Avis Car Rentals nearly doubles net revenue amid pandemic

Avis Car Rentals managed to bring their net revenue to almost $3 billion, and analysts are skeptical of future prospects in late 2021 and early 2022. Yahoo Finance's Emily McCormick reports.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: And I know, Emily, you're also watching Avis, a pretty good quarter for them. Somewhat under the radar, but this has been one of the hottest stocks in the entire stock market, I believe up close to 360% year to date.

EMILY MCCORMICK: That's right, Brian. I was pretty shocked to see that as well. I mean, Avis, of course, as a rental car company, has been one of the big beneficiaries of the reopening trade that had really started a year ago and just accelerated into the spring and summer of this year.

But if we take a look at what the company actually reported here, net revenue nearly doubling to $3 billion compared to last year and also seeing a pretty strong beat here on adjusted earnings per share. And I think one of the things that Wall Street seems to be split on here in terms of the future of Avis is whether this type of beat, this type of performance relative to expectations can continue.

And one of the things that a Morgan Stanley analyst, Billy Covanis, said in a note is that he doesn't believe that what we're going to be seeing is going to be continued. He said that 2021 and 2022 will mark the cyclical peak and doesn't see Avis maintaining the current margin profile in the long term here.

So again, had a really strong stock run-up for the year to date so far. Not necessarily a huge move to the upside, despite its much better than expected third quarter results here. So I think this is now becoming a wait-and-see story for a lot of Wall Street analysts as to whether this type of performance can continue in the near to medium term, Brian.