TULSA, Okla. -

Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group offered a revised guidance for full-year Corporate Adjusted EBITDA and fleet costs projections on Tuesday, while also giving its preliminary expectations for its first quarter 2011 performance.

More specifically, Dollar Thrifty believes that its Corporate Adjusted EBITDA will come in between $235 million and $260 million, when merger-related costs are taken out of the equation.

This is about a 30-percent increase from the previous projection.

Dollar Thrifty said it increased the projection mainly because its fleet cost expectations are lower and it is confident in what the summer rental season will bring.

Moving along, Dollar Thrifty delved into its adjusted fleet cost expectations. Within this metric, Dollar Thrifty believes that vehicle deprecation per unit won’t be as high as previously though. The company is expecting a range of $240 to $250 per unit.

At first, Dollar Thrifty believed that the used-vehicle market would level off this year from where it had been 2010, which would lead to a downward effect on residual values.

Dollar Thrifty pointed out that “conditions in the used-vehicle market have remained very robust during the first three months of 2011, with tight supplies of late model used vehicles and high demand driving residual values to new record levels.”

Officials added: “Based on information currently available, the company believes industry fundamentals will remain favorable, positively impacting residual value estimates.”

Offering his input, president and chief executive officer Scott Thompson shared: “As we disclosed on our year-end earnings conference call, we expected significant upside in fleet costs in 2011 if the used car market continued at the strong levels experienced in 2010.

“We are now in the prime selling season for used vehicles, and are realizing very favorable results based on the vigor of the used car market combined with our enhanced pricing strategies,” he continued. “Accordingly, we have revised our fleet cost targets to reflect continued favorable market conditions.

“Furthermore, since our year-end earnings call, the rental pricing and volume environment have improved following the winter storms that impacted January and February,” Thompson went on to add. “The combination of these factors has given us significantly greater confidence in our 2011 operating performance.”

First-Quarter Projections

Next up, Dollar Thrifty shared its expectations for the first quarter. The company projects that quarterly rental revenue will range from being static from a year ago to being down 1 percent.

The winter storms are projected to have pushed down rental revenues by $5 million to $10 million.

Meanwhile, Dollar Thrifty is predicting that quarterly Corporate Adjusted EBITDA will total between $25 million and $30 million, when merger-related costs are excluded.

A year ago, Corporate Adjusted EBITDA (excluding $1.7 million in merger-related costs) came in at $51.1 million.

Lastly, Dollar Thrifty said “it expects gains from sales of vehicles to be only $7 million in the first quarter of 2011, compared to $25.7 million of gains in the first quarter of 2010 as the company plans to dispose of approximately 7,300 fewer risk vehicles in the first quarter of 2011 compared to first quarter of 2010.”