When Hilton goes public, the world’s largest hotel company will have the world’s largest hotel IPO in history with an initial stock price of $20 per share.
Hilton priced its initial public offering on Wednesday, bringing in $2.35 billion for the company by selling 117.6 million shares. The overall deal values the hotel company at $31 billion, according to Bloomberg News.
The deal is expected to generate a profit of $8.5 billion for Hilton’s owner, Blackstone Group. Blackstone, which acquired Hilton in 2007, owns a 76 percent stake in the company; according to the Wall Street Journal, the private equity company invested about $6.5 billion in Hilton and layered on about $20 billion in debt. The HLT symbol will begin trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Hilton is the world’s largest hotel company by rooms–700,000 of them–and owns a valuable portfolio of properties across the world. Among Hilton’s most famous hotels are New York City’s Waldorf Astoria hotel and the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki.