LONDON, June 27, 2026, 21:03 BST
- IHG last traded Friday at $171.55 in London, 2.4% below its June 25 high of $175.70.
- A June 26 filing shows 200,000 shares bought over 10 purchase days through June 25, at about $34.0 million in total.
- New Italy and Portugal signings announced last week add 772 named rooms, most of them through conversions.
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (LON:IHG) will start next week with its London shares still close to a record, after the Holiday Inn owner bought stock through June at prices near last week’s high. The London Stock Exchange is shut on weekends; IHG’s latest London trade was Friday’s $171.55 close, down 0.64% on the day.
The stock rose 1.36% for the week from its June 19 close, while the FTSE 100 (INDEXFTSE:UKX) gained 1.40%. IHG touched $175.70 on Thursday, June 25, and volume that day was 839,904 shares, more than twice Friday’s 386,664.
The buyback is the sharper data point. In a Form 6-K posted Friday, IHG listed 10 daily purchases of 20,000 ordinary shares each from June 12 to June 25. Using the disclosed average prices, the outlay was about $34.0 million, at a weighted average of $170.17 per share.
The last purchase, made on June 25, was at an average price of $174.4244. The company said the bought shares would be cancelled and that shares in issue after the purchase stood at 149,163,876, excluding treasury shares.
That matters because the board launched a new $950 million buyback for 2026 after more than $1.1 billion of shareholder returns in 2025. At near-record prices, each buyback dollar retires fewer shares than it did earlier in the programme, so room growth and fee growth carry more of the per-share case.
IHG changed the trading currency of its London shares from sterling to dollars from Jan. 2, saying the shift would reduce currency translation effects and better match the group’s dollar reporting. That makes this year’s buyback easier to read: the share price, buyback budget and reported earnings are now in the same currency.
On the operating side, last week’s fresh pipeline news was mostly Southern Europe. On Thursday, IHG announced four Italian signings that take its Italy portfolio to more than 50 open and pipeline hotels. The projects named in the release total 449 rooms, including a 263-room dual-branded Crowne Plaza and Staybridge Suites conversion in Milan.
On Wednesday, IHG announced the 323-room InterContinental Vilamoura – Algarve in Portugal, a conversion from Crowne Plaza due to open in April 2027 after renovation. Together, the two releases add 772 named rooms, with about 83% of that count tied to conversions rather than ground-up development.
Willemijn Geels, IHG’s vice president for development in Europe, said of Italy: “we’re only getting started.” The quote is useful for investors because Italy is no longer a small white-space market for IHG; the company says it has 32 open hotels there and 20 more in development. InterContinental Hotels Group PLC
The last trading update set the base for the share move. Reuters reported in May that IHG’s first-quarter global revenue per available room rose 4.4%, above expectations of 3.3%, with U.S. RevPAR up 3.4% and Greater China up 5.7%. CEO Elie Maalouf told analysts that U.S. “consumer spending is good.” Reuters
The weak point was the Middle East, where Reuters said RevPAR fell 2% in the quarter and IHG warned April RevPAR in the region was down about 50%. AlphaValue analyst Yi Zhong said IHG’s midscale brands were well placed for value-seeking leisure travellers, but business travel exposure could limit gains versus peers.
For the week ahead, the near-term tape is likely to be set by any fresh transaction-in-own-shares notices, whether the stock retests $175.70, and whether more conversion deals land before the half-year results date in August. IHG’s financial calendar lists half-year results to June 30, 2026, for Aug. 11.
