Avis Budget Group, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to the Avis Budget Group Q1 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to David Calabria, Treasurer and Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance. Thank you, David. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me are Brian Choi, our Chief Executive Officer, and Daniel Cunha, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that we will be discussing forward-looking information, including potential future financial performance, which is subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements and information. Such risks and assumptions, uncertainties, and other factors are identified in our earnings release and other periodic filings with the SEC, as well as the investor relations section of our website. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as a prediction of actual results, and any or all of our forward-looking statements may prove to be inaccurate, and we can make no guarantees about our future performance. We undertake no obligation to update or revise our forward-looking statements. On this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. please refer to our earnings press release, which is available on our website, for how we define these measures and reconciliations to the closest comparable gap measures. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Brian.

Thanks, David, and thank you to everyone joining us today for our first quarter earnings call. There's a lot to cover this morning, and as you've seen in our earnings release and financial supplement, we've begun executing on the changes we outlined last quarter. In particular, the actions we've taken around fleet reduction and supply discipline are starting to show up in both our operational performance and our financial results. We believe these changes do much to strengthen Avis. Daniel and I will walk you through the details of the business, but before we do that, I want to address what I know is top of mind for many of you, the recent volatility we've seen in our stock price. We've received a number of questions, so I think it's worth taking a moment to walk through the facts as we understand them based on disclosure from public filings. Let's start with what's well understood. Our second largest shareholder, Pentwater Capital, who filed as a 9% owner of our company as of December 31st, 2025, crossed the 10% ownership threshold on February 20th and became a Section 16 insider. On that day, Pentwater disclosed they held an economic interest of 39% of our company through stock and cash settled swaps. By March, they disclosed that economic interest increased to 51%. So in the span of a month, Tentwater's public filings showed their economic interest increased substantially. We believe that this significant increase in ownership, combined with the high short interest in our name, resulted in a short squeeze. That much is well understood. Here's what we're absorbing just now. After market closed yesterday, Tentwater disclosed the sale of 4.3 million shares for gross proceeds of $1.75 billion on April 22nd and April 23rd. Given the quantum of shares sold in such a short span of time, our stock price experienced a significant decline. It is important to note that Avis has not bought or sold a share since 2024. Our largest shareholder SRS has not bought or sold a share since 2023. so it seems the only insider active during this period of excess volatility was Pentwater Capital. Pentwater has acknowledged that its sale of Avis stock, at least in part, was violative of the SEC Section 16 short-swing profit rules. Avis has requested Pentwater furnish it all relevant information concerning the trades, and Avis will aggressively pursue all rights on behalf of our stockholders. From the company's perspective, Nothing about how we operate the business has changed and our focus remains squarely on execution and long-term value creation. With that context, let's turn back to the fundamentals of the business. On our last earnings call, we laid out the difficult but necessary decisions required to put this business on a stronger footing. We executed on that plan in the first quarter and the early results reflect that progress. Overall, We're pleased with our first quarter performance, which delivered adjusted EBITDA above plan. Before I turn it over to Daniel to walk through the details, I want to highlight a few proof points that demonstrate how the business is responding. Starting with revenue, this was the first quarter in 10 where we delivered growth in the Americas, driven by strong RPD performance. That was a direct result of our decision to better align supply with demand, allowing us to be more selective in the business we accepted and improved pricing discipline. International continued to execute well on its mixed strategy, also delivering strong RPP growth. On the fleet side, we were able to take advantage of a stronger-than-expected first quarter used car demand. The Mannheim Index tracked above prior years at this point in the seasonal curve, and our teams moved quickly, disposing of a record number of vehicles in the Americas where we did not expect residual values to hold. Operationally, utilization was the highest we've seen in over 15 years for the first quarter in the Americas, despite continued recall-related constraints. We effectively managed our assets through a volatile environment, including weather disruptions early in the quarter, TSA-related impacts, and broader geopolitical uncertainty. Beyond day-to-day execution, we continue to invest in key areas of our longer-term strategy. Avis First is now in 36 locations, including nine international airports, and we continue to see strong customer satisfaction metrics. While still early, we're seeing encouraging adoption and believe the product has significant long-term potential. On the Waymo front, we remain on track for our Dallas launch in the third quarter and are nearing public rider availability. As we've said previously, we expect to expand into additional cities over time and remain in active discussions with our partner. With that, I'll turn it over to Daniel to walk through the quarter in more detail.