CAR
Wall Street’s soap opera, Avis edition
Avis Budget spent its Q1 call doing two jobs at once: talking up the actual business and swatting away the circus around CAR stock. CEO Brian Choi said the company’s recent volatility was driven by a massive short squeeze, then made it clear Avis isn’t looking to play games with its own share price.
The numbers were less chaotic
Under the hood, the quarter looked a lot more boring — in a good way. Revenue came in at $2.5 billion, ahead of expectations, while adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $113 million. More importantly, the Americas segment posted positive pricing growth for the first time in 10 quarters, which is the kind of trend investors actually want to see instead of another headline about hedge funds doing hedge-fund things.
No “value extraction” moonshot
Choi also pushed back on the idea that Avis should have cashed in on the squeeze by issuing stock at elevated prices. His message was basically: we’re not here to turn the company into a trading toy. Management said it hasn’t bought or sold a share since 2024, and it raised full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance to $850 million to $1 billion.
Big picture: the stock drama may grab the headlines, but the real test is whether Avis can keep improving pricing, utilization, and fleet discipline without the market turning every quarter into a meme-stock rerun.