New Price Target for This Construction Name After Promising Spending Update
Because we’re starting to get economic data for May on Monday, one may think the findings of the Construction Spending report out for April are a bit stale.
We’ve gotten comments about favorable construction activity from the likes of Caterpillar ($CAT), Terex ($TEX), and our own United Rentals ($URI), but given our penchant to track the data, the 0.4% sequential increase in April construction activity was a nice beat compared to the 0.2% one Wall Street was looking for. As you know, we tend to favor year-over-year comparisons, and on that basis total construction spending was up 0.9% year over year.
Reading between the total private and total public line items, we find areas of April spending strength included:
- Power: +6.8% year over year
- Water Supply: +4.8%
- Sewage & Waste Disposal: +4.6%
- Highway & Street: +4.0%
- Communication: +2.7%
Unsurprisingly, April new private construction spending on single-family homes fell 2.9% compared to April 2025 levels.
New Price Target for United Rentals Shares
Our message to Pro members that track the Portfolio was that we would review our URI price target as we moved past winter weather and gauged the usual seasonal pick-up in construction activity. Following the learnings above, we are lifting our URI price target to $1,100 from $1,000. Not enough to changing our current Two rating on the shares but one to keep close eye on should we see a pronounced pullback in the shares.
Eyeballing the URI chart we see a confluence of support building between $857 and $872, but much like you we also see that massive post Q1 2026 earnings gap as well. With inflation pressures building further in May and the likelihood that Federal Reserve comments become more hawkish in response leading up to the Fed’s June policy meeting later this month, we’ll stand pat for now with URI share.
More Pro Portfolio
- Locking in Big Gains and Downgrading This Sleeper Position
- We’re Tracking 29 Signals Across 9 Portfolio’s Investment Themes
- May Monthly Roundup: Sell in May? No Way!
At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long URI shares.
