Tesla Model 3 electric vehicles at a Hertz neighborhood location.
Hertz
After emerging from bankruptcy protection in June, the parent company for Hertz rental cars made its trading debut on the Nasdaq on Tuesday, falling by 9.8% to $26.17 a share.
Hertz Global Holdings, trading under the ticker symbol “HTZ,” fluctuated throughout the day between $25.40 and $28 a share. It failed to reach the $29 a share offering price by certain stockholders of the company – the high end of a previously targeted range.
The lackluster performance came after the share offering was increased the share offering by 20% to 44.52 million shares, up from 37.1 million announced last week. The shares were offered by a group of shareholders, including Cougar Capital and Oaktree Capital Management, which raised $1.3 billion under the new terms, according to a public filing.
Of the shares offered, Hertz said it would repurchase more than 10.3 million shares from the underwriters at an aggregate purchase price of $300 million.
Since October 2020, Hertz’s common stock has traded on the over-the-counter market under the symbol HTZZ, following its Chapter 11 filing in May 2020. The company after emerging from bankruptcy had previously applied to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “HTZ.”
The company’s outstanding warrants also were listed Tuesday on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “HTZWW.” The publicly-listed warrants declined Tuesday by 18.5% to $16.95 a share.
Hertz said Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley were acting as lead bookrunning managers for the proposed offering, which is expected to close Friday.
The public offering and repurchase plan follow a runup in the company’s shares after it announced former Ford CEO Mark Fields as its interim chief executive and a plan to add 100,000 Tesla cars to its fleet through 2022.
“This is not only about running an excellent rental car company, we’re gonna stay very focused on that, but this is also about a transformation of Hertz,” Fields said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Tesla deal unclear
It’s unclear the status of Hertz’s deal with Tesla, after CEO Elon Musk last week said no agreement had been signed. Hertz has declined to directly comment on the deal, citing its plans remain on track.
Hertz Vice Chair Tom Wagner, of Knighthead Capital Management, dodged answering questions Tuesday about the status of the Tesla order as well as whether it will be paying full price for the vehicles, which Musk has said Hertz would do.
“We’ll work with Tesla and other OEMs to bring EVs into the fleet in a way that works for the OEMs, in a way that works for Hertz,” Wagner said during the “Squawk Box” interview alongside Fields and Hertz Chair Gregory O’Hara, of Certares Management.
During the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Hertz filed for bankruptcy protection — but as travel rebounded somewhat and demand for rental vehicles picked up, investors from Knighthead Capital Management and Certares Management said they would take over the company.
Knighthead, Certares and Apollo own 42% of Hertz, according to Bloomberg.
