Gaining from rising consumer spending

Article Excerpt

WYNDHAM WORLDWIDE $42.99 (New York symbol WYN; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (973-753-6000; www.wyndhamworldwide.com; Shares outstanding: 154.0 million; Market cap: $6.6 billion; Dividend yield: 2.1%) is one of the world’s largest hospitality companies, with 7,205 franchised hotels worldwide. Aside from Wyndham and Ramada, it owns a variety of other brands, including Days Inn, Super 8, Wingate, Baymont Inn & Suites, Microtel Inns & Suites, Hawthorn Suites, Howard Johnson, Travelodge and AmeriHost Inn. In addition to hotels, Wyndham manages vacation resorts, rental properties, luxury clubs and time-shares. Wyndham now has 100,000 vacation rental properties worldwide. This wide range of operations gives the company more consistent cash flow than most of its competitors, which mainly focus on hotels. In the three months ended December 31, 2011, Wyndham’s revenue rose 6.7%, to $1.0 billion from $937.0 million. The company gets most of its revenue from vacation rather than business travel, and vacation bookings rose in the latest quarter. That helped push up Wyndham’s occupancy rate…