Elliott Pushes for Sale of Hilton Grand Vacations

(Bloomberg) -- Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. has built a position in Hilton Grand Vacations Inc. and has been advocating for a sale prior to the company putting itself on the block, according to people familiar with the matter.

The New York-based hedge fund run by billionaire Paul Singer bought a stake of less than 5% in the time-share operator in July, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public.

Hilton Grand Vacations rose as much as 3.2% on the news before settling up less than 1% to $33.82 at 12:13 p.m. in New York trading Wednesday, for a market value of about $2.9 billion. The shares are up about 21% since the New York Post reported Aug. 19 that it had received takeover interest from Apollo Global Management Inc.

Representatives for Elliott and Hilton Grand Vacations declined to comment.

Hilton Grand Vacations, with 55 resorts and more than 315,000 members, fell the most ever on Aug. 1 after lowering its guidance for earnings and sales, citing a lack of inventory in locations like Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and the Big Island of Hawaii.

To contact the reporters on this story: Scott Deveau in New York at sdeveau2@bloomberg.net;Gillian Tan in New York at gtan129@bloomberg.net;Kiel Porter in Chicago at kporter17@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Liana Baker at lbaker75@bloomberg.net, Matthew Monks, Michael Hytha

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.