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Hospitality group InterContinental Hotels Group (LON:IHG) reported that it would return $500 million to shareholders via a special dividend and share consolidation. Revenue per available room during the third quarter was flat in American markets, climbed 4.8% in China, and was up 2.5% in the rest of the world.
Chief executive Keith Barr commented: “We delivered a good third quarter performance. Our strategic focus on improving our rooms growth yielded strong results, driving net system size up 5.1% and our best performance for signings and openings in a decade. Global RevPAR grew 1.0%, with performance in the US impacted by strong prior year demand from the 2017 hurricanes.
“[…] Reflecting this rapid implementation of our strategic initiatives and in line with our well-established strategy of returning surplus cash to shareholders, we are today announcing a $500m special dividend with share consolidation, to be paid in early 2019.”
Shares in InterContinental Hotels fell by 5.01% to 4,005.90p.