For the three-month period, core earnings strengthened and revenue increased significantly. While the company did post a net loss for the quarter, it resulted from a move that was aimed at buttressing the viability of the company’s business in coming years. In the future, Hertz’s results will be fortified by its acquisition of its smaller rival Dollar Thrifty, a deal that was approved by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in November and caused the company to report a quarterly loss $36.4 million, or 9 cents per share. That loss included a 24-cents-per-share charge related to the acquisition.

For comparison, the company recorded a profit of $47.1 million, or 11 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter.

The $2.3 billion acquisition of Dollar Thrifty is expected to save the merged company approximately $160 million annually and secure the number-two position in the global car rental rankings for Hertz, placing it just behind privately held Enterprise Holdings. Hertz fought Avis Budget Group (NASDAQ:CAR) for the Dollar Thrifty deal in order to expand its services further into the leisure car rental market, a segment of the industry in which Thrifty was flourishing. Within the U.S. commercial business, both Avis and Hertz had been struggling to attract more corporate customers by offering lower and lower prices…
As the lingering effects of the recession are slowly diminishing, business and leisure travel has picked up, pushing worldwide car-rental revenue up by 14 percent. In addition to the acquisition, Hertz’s fourth-quarter results were bolstered by this increase, making sales in the past quarter the strongest they have been in three years, according to MarketWatch. Even with the quarterly loss, revenue came in at $2.32 billion, an increase of 15 percent from last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected sales of $2.27 billion.

Changes within Hertz itself and the slowly-improving economy led the company to predict full-year results above what analysts have estimated. Hertz has forecast per-share earnings between $1.82 and $1.92 on revenue between $10.85 billion and $10.95 billion, while analysts expect earnings of $1.78 a share on revenue of $10.79 billion.

Hertz’s results gave investors renewed confidence in the company’s earnings power, and shares jumped as much as 8 percent, hitting $20.23 after the earnings report was released. Ahead of the release, the stock was up almost 25 percent since January.

Frissora said that these results were a “record.”

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