,538,060 of the shares are being sold by private equity backers.

The private equity giant The Blackstone Group LP (NYSE: BX) will own a majority stake in the company. This is also being touted as one of the most profitable deals for private equity taking a hotel chain private and then bringing it public all over again.

Hilton Worldwide intends to use the net proceeds from the offering and available cash to repay approximately $1.25 billion of term loan borrowings outstanding under its senior secured credit facilities. It appears that the deal is coming at close to 13-times expected EBITDA and Blackstone appears to be close to 75% ownership after the deal, depending upon the overallotment option.

The underwriting syndicate is massive here. Joint book runners are listed as Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, BofA Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo Securities. Co-managers are listed as follows: Blackstone Capital Markets, Macquarie Capital, Barclays, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, HSBC, RBS, Baird, Credit Agricole CIB, Nomura, Raymond James, RBC Capital Markets, UBS Investment Bank, CastleOak Securities, Drexel Hamilton, Telsey Advisory Group and Ramirez and Co. The overallotment option of up to an additional 17,646,093 shares at the initial public offering is coming from the shareholder led by Blackstone affiliates rather than the company.

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About the Author Jon C. Ogg →

Jon Ogg has been a financial news analyst since 1997. Mr. Ogg set up one of the first audio squawk box services for traders called TTN, which he sold in 2003. He has previously worked as a licensed broker to some of the top U.S. and E.U. financial institutions, managed capital, and has raised private capital at the seed and venture stage. He has lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, as well as New York and Chicago, and he now lives in Houston, Texas. Jon received a Bachelor of Business Administration in finance at University of Houston in 1992. www.247wallst.com.

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