Could Blackstone Wholesale Strategic Hotels' Assets?

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—Shortly after the Blackstone Group announced on Sept. 8 that it would take Strategic Hotels & Resorts private for approximately $6 billion, analysts saw a division between the Chicago-based lodging REIT’s trophy assets and its lower-echelon ones, and said the deal’s pricing reflected this division. That in turn led SNL Financial to suggest that the alternative asset manager could put some or several of the properties on the block before long. A Blackstone spokesman tells GlobeSt.com the firm has no comment, since the deal for Strategic, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange as BEE, hasn’t closed yet.

SNL quoted RBC Capital Markets analyst Wes Golladay and Cannacord Genuity‘s Ryan Meliker on the split between BEE’s trophies, such as the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, CA, and the “high-quality but non-trophy” assets that comprise the remainder of the REIT’s portfolio. Meliker told SNL that trophy hotels have traded lately at cap rates in the 3% to 4% range. “That’s not going to work for Blackstone,” he said. “It just doesn’t pencil out.”