UPDATE: Barclays Upgrades Starwood Hotels & Resorts

In Friday's morning summary, Barclays analyst, Felicia Hendrix upgraded shares of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

from Equal-weight to Overweight and raised the price target from $84 to $89. Hendrix's upgrade of Starwood comes on the back of the company's recently announced repurchase plan. Hendrix is now predicting Starwood will return $1,618 million to shareholders this year. Moreover, that figure is excluding the special dividend funded by Bal Harbour unit sales and is almost double her previous estimate of $877 million. Hendrix also noted that this brings Starwwod inline with her projection for peer Marriott International's

capital returns of $1,575 million. Hendrix stated, "As Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worlwide closes the gap with Marriott International in terms of capital returns, we expect the valuation gap to close as well." According to Hendrix, Starwood and Marriott currently trade at a 12.7x and 13.5x EV/EBITDA multiple, respectively.