The other Hertz

Spun off from Hertz Global Holdings earlier this year, the fortunes of Herc Holdings brightened after the presidential election. The newly formed company's headquarters in Bonita Springs is poised for employment growth.
When car-rental giant Hertz Global Holdings relocated its global corporate headquarters to Southwest Florida from New Jersey in 2014, few people expected the region would get a two-for-one deal.
But that's exactly what happened this summer when Hertz spun off its equipment-rental business into a separate publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. Now, Southwest Florida is home to two corporate headquarters: car-rental operator Hertz Corp. in Estero and Herc Holdings, which operates through its Herc Rentals subsidiary in nearby Bonita Springs.
While most of the attention has focused on Hertz and its management and operating struggles, investor enthusiasm for Herc Holdings surged after the election on news that the government might spend $1 trillion during the next 10 years on construction projects. Herc Holdings' stock (symbol: HRI) rocketed by as much as 38% in the month following the election of Donald Trump.
“I think the whole market environment is pretty upbeat as a result of the presidential election,” acknowledged Larry Silber, the president and CEO of Herc Holdings, the parent company of Herc Rentals.
Herc Rentals is really not a new company. It has grown within Hertz for 50 years and rents equipment through a network of about 280 locations with 4,700 employees principally in North America. In 2015, when it was still a part of Hertz, Herc generated $1.7 billion in revenue from key markets that include commercial and residential construction, manufacturing, utilities, energy and agriculture.
But leading Hertz shareholders, such as New York financier Carl Icahn, had long agitated for a split, arguing that as separate entities each company could focus on its core business to the benefit of shareholders. On July 1, Herc Holdings completed its separation from Hertz and became its own publicly traded company.
Now, Herc's headquarters in Bonita Springs is slated to grow by about 50%, from its 230-person staff to 350 people next year. “We're in the process of looking at that right now and working with our landlord for additional space,” says Silber, a veteran of equipment-manufacturer Ingersoll Rand who was named to lead Herc in 2015.