The Wall Street Transcript > Sectors > Consumer Sector

Wyndham Worldwide Corporation (WYN) featured company in The Wall Street Transcript

2010-12-06 02:06:25

Thomas G. Conforti, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Wyndham Worldwide Corporation (WYN), talked to The Wall Street Transcript about his company. Click here to read the complete interview.

TWST: Wyndham is a well-known name but it would be helpful if you could start with a brief history of the company and an overview of your brands and operations.

Mr. Conforti: Wyndham Worldwide's corporate history can be traced back to the 1990 formation of HFS, Hospitality Franchise Systems. It initially began as a hotel franchisor, then later it extended its hospitality business and became a major real estate and car rental franchisor as well. In late 1997, HFS merged with another company to form Cendant, and then it stayed a part of Cendant until 2006 when Cendant spun off all of its businesses, and we became an independent public company. So those are the historical origins of our company.

Now we have three business units. We have a hotel franchising business with such recognizable brands as Days Inn, Super 8, Ramada, Howard Johnson, and other brands as well, and of course Wyndham. In our hotel business, our brands are mostly found as economy and midscale brands. Wyndham is an upscale brand, and we're developing a greater presence of Wyndham around the world. We have a second business unit, the Wyndham Exchange & Rentals business. That division includes a European vacation rental business that has operating presence in the UK, Denmark, Holland. Many of the rental properties that we rent can be found throughout Europe. Brands that are associated with our European Vacation Rental business include the Hoseasons brand in the UK. Our Scandinavian business is branded under the name Novasol, and our business in Holland has the brand Landal. They are all European vacation rental business, where we act as a value-added intermediary between people who own vacation homes and people who want to rent them. We recently purchased a U.S. vacation rental business, ResortQuest. The business unit also includes a time-share exchange business under the brand name RCI. We are the largest time-share exchange company in the world. Combined, our vacation rental and exchange business generates around $300 million of EBITDA.

 Click here to read the complete interview

American Airlines (AMR) Vice President and Treasurer Describes Citigroup (C) and GE (GE) Financings

2009-11-23 19:01:52

TWST: More recently, I believe the company has focused on strengthening its liquidity and its financial standing in what is clearly a challenging environment for all airlines. Talk a bit about those initiatives.

Ms. Goulet: As you said, it has been a very challenging environment in which to raise liquidity, but year-to-date, we have been very successful. We have raised substantially more than $5 billion year-to-date. Even during the first half of the year, when conditions were about as bad as they could get, we were able to arrange financing both for new delivery aircraft as well as for aircraft already in our fleet. And I think all of this is frankly testament to the fact that we have met our obligations as they have come due, as opposed to resorting to the bankruptcy courts as a number of our competitors have.

Things really got cranking early in the third quarter as the capital markets did begin to reopen. We raised about $800 million of financing in both public and private transactions secured by aircraft, again, already in our fleet or new aircraft that we will be taking delivery of. But the cornerstone of our efforts was laid in September, when we arranged $2.9 billion of financing with two of our long-time key business partners. The first of those is Citigroup (C). We did a $1 billion advance sale of AAdvantage miles with Citi. And then we did two transactions with General Electric (GE) - a $282 million loan facility secured by owned aircraft, and then we put in place with GE a $1.6 billion sale-leaseback commitment that will finance aircraft that we will take delivery of in 2010 and 2011. So those three transactions, the Citi transaction and the two GE transactions, totaled just about $2.9 billion.

GSI Commerce (GSIC) unique e-commerce operator offers great upside

2009-10-26 12:57:07

In our Recent Online And Direct To Consumer Retailing, Frederick Moran Managing Director of The Benchmark Company, LLC  compares online retailers' performance to that of traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, noting that the former group better withstood the economic recession as a result of being younger, less burdened by inventory and generally more efficient. However, he goes on to clarify that the secular market shift toward online retailers continued but did not accelerate during the downturn. Mr. Moran had four buy recommendations below is one to get the other three read the full Online And Direct To Consumer Retailing Report ;

Mr. Moran: Maybe I will just mention my specific thesis on each of my buy recommendations. I have four "buy"-rated stocks right now. The first one is GSI Commerce, ticker GSIC, a $19 stock with a $25 price target. GSIC is a $1 billion company, both in terms of revenue and market cap, and it is an extremely unique e-commerce operator. They don't actually brand anything or sell any of their own products, all they do is facilitate the Internet service for other retailers. They basically produce the Web site, control the warehouse, take the orders and do the deliveries for 100 different partners from Dick's Sporting Goods to Sports Author­ity to the professional sports leagues and others. This year GSI is growing new partners at a record pace and seeing positive growth out of their existing partners. The company has never lost a partner to taking the service in-house or to a competitor. The only time they've lost a partner is because that partner went bankrupt for company-specific reasons. So I think GSI has the ability to grow cash flow 15% to 20% a year, including this year during the down­turn. And we could possibly see an acceleration from that level if the economy allows for it.

Amazon a Sell ?

2009-10-20 10:29:44

As part of our Online And Direct To Consumer Retailing Report we spoke with Hamed Khorsand Analyst BWS Financial Inc. where he talked about E-commerce Investment Themes and his decision to downgrade Amazon to a sell;

Mr. Khorsand: From a business perspective, they (Amazon:AMZN) are doing everything right, and they've always done everything right. They have the best brand, they've always maintained the best pric­ing and the customer is always happy. Our "sell" rating has nothing to do with what management is doing, our "sell" rating has to do with what the market is doing, and the market is putting the astro­nomical valuation on the stock. And the fundamentals are starting to deteriorate compared to what expectations are

Follow us on TWITTER  for exclusive content and content updates

What's next for Education and E-Learning ?

2009-09-11 10:07:58

In our recent 57-page Education Report  we spoke to Robert L. Craig and Jerry R. Herman of Stifel Nicolaus focusing on the OUTLOOK FOR EDUCATION & E-LEARNING and what Investors should be looking at;

Mr. Craig: We continue to be positive on the group. We don't follow every company in the sector, we follow most of them and most of those quite frankly are rated buy and have been rated buy for some time. We think these valuations are attractive and there are various ways you can play this group. If you take a longer-term perspective, then in our opinion, the best attributes to look for are relative nascency or small size, quality as measured by student outcomes and satisfaction and value proposition for the student. Valuation is of secondary importance. On a nearterm basis, if valuation is what drives your investment decision, then there is an awful lot to work with here because, in our opinion, PE's are very attractive relative to sustainable rates of growth.

Also the impact of the current Administration on the Industry is discussed;

Mr. Herman: Given the backdrop and the vision of this Administration, there are certain companies clearly positioned to be part of the solution to the problem of the shortage of post-secondary education capacity. Companies that we believe are positioned to help solve that problem and also have good student outcomes and academic performance include the likes of DeVry and Strayer and Capella, and even Apollo. Those companies have generally very solid metrics.

Make sure to follow us on TWITTER for exclusive content