Whitbread buys back £2 billion of shares

Whitbread PLC is using proceeds from the £3.9 billion ($4.9 billion) sale of its Costa Coffee business to buy back £2 billion ($2.5 billion) of shares to “double the long-term network potential at its hotels business to more than 170,000 rooms in Britain and overseas,” Reuters reports.

Whitbread completed the sale of its coffee division in January and is focusing most of its efforts on hotels. The company “put the potential total for the number of rooms in Britain at 110,000 in the long term from an existing portfolio of 74,000 rooms,” the news outlet reports.

Whitbread is planning to increase the number of hotel rooms in Germany to at least 60,000 rooms with “investment in freehold and leasehold properties, combined with acquisitions.” The company expects to profit from hotels in Germany by fiscal year 2022.