With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

F500 2025-Avis Budget Group

<p>Avis Budget Group is a provider of vehicle rental and mobility solutions operating under several brands. The company offers short- and long-term rentals, as well as car-sharing and fleet management services. Its customer base includes leisure travelers, business clients, and corporate accounts. Avis Budget Group maintains operations at airports and urban centers around the world.</p>

The 300 companies on this year’s list brought in over $12.6 trillion in revenue for the latest 12 months, with the median revenue figure at $22 billion.

America's Most Innovative Companies

Industries included in the sector are automotive retail, general merchandisers, internet retail, and specialty retail.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Retailing

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-498-Avis Budget Group

The parent group of multiple car rental companies and Zipcar operates in 180 countries around the world.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-345-Avis

The New Jersey-based rental car company that operates the Avis and Budget brands also owns car-sharing service Zipcar.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Avis Budget Group is a provider of vehicle rental and mobility solutions operating under several brands. The company offers short- and long-term rentals, as well as car-sharing and fleet management services. Its customer base includes leisure travelers, business clients, and corporate accounts. Avis Budget Group maintains operations at airports and urban centers around the world.

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Avis Budget Group (CAR): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Avis Budget Group

avis budget group

Greetings. Welcome to the Avis Budget Group Q1 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Question-and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to David Calabria, Treasurer and Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance. Thank you, David. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me are Brian Choi, our Chief Executive Officer, and Daniel Cunha, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that we will be discussing forward-looking information, including potential future financial performance, which is subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements and information. Such risks and assumptions, uncertainties, and other factors are identified in our earnings release and other periodic filings with the SEC, as well as the investor relations section of our website. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as prediction of actual results, and any or all of our forward-looking statements may prove to be inaccurate, and we can make no guarantees about our future performance. We undertake no obligation to update or revise our forward-looking statements.

On this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings press release, which is available on our website for how we define these measures and reconciliations to the closest comparable GAAP measures. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Brian.

Thanks, David, and thank you to everyone joining us today for our first quarter earnings call. There's a lot to cover this morning, and as you've seen in our earnings release and financial supplement, we've begun executing on the changes we outlined last quarter. In particular, the actions we've taken around fleet reduction and supply discipline are starting to show up in both our operational performance and our financial results. We believe these changes do much to strengthen Avis. Daniel and I will walk you through the details of the business, but before we do that, I want to address what I know is top of mind for many of you, the recent volatility we've seen in our stock price. We've received a number of questions, so I think it's worth taking a moment to walk through the facts as we understand them based on disclosure from public filings.

Let's start with what's well understood. Our second-largest shareholder, Pentwater Capital, who filed as a 9% owner of our company as of December 31st, 2025, crossed the 10% ownership threshold on February 20th and became a Section 16 insider. On that day, Pentwater disclosed they held an economic interest of 39% of our company through stock and cash-settled swaps. By March, they disclosed that economic interest increased to 51%. In the span of a month, Pentwater's public filings showed their economic interest increased substantially. We believe that this significant increase in ownership, combined with the high short interest in our name, resulted in a short squeeze. That much is well understood. Here's what we're absorbing just now.

After market closed yesterday, Pentwater disclosed the sale of 4.3 million shares for gross proceeds of $1.75 billion on April 22nd and April 23rd. Given the quantum of shares sold in such a short span of time, our stock price experienced a significant decline. It is important to note that Avis has not bought or sold a share since 2024. Our largest shareholder, SRS, has not bought or sold a share since 2023. It seems the only insider active during this period of excess volatility was Pentwater Capital. Pentwater has acknowledged that its sale of Avis stock, at least in part, was violative of the SEC Section 16 short swing profit rules. Avis has requested Pentwater furnish it all relevant information concerning the trades, and Avis will aggressively pursue all rights on behalf of our stockholders.

From the company's perspective, nothing about how we operate the business has changed, and our focus remains squarely on execution and long-term value creation. With that context, let's turn back to the fundamentals of the business. On our last earnings call, we laid out the difficult but necessary decisions required to put this business on a stronger footing. We executed on that plan in the first quarter, and the early results reflect that progress. Overall, we're pleased with our first quarter performance, which delivered adjusted EBITDA above plan. Before I turn it over to Daniel to walk through the details, I want to highlight a few proof points that demonstrate how the business is responding. Starting with revenue, this was the first quarter in 10 where we delivered growth in the Americas, driven by strong RPD performance.

That was a direct result of our decision to better align supply with demand, allowing us to be more selective in the business we accepted and improve pricing discipline. International continued to execute well on its mix strategy, also delivering strong RPD growth. On the fleet side, we were able to take advantage of a stronger-than-expected first quarter used car demand. The Manheim Index tracked above prior years at this point in the seasonal curve, and our teams moved quickly, disposing a record number of vehicles in the Americas, where we did not expect residual values to hold. Operationally, utilization was the highest we've seen in over 15 years for the first quarter in the Americas, despite continued recall-related constraints. We effectively managed our assets through a volatile environment, including weather disruptions early in the quarter, TSA-related impacts, and broader geopolitical uncertainty.

Beyond day-to-day execution, we continue to invest in key areas of our longer-term strategy. Avis First is now in 36 locations, including nine international airports. We continue to see strong customer satisfaction metrics. While still early, we're seeing encouraging adoption and believe the product has significant long-term potential. On the Waymo front, we remain on track for our Dallas launch in the third quarter and are nearing public rider availability. As we've said previously, we expect to expand into additional cities over time and remain in active discussions with our partner. With that, I'll turn it over to Daniel to walk through the quarter in more detail.

Let me start with the America segment, where we saw several clear signs of progress this quarter. Revenue grew 2.9% year-over-year, the first such increase in Americas in 10 quarters. Just as important as the growth itself is how it was constructed. Rental days were essentially flat, while RPD increased 2.8%. This marks the first quarter of positive pricing in the Americas since the fourth quarter of 2022, and we view that as a meaningful inflection point. RPD was modestly positive in January and exited the quarter up nearly 4% year-over-year. We also saw improved ancillary performance, which grew 1.9% year-over-year and continued to support a shift toward higher quality revenue. Leisure share of revenue increased by 1.1 point in the quarter.

The key driver of this performance was the shift in fleet strategy we outlined last quarter. TSA volumes grew 1.6% in the quarter, while we reduced fleet by 0.6%, a deliberate decision to better align supply with demand. Despite a smaller fleet and continued recall-related constraints, we maintained rental days to improve the operational execution and higher utilization. We also took advantage of first quarter strength in the used car market to further right size the fleet. In doing so, we prioritized speed over yield, which helped accelerate normalization of depreciation. Monthly depreciation in the Americas averaged approximately $380 for a quarter, starting above $500 in January and improving into the mid-$300s by March. As noted in our supplemental financials, we expect depreciation to decline meaningfully in the second quarter.

We exit the quarter with the healthiest fleet position we've had since the pandemic and a fleet that is approximately 20% younger, positioning us well for the balance of the year. Our international segment continues to execute on a strategy of shifting revenue mix towards higher return segments. Rental days were down 3.8% year-over-year, while RPD increased 3% on a constant currency basis. This transition began in the second quarter last year, we're in the process of aligning our staffing, real estate footprint, and go-to-market to support that new mix. That has created some temporary cost inefficiencies, we view those as transitional, while the improved revenue mix is structural. From a demand standpoint, the international environment remains uneven and difficult to predict. We're seeing variability across regions influenced by geopolitical developments and higher travel costs.

That said, we're positioned to benefit from shifts in travel behavior, particularly toward intra-regional travel within Europe, where rental can be a more attractive alternative. With that, I'll turn to our leverage, liquidity, and outlook. As of March 31, we had over $900 million of available liquidity, along with approximately $2.9 billion of additional capacity across our ABS facilities. Our net corporate leverage ratio was 7.6x, and we expect to reduce that to below 6x by year-end through earnings growth and continued debt repayment. We remain focused on returning to more normalized leverage levels, and importantly, we have no corporate debt maturities until 2027. During the first quarter, we executed a number of refinancing transactions that reinforce our access to capital. In February, we renewed our European securitization facility for approximately EUR 2.4 billion, extending its maturity by two years.

In March, we issued $668 million of ASOP term debt across three and five year tenors to refinance maturing obligations. The transaction was well-received, oversubscribed, and priced on favorable terms, reflecting continued demand for our credit. We also expect to renew our $2.4 billion ASOP VFN facility at the end of the month, along with an additional $480 million of seasonal capacity through October 2026. Overall, the first quarter represents a strong start to the year. We exceeded our adjusted EBITDA plan by approximately $50 million, supported by improved pricing and disciplined fleet execution. As a result, we're raising our full-year guidance to a range of $850 million-$1 billion in adjusted EBITDA. With that, I'll turn it back to Brian.

Thanks, Daniel. As we look ahead, there are a few key areas that we are monitoring closely. First, the geopolitical environment, particularly in the Middle East, has already begun to impact energy prices and remains an important variable for the balance of the year. Higher fuel costs can influence consumer behavior, including vehicle preference and overall demand. We are beginning to see early signs of a mix shift and are actively managing our fleet composition and disposition strategy in response. From a demand perspective, we are seeing a healthy buildup into the summer season. Rental days in the Americas are trending mid-single-digit growth with RPD holding. The Easter shift will impact second quarter comparisons, underlying demand remains constructive. We are also seeing strong demand in key markets, including World Cup host cities, where both rental days and pricing are performing well.

For our Avis team listening today, our priorities remain clear and unchanged. We will continue to manage fleet with discipline, drive utilization across the network, and execute consistently. These are the fundamentals of how we run the business. They position us to serve customers well, protect profitability, and create long-term value. With that, operator, we would be happy to take questions.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. One moment, please, while we poll for your questions. Our first questions come from the line of Dan Levy with Barclays. Please proceed with your questions.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Can you please just address the pricing trends? Daniel, this is the first positive quarter of pricing in Americas in, you know, several years now. What flipped in the quarter? I know you gave some commentary on how things are looking into the second quarter so far. What's the confidence that this can hold for the balance of the year? Maybe you could just give a sense of how the trends have changed and why this has flipped.

Yeah, sure. Dan, I'll start. Then Daniel can add. You're right, this is the single biggest fundamental change that we've seen in years in our business. I think the biggest shift that we've seen at least is, like I said on our fourth quarter earnings call, is us taking a pretty different philosophical approach with how we view supply and demand in the industry. We're not there to take every last rental. We're fleeting to account for that. I think the lower supply, and this was shown by kind of the number of cars that we disposed of in the quarter, did a lot to help this. Pricing was constructive in the first quarter, like we said in our prepared remarks. It got better in February.

March benefited from a little bit of an Easter shift mix. As we look out, we do believe that things have normalized. Like as we're looking at April, again, that benefit that we saw from the Easter mix is impacting a little bit. Looking further towards May and June, we see things stabilizing. We're pretty constructive on where we see pricing today.

I'll just add, Brian, that this is first positive prices since the fourth quarter of 2022, right? Since then, we have experienced, especially the Americas, you know, quite a bit of inflation, you know, labor, vehicle costs, and we believe those are pressures that the entire industry experienced. At some point, you know, to sustain the economics of an asset-heavy business, you know, pricing has to sustain and, you know, stop declining. We do think that this is a bit of an inflection point, and as far as we can influence it by, you know, maintaining supply and demand aligned, we will, we'll be contributing. Yeah.

Great. Thank you. The second question is on the balance sheet. I know now you're in this sort of mid 7x net debt to EBITDA range. You know, pre-COVID, you were in the sort of 3x-4x range. What's the right leverage ratio for you, and what steps can you take? We know free cash flow generation, obviously, but what steps can you take to reduce the leverage ratio if that's something that you want to pursue?

No, I think, Dan, we've been pretty consistent in our messaging, saying that the focus in terms of capital allocation is gonna be shifting towards debt repayment. We still generate free cash flow in this business, so proceeds of that will go down to paying debt. The real thing that has to happen is we need to start growing our EBITDA. We're coming off right now, two years where we've had issues with our fleet, and that's reflected kind of in the income statement. We think that as we get out of this first quarter and as we normalize going forward, you will see EBITDA growth that justifies, you know, kind of meaningful deleveraging.

We said that a combination of EBITDA growth and debt pay down will already get us down to below 6. Or sorry, in the 6x range this by the end of this year. We're gonna continue that EBITDA growth and debt repayment strategy till we get to our target leverage ratios of 2x-4x.

Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Chris Woronka with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your questions.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions, and congratulations on the better than expected quarter. Hope we could maybe talk a little bit about fleet size. You guys have always said you try to fleet a little bit under demand. You've done that the last couple of quarters now with positive utilization in the Americas. You know, as pricing has gotten nicely better here, do you think you will continue to try to fleet under demand? You know, are there any indications that the industry will follow that trend? I know that you guys sometimes have to react to what competitors are doing, but is your plan to continue fleeting under demand? Thanks.

Yeah. you know, I'll start and Daniel, you can chime in. We've said consistently that we fleet under demand, which is true. When we said that, I think what I was trying to say is like at the peak of any given quarter, like if it's a Memorial Day or something like that, you're trying to peak under that demand. That leaves you pretty over-fleeted during the shoulder periods.

I think what we're trying to do right now is say, "Hey, we need to, over the course of the quarter and over the course of seasons, understand what the minimum level of fleet that you can maintain to make sure that you aren't over-fleeted during those shoulder periods, and then really rely on operational efficiency and utilization to get those days during the peak demand." I think that's the structural difference that we've taken. I think that does have a positive increase on price. Like from our perspective, that's what we can control, and that's what we continue to do going forward.

The only thing I would add, Brian, is that, like you pointed out, Chris, there is a portion of debt that we don't control, right? The portion that we do control is how we utilize our assets, right? We're asset managers. We need to drive return on assets, right, in each of our operations, and we can keep pushing the envelope there by reducing the asset base, right, which we do by increasing, you know, utilization. That's a key focus of ours, and you've seen progress over the last, you know, several quarters. Increasing EBITDA, which is the point, Brian has been pushing very strongly about growth, improving margins, and so on.

Those are things that we do that we control that help, I think, both Avis and help, you know, maintain the industry in a more balanced supply and demand position.

Okay. Thanks, guys. Just as a follow-up, you know, Brian, I think you mentioned last year that, you know, your Avis First initiative and your, you know, the initial Waymo contract, you know, would certainly not be like material to financials, last year or even this year. I'm curious as we, you know, look out to kind of an exit rate for 2026. I know it's still kind of early in the year, do you expect one or both of those to, you know, to kind of be noticeable through the financials, either by the end of this year or next? Thanks.

Chris, I think we need to bifurcate that. I think Avis First, towards the end of this year, you'll see more of an impact on the financials. At this time, because we're still really positioning our chess pieces, and, you know, negotiating with airports in order to make sure that we can offer the service, it's still pretty early for us to give guidance around where that'll be. In terms of Waymo, I think you'll see the benefits of that more so next year in 2027 as we really start to ramp our Dallas and what we're hoping are our additional cities.

Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Lizzie Dove with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your questions.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to ask about your EBITDA guidance. Appreciate you kind of flowed through the 1Q beat there, any way to think about, I guess, firstly, a reminder of just what's embedded there in terms of what gets you to the low end versus the high end of the range? Is that $850 million-$1 billion the right way to think about kind of, call it, normalized EBITDA longer term?

Hi, Lizzie. Yeah, listen, like I think what we said in the prepared remarks that we outperformed our expectations in the first quarter. What we would say is that like looking forward into Q2, Q3, and Q4, it's still too early to say kind of where things shake out because the bulk of our earnings come in the summer season. It looks constructive, like Daniel said. But I think right now that $850 million-$1 billion range is what we're comfortable with for this fiscal year. Going forward, though, I wouldn't say that that's a normalized level because you're still coming off a pretty tough one quarter of this year.

Yes, we outperformed our expectations. This isn't what normalized should be for us. We shouldn't be in a quarter where we're losing money. The reason why this happened was we had, you know, with the writedown we took, with us, like, we said, prioritizing kind of speed over capturing every last dollar in terms of vehicle dispositions. We had to rightsize the fleet. That came at a cost. You saw that in the EBITDA impact this quarter. I don't expect that to continue for 2027. I do think that structurally EBITDA should be higher than this range that we're giving you right now.

Got it. Thank you. That's helpful. Then I guess just on the fleet cost side of things, I think what's embedded in your guidance for the second half is maybe $300 or so. I appreciate that's a stat that can be, you know, lumpy. There's always kind of different moving pieces. You know, it's only maybe 15% above where fleet costs were in 2019. I guess just how do you assess longer term like comfortability with that kind of $300 or so range and how that can be maintained?

Listen, I think for us, given the significant increase in the overall cost of new cars, we've had to get better about how we manage these assets, how we dispose of them, how long we hold them. I think a lot of the work that our teams are doing here on the fleet side have contributed to that. We think that longer term in the low 300s is possible to achieve. Now, it comes with work, and it comes with us being more nimble than we were before. We can't rely on a static, "Hey, we hold these cars for 18 months and dispose them at 35,000 miles." You are more playing Moneyball with these assets. The good news is we've been investing in that capability for a long time.

We think that we're getting better at it, but a lot of this also has to do with, you know, just the overall kind of macro trends in the used car market. It's tough to say exactly where that'll shake out, but we think at a general range in normalized times, that kind of low $300 seems to be a place that's achievable.

Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of John Healy with Northcoast Research. Please proceed with your questions.

Thanks for taking the question. Wanted to continue on the theme of car costs. You know, Brian, when you kinda look at the last few years, I think that, you know, there's been disruption on supply, both on new and used, and it seems like on the used side, we're kinda right on the cusp of seeing that shift with probably going from $2.5 million lease returns a year to maybe $4 million or so lease returns a year. Can you just talk to how you think those cars impact your ability to hit that kinda low 300 number? Because, you know, just at a high level, it would seem like you guys are gonna have a lot more competition in the lanes for moving your cars.

I'm just trying to think about how that goes into your calculus. You guys, you know, clearly are doing a lot on the revenue optimization side, but what are you guys doing on the fleet disposition side? Are you looking at any sort of kind of innovative partners? I know Hertz is doing this thing with Amazon. Are there things like that that we might see you guys dip your toe into, you know, later this year or next year? Thanks.

Okay. John, let me start with the first part of that question. Yeah, obviously, we monitor the supply of used vehicles coming in very closely as well. I think kind of to Lizzie's question before, this is why we have to be a lot more nimble about what cars we sell when. You're right. If a 35,000 mile car would compete squarely with a three-year lease return vehicle, that's not where we wanna be. Obviously, some of our vehicles will be in there, but we have to get comfortable kind of with certain vehicle classes selling well before that, and then certain vehicles, like, selling after that. Like I said, that's the work that we've been investing into.

After testing these waters, we think that that actually benefits everyone. It benefits us in terms of the overall depreciation costs, but it also skews generally to us recycling our fleet a little younger than we had historically. Which means that it's a younger fleet for our cars, which has downstream effects also, like, in terms of vehicle maintenance and obviously, and most importantly, the customer experience. I think by picking and choosing where we sell cars, we're able to kind of stick to that low 300s number. In terms of the dispositions, you're right. Like, we are looking at more innovative ways to quickly exit our vehicles.

We've been doing a lot of work with our partners over at Cox, and we're also doing more kind of internally in terms of our direct-to-consumer sales. You know, kind of on both fronts in terms of the mix of vehicle selling and the channels we're going through, like, we're investing in all of it to make sure that we can offset the rising cost of new cars by being more efficient operators in terms of how and when we dispose these vehicles.

Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Ryan Brinkman with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your questions.

Thanks for taking my call. You know, with regard to your comment at the start of the call, it seemed to me as if there was maybe a missed opportunity here for more of your shareholders to have benefited from the unusual capital markets activity, such as, you know, by the issuance of very low-cost equity to retire higher cost debt. I know you're always kind of thinking about the relative cost of different parts of your capital structure, even in normal times. Had you contemplated such an action, and can you maybe share, like, what factors might have prevented you from doing so, whether due to, you know, MNPI around earnings or maybe the equity distribution agreement with the seller agent banks?

Did you explore trying to overcome some of these obstacles, such as by pre-announcing earnings in order to, you know, therefore execute your at the market offering?

Ryan, simply put, we were in a quiet period at the time. I can tell you this much, we have no intention of issuing shares anywhere near these levels. More broadly speaking, listen, I bought my first shares in Avis in 2010, so I've been involved with this company for 16 years now. Back then, and you've covered us for a while, you know that Avis had 129 million fully diluted shares outstanding. Since then, in my capacity as a large shareholder, a board member, a CFO, I've been very consistent in my belief that our shares are undervalued and have advocated for buying back stock. Our shares outstanding today are 35 million shares. We've retired 94 million or 73% of those original shares outstanding.

I've not seen public companies reduce their share count by anything close to that order of magnitude. We're true believers of this business, and on a fundamental basis, we were repurchasing our shares as high as $300 post-pandemic. The thought of doing the opposite and issuing shares never entered my mind until this situation arose. Now, you're right. We put an ATM in place because it'd be irresponsible not to. We've done this in the past as well, and we haven't issued any shares. I'm not here to trade Avis for value extraction. We're gonna put in the hard work and create value by building a better business. Might not be as flashy as making a quick buck, but that's the journey we're on, and we take pride in that.

No, you've done a great job. Curious, as, you know, an insider, would Pentwater have known about any deliberations of the board or management's part, you know, prior, you know, to your potential of engaging in any sort of, you know, primary share issuance? Could they have, you know, possibly front-run that information, thereby accruing value for themselves, which, you know, had Avis issued those shares into the market, you know, would have therefore accrued more to, like, all the shareholders, them included, albeit to a lesser degree, kinda more pro rata with the other holders?

Ryan, I can't get into the details of that right now, but as I said in the prepared remarks, I strongly believe we have a fiduciary duty to aggressively pursue every dollar our shareholders are entitled to. Honestly, Pentwater only disclosed their sales yesterday after market closed. There's a lot of transactions to sift through, and it's not exactly straightforward. The timing of that disclosure wasn't exactly convenient for us. That's unfortunate. You know, we have our securities lawyers here. They're combing through this as we speak. There's $1.75 billion of gross proceeds that Pentwater laid out in their Form 4s. You have my commitment that we will go after every last dollar that our shareholders are owed.

Very interesting. Last question. I promise I'll ask one. Revenue per day, you know, I haven't gone through all the math, you know, extensively either, but it does look like this is an incredible trade. They may have made, you know, $1 billion of profit or something like that. When I first learned of the short swing profit rule, including its remedies, you know, it did seem a little extreme. You know, but this circumstance does sort of, you know, illustrate maybe what the regulator's motivation may have been for that rule. What is your understanding of, you know, the remedy relative to disgorging of profits or what amount of the profits might be subject to disgorgement? I understand maybe you need to go through it in detail.

Also the legal precedent here, I think it's been challenged in some cases. Maybe that's more for employees than, you know, investor, you know, large institutional investors. You know, you said too, I heard that they acknowledged having violated the rule to some degree. Does that maybe suggest, you know, conversations or the potential for some sort of, you know, amicable settlement of your claim?

Ryan, I think there are, like, seven questions in that third follow-up question. Like, generally speaking, I think here's what we can say. Like, what I feel comfortable saying is what we've already laid out thus far. We're going through it in painstaking detail right now. We're in conversations with our internal counsel, Pentwater, their counsel, just like we said in our prepared remarks. You make a good point. Listen, Section 16 rules exist for a reason. They're there to protect shareholders, and I view it as my fiduciary duty to pursue this to its fullest in the interest of my stakeholders. We'll get to the bottom of it, I have no doubt.

Okay, very interesting. Thank you. Just on RPD, obviously, you leaned into this strategy of, you know, emphasizing unit economics and very efficiently running the fleet, you know, even more it seemed like than, you know, discussed at the time of 4Q earnings. Obviously, you know, you don't, you know, can't operate your business in isolation, and you've got the competitors out there, and their mindset has changed a lot over the years too. To have had such a good RPD result, I imagine that you're the first to report here, but that the others are, you know, headed in a similar direction.

What do you sense in terms of, like, the kind of industry discipline and whether the RPD gains that you've just reported here, you know, are sustainable within the context of, like, competitor activity?

Ryan, I can't really comment to what I think our competitors are going to report. From our perspective, given the kind of actions that we've taken to better align our vehicle supply to demand, it seems like the industry is appropriately fleeted right now. This is gonna be a big summer ahead of us. We have World Cup, America 250. I think that travel is gonna be robust. I think from our perspective, like we can control only what we control, but we're gonna remain disciplined in terms of supply and make sure that we, you know, gain our share of days through utilization efficiencies.

Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Stephanie Moore with Jefferies. Please proceed with your questions.

Good morning. Thank you. I was hoping to maybe touch on the underlying demand environment. Maybe you could speak to how demand trended as the quarter progressed, specifically as we started to see heightened maybe geopolitical uncertainty, and if we saw any pullback on demand activity. Same thing as those events started to unfold, if you started to see any changes in forward booking, just trying to get a sense of out your demand. At the same time, you know, obviously a very large sporting event in the U.S. this year with the World Cup and a lot of cities. Thinking about how that could be an impact to overall travel demand as well as pricing in those cities. Thanks.

Yes, Stephanie. I'll start, then Daniel, feel free to add. You're right. I think travel demand was kind of mixed in the first quarter. It feels like forever ago, but, remember in January, there were a lot of, like, kind of weather disruptions to start off with. Then, yeah, the TSA, shut down. That impacted a lot of our commercial travel. It was kinda choppy. I think we said in our prepared remarks that, TSA kind of volumes for the first quarter were up 1.5%, something like that. That's, that's on the lower side of what we've seen, historically. I do think as we look later out, things are strengthening, and normalizing.

We mentioned that these World Cup cities are booking, like, very strong in terms of early bookings, we're managing that. We think overall the demand is gonna be just fine for the peak travel season. That's what we're seeing in kind of our booking trends. It seems like a normal year in terms of that. Potentially a little benefit to the upside given the World Cup and that we have in certain cities in the Americas. Daniel, anything?

Yeah, just a couple of data points, right? I think we're pretty pleased by Easter, which this year was a little earlier, right? We were gonna be lapping that in into two, put a little bit of pressure on a year-over-year comparison on RPD. As we get out of that season, and especially as we get into June, July, August, we're pretty encouraged by how the days are building. Yeah.

Great. Just as a follow-up, I think in the, in the past, Brian, you've talked about several initiatives on the cost and investment side that you're focused on to, you know, generally improve overall OpEx. Maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, how we should think about just some of those cost initiatives coming through in 2026. Thanks.

Yeah, sure. I think in terms of cost discipline, like, we laid that out, laid out our plan on that in the fourth quarter. It's something that's foundational to our business. Like, just given the operating leverage that we have and given some of the uncertainties there are around the macro side of our business, that which we can control, we absolutely have to control. We're doing a lot of work internally here to make sure that we are staying lean where we can so that we can take those proceeds and invest it into areas that we, that we really do need. You know, for us, those areas are coming into operational efficiencies by utilizing technology, by really.

Like, the big thing that I wanna get into in a little more depth on a future call is how we're redoing our entire operating system for the company and relying on a brand-new platform for that. We can get into that into a little bit more detail in the future, but what we're trying to do is instead of squeezing every last dollar to show on the OpEx or SG&A line, we're being lean where we can so that we can reinvest it into proceeds that are gonna generate returns and revenue growth in the future.

Thank you. We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Chief Executive Officer, Brian Choi, for closing remarks.

All right. Well, thank you to everyone joining us today. We believe the results this quarter reflect the progress we've made executing on the changes we outlined last quarter, and we're starting to see the business respond. Our focus now is to build on that momentum and deliver consistent results through disciplined execution. We look forward to updating you on that progress next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and enjoy the rest of your day.

Avis Budget Group (CAR) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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