Florida-based rental company Hertz Global (HTZ) saw its shares plunge 13% on Tuesday after it emerged that one of its primary backers is selling his stake.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, billionaire investor Carl Icahn has reduced his stake in the company from over 35% to around 29%. Icahn’s investment firms – Icahn Partners LP, High River Limited Partnership and Icahn Partners Master Fund LP – together sold about 5 million outstanding shares of Hertz on Monday.
Icahn currently holds over 24.2 million shares of HTZ.
The 83-year-old businessman had more-than-doubled his stake in Hertz Global two years back when the rental company was facing a slew of skeptic remarks from analysts and market watchers due to its poor performance as well as an accounting scandal. A month before this, Icahn had installed Kathryn Marinello as the CEO of the company to steady the ship.
HTZ stock is up 42% since the start of this year.
Hertz has not responded to a request for management comment on the stock sale. The story would be updated once we get a response.
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Hertz Global had last week posted narrower-than-expected fourth quarter results and higher revenues. The company posted a loss of 55 cents per share, compared to 90 cents expected by analysts. The results had sent the stock up 15% during pre-market trading that day.
CEO Marinallo said, following the results, “We finished 2018 strong, delivering improvements in rental price, volume, utilization and fleet costs for the full year as a result of targeted strategies, disciplined execution and well-placed investments.”
“We have tremendous momentum as we move into 2019 and will focus on continued revenue growth as well as productivity to drive margin expansion,” she had added.