CAR [NASD] Avis Budget Group, Inc. Industrials | Rental & Leasing Services | USA Avis Budget Group, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides car and truck rentals, car sharing, and ancillary services to businesses and consumers. It operates the Avis brand, a vehicle rental system that supply rental cars to the premium commercial and leisure segments of the travel industry; the Budget Truck brand, a local and one-way truck rental businesses with a fleet of approximately 20,000 vehicles, which are rented through a network of approximately 515 dealer-operated and 410 company-operated locations that serve the consumer and light commercial sectors in the continental United States; and the Zipcar brand, a car sharing network. The company also operates various other car rental brands, such as Budget, Payless, Apex, Maggiore, MoriniRent, FranceCars, Amicoblue, Turiscar, and ACL Hire. In addition, it offers optional insurance products and coverages, such as supplemental liability, personal accident, personal effects protection, emergency sickness protection, and cargo insurance products; fuel service options, roadside assistance services, electronic toll collection services, curbside delivery, tablet rentals, access to satellite radio, portable navigation units, and child safety seat rentals; automobile towing equipment and other moving accessories, such as hand trucks, furniture pads, and moving supplies; and Business Intelligence solution, an online portal for corporate travel. Avis Budget Group, Inc. operates in approximately 10,600 locations worldwide. The company was formerly known as Cendant Corporation and changed its name to Avis Budget Group, Inc. in September 2006. Avis Budget Group, Inc. was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey.
Avis (CAR) Takes The Wheel Of The Transports Wed, Nov 3, 2021 In an earlier post, we highlighted the relative performance of one of the key industries used to gauge broader economy/market health: the semis. As for another—perhaps more old school—cohort of stocks considered to be a leading group acting as a barometer for the broader economy, the Dow Transports have seen some interesting moves this week. In the chart below, we show the relative strength line of the Dow Transports versus the S&P 500 over the past five years. On a relative basis, the group has generally underperformed over the past few years, but more recently the relative strength line has been headed higher. Yesterday alone, though, it received a massive boost. Heading into yesterday, the index was hovering right around resistance at the spring highs. It then surged 6.88% which not only smashed through that resistance but was the largest single-day gain since 5/18/20. The Dow Transports have a very long history going back to the late 1800s. As for just how impressive yesterday's move was, since 1900 there have been less than 50 other days with as large of a single day gain as yesterday. And at the intraday high, the Transports were up an even more impressive 14.5%. The index's massive gains can be chalked up in large part to a single name: Avis Budget (CAR). The car rental group more than doubled yesterday on better than expected earnings, and potentially there were some short squeeze factors at play as the stock had 29% of shares sold short as of mid-October. As we noted last week when that data was released, that placed CAR as not only the most heavily shorted transport stock but the most heavily shorted stock of the whole S&P 1500. The Dow Transports is a price-weighted index meaning that stocks with higher prices per share have larger impacts on the index. After doubling in a single day yesterday and even after falling well over 18% today, CAR is now the second highest-priced stock in the Dow Transports behind Kansas City Southern (KSU). Prior to earnings, it ranked as the eighth highest priced stock in the group. In other words, the massive move in the past few days has resulted in the moves of CAR contributing far more to the moves in the Dow Transports than what is normal. As for how large of an impact the past couple of sessions have had, below we show the daily point contribution of each member since October 2014 when CAR was added to the index—CAR is one of the most recent additions with the only newer members being United Airlines (UAL) in 2018 and American Airlines (AAL) in 2015. The extremely volatile moves of the stock paired with what is now a high price point relative to the rest of the index has resulted in the stock having major impacts on the day to day moves in the index.
