Starwood Hotels and Resorts posts profitable quarter

Stamford-based Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. posted second-quarter results recently, notching a year-over-year gain in net income while absorbing a multimillion-dollar decrease in earnings in its vacation/ownership/residential business programs.

Excluding special items, the company’s earnings per share for the second quarter from continuing operations was $0.77. Including special items, earnings per share from continuing operations was $0.80, up from $0.71 in the second quarter of 2013.

Excluding special items, income from continuing operations was $147 million. Including special items, income from continuing operations was $153 million, an increase from $137 million in last year’s second quarter.

Management fees, franchise fees and other income increased 10.2 percent compared with 2013. Based on so-called basis points, the company and its individual hotels in nine hotel groups saw upticks. Starwood’s brands include the Sheraton, Westin and St. Regis names.

Earnings from Starwood”™s vacation ownership and residential business decreased approximately $30 million compared with 2013, including a $29 million decrease in earnings from the St. Regis Bal Harbour residential project, a billion-dollar high-rise in Florida completed in 2012 that the company says is now sold out.

During the second quarter, the company signed 45 hotel management and franchise contracts, representing approximately 8,500 rooms, and opened 19 hotels and resorts with approximately 3,800 rooms.

In May, Building and Land Technology, owner and developer of Harbor Point, a mixed-use waterfront development in Stamford, announced Starwood had inked a new 430,000-square-foot, 20-year lease for its global headquarters at One StarPoint there, adding 130,000 square feet to the hotelier’s footprint. Starwood moved to Stamford from White Plains, N.Y., in January 2012.

That deal envisions another 340 jobs coming to Stamford.