Blackstone Profits Jump 86% On Hilton Appreciation
Blackstone Group, the world’s largest private equity firm, ended last year with a bang, thanks to its largest public asset, Hilton Worldwide Holdings, appreciating and pushing the firm’s Q4 profits up 86%.
Hilton rose 19% in Q4 after Blackstone sold a 25% stake in the company to China’s HNA Group in a $6.5B deal, Bloomberg reports. Blackstone’s economic net income, a metric that reflects realized and unrealized investment gains, jumped to $811.6M in Q4, up from 435.7M in the year-ago quarter.
During the quarter Blackstone sold $3.5B worth of real estate, including London’s DoubleTree hotel, the Hyatt Regency Pier 66 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and the Burlington hotel in Dublin. [Bloomberg]