United Rentals - cleaning up the aftermath of Sandy

Billions of dollars of damage sits in the wake of Sandy. The clean up efforts will require years of work, and much of that work will need to be done by heavy equipment.

United Rentals (URI) is the clear beneficiary of potential windfalls as a direct result of the hurricane. Government spending will be vast, in addition to private clean up efforts. The logical way to gain access to equipment for this work is by renting the cranes, bulldozers, trucks, etc, and the largest heavy equipment company is URI.

We saw a pop in URI directly after the news hit, though it settled down after an Obama victory with the rest of the market, offering us an opportunity to get in before their next conference call where inevitably the CFO will say something to the tune of "we beat estimates in Q4 due mainly in part to hundreds of millions in new contracts related to the cleanup efforts in NY and NJ". The next minute, URI hits $48 in after hours trading. We sell at $50.