Enterprise Rent-A-Car says sales are up for year

ST. LOUIS -- Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the nation's biggest auto rental agency, reported Tuesday that revenues jumped 9 percent to a record $9.04 billion for its fiscal year that ended in July.

Enterprise has benefited from a shift in consumer behavior as more drivers rent cars in their neighborhoods for road trips or special errands, spokesman Pat Farrell said.

Enterprise was not a big player in the airport auto rental market until recently but now has more than 200 airport locations nationwide. Farrell said the company will continue to open new neighborhood locations as consumers grow more comfortable with neighborhood rentals.

Enterprise, based in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton, has 6,900 branches worldwide and opened 413 locations last year. The company will continue at that pace into 2007, Farrell said.

"When you're growing your business, then it's like a multiplying cell, where you're looking for a new opportunity where a new branch office might succeed where it didn't before," Farrell said.

Enterprise is a privately held company that doesn't report the same extensive financial figures that public companies show to Wall Street investors.

The company's annual financial overview is audited by Ernst & Young, spokeswoman Christy Conrad said. Enterprise doesn't report its annual profits or losses.

Enterprise boosted its auto fleet to more than 878,000 cars, trucks and vans during the last fiscal year, up from 818,000 in 2005, according to the report.

Enterprise got good news this year that supported its decades-long strategy of placing branches away from airports.

The trade publication Auto Rental News reported in January that off-airport auto rentals accounted for more revenue than airport rentals industrywide during 2004, the latest year that firm data is available.

Neighborhood shops accounted for more than half of the $17.6 billion of all car rental revenue in 2004, said Joe Crosby, associate editor of the publication.

The numbers are a watershed, Crosby said. In 1991, neighborhood car rentals accounted for a mere $2.5 billion of the $10.7 billion market. By 2004, that figure nearly quadruped to $9.5 billion while revenue at airport locations remained relatively flat, he said.

Launched in 1957, Enterprise got most of its business over the decades from customers who needed a quick rental while their own car was being repaired.

The firm is owned by the family of founder Jack Taylor. His son Andrew Taylor is now chairman and chief executive of the firm.