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F500-2021-145-Autonation

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F500-2020-154-AutoNation

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AutoNation is an automotive retailer that sells new and used vehicles, parts, and services across a network of dealerships. The company represents multiple vehicle brands and offers financing, insurance, and repair services. Its operations span vehicle sales, maintenance, and reconditioning. AutoNation also operates digital platforms to support customer engagement and inventory management.

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AutoNation (AN): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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AutoNation

autonation

you for joining AutoNation's Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Earnings Call. My name is Harry and I will be your operator today. All lines are currently in listen only mode and there will be an opportunity for Q and A after management's prepared remarks. I would now like to hand the conference over to Derek Dibig, VP of Investor Relations. Thank you.

Thank you, Harry, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to AutoNation's fourth quarter twenty twenty four conference call. Leading our call today will be Mike Manley, our Chief Executive Officer and Tom Slozick, our Chief Financial Officer. Following their remarks, we'll open up the call to questions. Before beginning, I'd like to remind you that certain statements and information on this call, including any statements regarding our anticipated financial results and objectives, constitute forward looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks that may cause our actual results or performance to differ materially from such forward looking statements. Additional discussions of factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially are contained in our press release issued today and in our filings with the SEC. Certain non GAAP financial measures, as defined under SEC rules, will be discussed on this call. Reconciliations are provided in our materials and on our website located at investors.autonation.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.

Yes. Thanks, Eric, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm going to dive in on the third slide. So we're almost halfway through the first quarter of twenty twenty five and it feels a little bit strange to talking about the previous year. But that said 2024 was a good year for automation highlighted by what I think was a super fourth quarter.

At the end of the year, there were several uncertainties that were difficult to plan for and these obviously included the U. S. Election, the debate and discussion about new vehicle pricing normalization and how would that play out just to name a few. But adding to that uncertainty was the early summer business interruption from the CDK outage, which as you know had a significant impact spanning both quarter two and quarter three. Now we'll get into the fourth quarter details in a moment, but for me the key highlight of the quarter was the delivery of 12% same store new unit volume growth.

New vehicle sales is the front end of our profit cycle and volume growth in this area bodes well for the future of our after sales and financial services business, which provide approximately 75% of

of after sales, the second highlight was achieving year over year 5% same store gross profit growth and improving our gross margin by 110 basis points. Importantly, the growth was principally driven by external customer channels, warranty and customer pay, delivering improvements in gross per repair order and growth in number of repair orders. The third highlight was the performance of AM Finance, which was introduced in late twenty twenty two. Now you will notice in our annual report, which we expect to file later this week, that we're giving more prominence to it. So I'd like to take a little bit more time discussing this business than I normally would.

Tom will also go into more detail in a few minutes. AM Finance had an outstanding 2024 growing its originations by three times over 2023 and building a portfolio that now stands north of $1,100,000,000 Notwithstanding the significant growth, which came solely from originations from our retail stores, Automation Finance only had a 12% penetration of our franchise store finance volume and approximately a 30% penetration of our AN USA finance volume. So there is plenty of headroom for further growth. But as you know, it's not just about origination and volume growth, the quality of the portfolio is critical. And in this area our performance is encouraging.

Throughout the year, we meaningfully improved the average credit rating and quality of our portfolio significantly de risking the business. As a result of disciplined origination growth, highly focused portfolio servicing, a planned well executed sale as the majority of the legacy subprime book, which was inherited when we acquired the business, our year end delinquencies are less than 3%. Now AM Finance continues to gain scale. We were able to reduce our operating expenses from 2023 to 2024, while driving a 40% increase in interest income. This is helping us to rapidly march towards profitability in AM Finance, which we expect to achieve on a run rate basis by the end of twenty twenty five.

Now on previous calls, you've heard Tom referring to impacts on our CFS profitability because of AM Finance growth. When CFS finances a deal with a third party lender, the lender typically provides an upfront payment or reserve fee. When AM Finance pays a similar upfront incentive to automation at the onset of each deal, but that incentive is eliminated for accounting purposes as the transaction is all within automation. We have confidence, however, that the incremental net interest income over the life of each loan far outweighs this full company. One final point, the relative capital required for this portfolio continues to decline.

The portfolio is currently funded 75% by non recourse financing, which rate we expect to continue increasing. As a result, we expect that the return on equity will become highly accretive to Automation's ROE as the portfolio matures. Now moving on from AM Finance, we also took important action with our invested capital selling off eight stores that did not fit into our model and were delivering substandard returns. We sold these businesses in extremely attractive valuations. We were then able to deploy this capital into further share repurchases, which I will touch on later.

Lastly, we were once again recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the world's most admired companies with the highest ranking amongst automotive retailers. This marks the fifth year in a row that AutoNation has been America's most admired automotive retailer, a strong testament to our unrelenting focus on our customers, associates and the communities we live in and serve. And again, I'd like to thank the AutoNation team and congratulate them for that achievement. So all of the guys and girls that are listening to this, thank you so much. Turning to our fourth quarter overview on Slide four, last quarter I mentioned some trends that we found encouraging, including the reduction in interest rates helping to improve affordability and lift demand for both new and used vehicles and actions we were seeing from a number of OEM partners to balance demand and production either through initiatives to make vehicles more affordable or adjusting inventory levels by moderating production and these were well received.

And both trends played out and contributed to our fourth quarter results. Fourth quarter new vehicle sales were strong. As I mentioned, we grew unit sales by 12% on a same store basis and like the third quarter gained share in our markets. Sales for the quarter were particularly strong for hybrid vehicles and battery electric vehicles and Tom is going to take you through that in greater detail. Domestic segment new vehicle unit sales increased 17%, import segment sales increased 5% and our premiumluxury segment achieved beyond its typically strong seasonal performance, growing unit sales by 12% from a year ago with particular strong performance in some of the upper end vehicle trends.

Premium Luxury was a key driver in our overall new vehicle unit profitability, which improved on a sequential basis from Q3 for the first time since the fourth quarter of twenty twenty one. Our used vehicle gross profit increased 14% from the fourth quarter a year ago as our actions to manage inventory and vehicle turn rates resulted in higher unit profitability and we delivered unit sales volume performance in line with the overall used retail industry. For CFS, we retained our leading position in the industry as unit profitability increased both year over year and sequentially. More than 70% of our CFS income comes from product attachment. For the fourth quarter, we attached more than two products per contract on average, a nice improvement from the preceding two quarters, which were adversely impacted by the CDK outage.

I've already covered my thoughts on ANFinance, which is now exclusively focused on our AutoNation franchise and AN USA customers. Our after sales teams continue to deliver strong growth with same store gross profit up more than 5% from a year ago and achieved AutoNation's total store records for gross profit for both the fourth quarter and the full year. Total store results included fourth quarter margin expansion of 110 basis points from a year ago and 70 basis point expansion for the full year. Now looking back to 2019, we've grown after sales annual gross profit by nearly $600,000,000 and expanded margin by nearly two fifty basis points. This more recurring revenue portion of our business is a key part of our customer retention efforts.

We remain focused on the development and retention of our technicians and continue to actively hire. Finally, as you saw on our press release, we repurchased hundred million dollars of shares during the fourth quarter and the average price of $166 per share, bringing our full year share repurchases to $460,000,000 or nearly 2,900,000.0 shares. This represented a 7% reduction in shares during the year. The $460,000,000 returned to our shareholders during 2024 represented 58% of our capital deployment and this compared to 56% in 2023. So with that now, Tom, I'm going to turn the call over to you to take us through the results in more detail.

Thanks, Mike. I'm turning to Slide five to discuss our fourth quarter P and L. Our total revenue for the quarter was $7,200,000,000 an increase of 7% from a year ago. That's 8% on a same store basis. This was driven by a 12% increase in new vehicle revenue, that's 13% same store, as we increased new unit volumes across all three segments, as Mike mentioned.

Gross profit of $1,240,000,000 increased by 5% on a sequential basis and 3% from a year ago on a same store basis. The year over year growth was driven by used vehicles, which was up 14% CFS, which was up 6% and after sales, which was up 5% all on a same store basis. The gross profit margin of 17.2% of revenue was down slightly from a year ago, reflecting the moderation in new vehicle unit profitability, partially offset by improvements in after sales, which was up 110 basis points and used vehicles retailed, which was up 40 basis points. Adjusted SG and A was 66.3% of gross profit, down more than 100 basis points from the third quarter. Adjusted operating income increased sequentially to just over 5% of revenue.

Now below the operating line, our fourth quarter results were impacted by higher interest expense from floor plan debt, which is a reflection of recovering new vehicle inventory levels. The fourth quarter floor plan interest expense of $55,000,000 was up $9,000,000 from a year ago, but down from the $61,000,000 in the third quarter of twenty twenty four, reflecting lower short term funding rates and inventory levels. Now as a reminder, we reflect floor plan assistance received from OEMs in gross margins. This assistance totaled $35,000,000 which was up $2,000,000 from a year ago. So net of these OEM incentives, net new vehicle floor plan expense totaled $18,000,000 which was up nearly $9,000,000 from a year ago.

Going forward, we'll continue to focus on maintaining optimal levels of new and used inventory to balance the opportunity to drive future sales growth with a desire to keep net financing costs in check. All in, this resulted in adjusted net income of $199,000,000 as compared to $216,000,000 a year ago. As Mike mentioned, total shares repurchased over the twelve months decreased our weighted average shares outstanding by 7% to forty point one million shares in the fourth quarter. This was a benefit for our adjusted EPS, which was $4.97 for the quarter, $0.05 below the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Let me go deeper on some of these results.

Slide six provides some more color for our new vehicle performance. New vehicle unit volumes were a strong point for the quarter, increasing more than 10% from a year ago on a total store basis and nearly 12% on a same store basis. Total store unit sales were up across our three segments with import units up 5%, premium luxury up 12% and domestic up 17% with results reflecting stronger supply, better incentives and good performance by our commercial teams. By powertrain, hybrid vehicles unit sales were up approximately 50% from the fourth quarter a year ago and represented nearly 20% of our unit sales and 10% of our ending inventory. Battery electric vehicle sales were up more than 25% from a year ago and represented about 8% of our sales for the quarter and 8% of ending inventory.

OEM actions with incentives and uncertainty regarding the longevity of government incentives for BEVs likely contributed to stronger BEVs sales from traditional OEMs during the quarter. Internal combustion engine unit sales were up about 3% in the quarter. Our new vehicle unit profitability averaged $2,969 for the quarter, up $165 from the third quarter, led by the performance of our premium luxury vehicles and marked the first sequential increase since the fourth quarter of twenty twenty one, as Mike noted earlier. On average, new vehicle unit revenue increased two percent from a year ago, while our cost per vehicle retailed increased 3% resulting in a year over year moderation in our new vehicle unit profitability. On the balance sheet, our thirty nine days supply of new vehicle inventory at year end was down 25% or 13 from the third quarter.

The new vehicle inventory ended the year below 43,000 units, which was up from 35,000 units a year ago, but down from the 46,000 units at the September. The strong new vehicle sales contributed in part to these reductions, but also our operating teams have been more selective in the OEM allocation process. Looking ahead in the first quarter, we expect normal seasonal shift back to import vehicles, which have lower selling prices and gross profit per vehicle than the premiumluxury brands. Turning to Slide seven, our used unit sales were flat year over year, tracking in line with the overall market. Sequentially, we were down 2% from the third quarter, while the market was down 11% on the same basis.

Supply availability has continued to be a challenge, particularly for the mid and higher priced years, consistent with the past few quarters, driven by lower new vehicle production during COVID. We continue to source more than 90% of our vehicles internally, with our Will Buy Your Car program helping to offset the headwinds we are experiencing in supply from lower lease returns. Used vehicle inventory levels were approximately 34,000 units at year end, up from 32,000 units at the September. This represents thirty seven day sales, roughly the same as at the September. Used vehicle sales and profitability continue to be a big area of focus for us as we emphasize effective sourcing, pricing and speed, while optimizing customer satisfaction.

Looking ahead, we expect the normal seasonal swing to used vehicles for the spring selling season to occur and that used vehicle unit sales will perform accordingly. In November, we opened our twenty fourth ANUSA store in Chandler, Arizona. This was the fifth store opened during 2024, in addition to one in Las Vegas and three in North Florida, with all the store additions adding density to our existing markets. And in January, we opened two additional AN USA stores in Texas. I'm now on Slide eight, Customer Financial Services.

On the last call, we described the momentum our CFS operations had in August and September. That performance continued during the fourth quarter. Our product attachment rate was strong, ended up being above two products per vehicle. Also, our finance penetration for the fourth quarter increased more than 200 basis points for new vehicles and 70 basis points from used vehicles from the period a year ago. Our CFS TBR of $2,686 was up about $100 sequentially from the third quarter and it also increased from the fourth quarter last year.

We continue to grow our hand finance business, which provides superior long term value, but creates a short term CFS TBR headwind as Mike explained earlier. The year over impact from this headwind was approximately $120 per unit in the fourth quarter. Now Slide nine is a new one for us. You will see in our Form 10 K, which we expect to file on Friday, that we've enhanced the disclosures for ANFinance given its growth and its status as a separate reportable segment in the company. ANFinance originated $1,100,000,000 of loans during 2024, including $360,000,000 dollars in the fourth quarter.

The quality of the portfolio also continues to improve. Our credit and performance metrics are improving with average FICO scores on originations of six seventy eight for the year compared to six twenty three in 2023. This includes FICO scores in the fourth quarter of '6 '80 '4 compared to the sub-six 50 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Delinquency rates at 2.6% are solid reflecting our proprietary underwriting standards and fourth quarter sale of the substantive remainder of the legacy subprime portfolio inherited with the CIG acquisition. This sale resulted in a $7,400,000 pre tax gain during the quarter.

From a funding perspective, 75% of our portfolio balance is funded with non recourse debt as of year end. This is up from 57% a year ago and obviously frees up capital for us to deploy elsewhere. We're getting great support from our warehouse lenders. As we begin to establish a regular ABS funding cadence, we expect the 75% funding level to continue increasing. We anticipate our inaugural ABS offering in the second quarter.

As we continue to grow the AN Finance portfolio, the accounting impact from the upfront life of loan credit provisioning, which is a non cash item, will be a continued headwind to the P and L of AN Finance, but this will begin to balance out as the portfolio reaches scale. It's our expectation that AN Finance become profitable by the end of twenty twenty five. Moving to Slide 10, after sales representing nearly one half of our gross profits continued its revenue and margin momentum. Same store gross profit increased by more than 5% from a year ago led by warranty and customer pay. Growth was driven equally by volume, mix and pricing.

Mike mentioned that our after sales gross profit margin has increased nearly two fifty basis points since 2019. For the fourth quarter, our margin rate was 48.4%, up 110 basis points from a year ago, reflecting improved parts and labor rates, higher tech efficiency, leverage and higher value repair orders. We continue to develop and promote our technician workforce, which has led year to date increases in our master and certified technician headcount and our overall technician headcount increased nearly 2% on a same store basis. So looking ahead, we expect after sales business will grow roughly mid single digits each year. On to Slide 11, we continue to generate a consistent and attractive conversion of income into cash.

Adjusted free cash flow for 2024 was $750,000,000 compared to $969,000,000 a year ago. While the quantum of free cash flow normalized in line with new vehicle unit profitability, the efficiency of our cash generation as measured by the conversion of net income into free cash flow improved to 105% from 94% in 2023, which is in part attributable to our focus on measuring and reducing our transactional cycle times, particularly in customer deal billing and financing, as well as optimizing inventory levels. We are focused on sustaining this operational performance as well as on the prudent allocation of capital to CapEx. Let me wrap up with a capital allocation Slide 12 before I turn it back over to Mike. We consider capital allocation in two categories: one, reinvesting in the business in the form of CapEx or M and A or two, returning capital to our shareholders via share repurchase.

CapEx is mostly maintenance related compulsory spending totaled $329,000,000 for 2024 and was 20% lower than 2023. Spending is expected to settle in this range. We continue to actively explore M and A opportunities, many on the franchise store side. We are competitive buyers and we're confident in achieving year three returns greater than our weighted average cost of capital for core franchise acquisition opportunities. This hurdle rate is a bit higher for non franchise.

It's difficult to predict the timing of M and A opportunities. As you know, during the second half of twenty twenty four, the landscape was improving and we are starting to see a more regular flow of potential opportunities. Share repurchases have been and will continue to be an important part of our playbook. During the fourth quarter, we purchased more than $100,000,000 worth of shares at an average price of $166 per share. This brought our full year share repurchases to $460,000,000 nearly 2,900,000.0 shares above or about 7% of our shares outstanding at the start of the year.

In our capital allocation decisioning, we also continually consider our investment grade balance sheet and associated leverage levels. At quarter end, our leverage was 2.45 times EBITDA, which modestly improved from Q3 and was in line with our two to three times EBITDA long term target. During the year, we reduced our non vehicle debt by $268,000,000 and received more than $150,000,000 in store sale proceeds. Let me turn the call back to Mike before we address your questions.

Yes. Thanks, Tom. Just before going over to questions, I want to talk a little bit about some of the thoughts of 2025. Obviously, there are multiple unknowns regarding the economy and geopolitical factors and obviously depending on how they play out, they may have an impact on our business. However, when I think about new vehicles, I believe there is pent up demand still.

And as a result, I think if the economic environment continues on its recent trend, we're going to see moderate unit growth from 2024, also in the first half, less so in the second half. But I think I anticipate moderation in unit profitability to support that growth. During such circumstance, I have optimism that gross profit per unit, however, will eventually stabilize above historical levels. I think our efforts to manage used vehicle costs, pricing and inventory levels will result in continued stabilization in unit profitability in what I think will be a stable used car market and we expect our CFS volumes and unit profitability to remain resilient and we continue to offer valuable products to customers to aid in their overall cost of vehicle ownership. And as part of our CFS performance, we'll continue to grow our AM finance business.

I previously mentioned the penetration opportunities and the associated benefits from scale that we should expect to progressively unlock throughout the year for after sales. Obviously, it's a big focus for us and we're going to remain very focused on that, particularly around technician recruitment, retention, development of our technicians. And this as you know, remains a highly competitive market with limited labor resource and I don't expect that to change at all as we get into deeper into this year. Our efforts to drive a strong cash conversion of our profits to cash will continue as Tom mentioned and 100% conversion on our adjusted net income, I think is a good starting point. In summary, I think with the strength and diversification of our business, automation has proven its ability to deliver strong results, profits and cash flow during a broad range of economic backdrops, which is our expectation for the coming year.

Our capital allocation activities are most focused on opportunities that drive the highest returns for our shareholders on invested capital and that will not change. And now with that, I'm going to open the lines to your questions.

Harry, if you could please remind participants how to get in queue for the question and answer, please.

Yes, of course. To ask a question, please dial star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. And our first question will be from the line of John Murphy with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys. Mike, I just wanted to ask a first question and this is for lack of a better term, sort of the Trump bump we've seen post election. It seems like there's kind of a benefit on the Lux side as consumer sentiment or at least whether it be measured or not improved dramatically, but also EVs and hybrids for fear of the cancellation of the 7,500 IRA incentive. So it seems like it's kind of helped in both directions. I'm just curious if you're seeing that extend into early twenty twenty five And also are the automakers realistic about what happened or what's happening with EVs here and they're not stuffing more back into the channel and everybody's using this as an opportunity to maybe clear the decks and get those inventories in balance.

So will that be a Trump bump be extended and what's happened on the EV side?

Yes. Thanks, John. Good morning to you. Well, if I think about the pattern of let's focus on new vehicle sales. If I think about the pattern on new vehicle sales, the industry obviously was running something around $16,000,000 pre election and then you saw progressively improvements in the overall industry with what I think is a very strong exit rate.

And that ultimately is just two things. I think firstly the uncertainty of the election and the confidence in terms of the target for the economic environment obviously helped people I think, make the decision to purchase. And then secondly, as I've mentioned before, we are seeing improved affordability on a monthly payment basis, I think, for consumers. So the question is, will that industry level continue? So to use a different term, what's the underlying run rate rather than is it a bump?

I think we already saw in January where from memory the retail start was something north of 13.3, 13 point four something like that, which was significantly above prior year. I think that if I think that that has the opportunity to continue through Q1 less so in Q2 on a year over year comp and then you'll see a flattening as we get into Q3 and into Q4. So I'm optimistic on, as I said, the year over year comps in Q1 and I think the industry I think the industry is in good shape. What was the second question, John? Sorry.

Just I mean, you've also gotten a bump on EV sales. I mean, is everybody kind of buying into this and thinking this is the new world order or are they using this as an opportunity to hopefully clear the decks on some of that inventory and not restock?

I think the OEMs are taking an incredible I think the OEMs are all over this topic frankly. They must have had multiple, multiple meetings in terms of their product capacity and what they're going to do to balance because I think everybody is clear that the next four years are going to be different to their anticipation should a different outlook happen. And they are already, I think pivoting in terms of their products, in terms of their powertrains, in terms of how they think the market will play out. So yes, there was an element of clearing the decks and urgency around Q4 in beds and hybrids. But remember, we've seen hybrid, we have seen best kind of settle in at 6% to 8% of the marketplace.

Hybrid had a very strong year last year as people recognize the benefits of both combustion and battery power. But there was and I look at this in a positive fashion. There was a degree of clear index particularly with inventory and we ended the year I think in a really good balance with what I think is going to be probably an underlying given our state and our distribution geographically and underlying battery electric market, we're short on hybrids because the demand significantly above. Unfortunately, the pipeline has been able to keep up with very high turn rates. So I think from a balance perspective, we ended the year in a better shape than I had anticipated mid year.

And that I think was driven by expectations that the environment is going to change in terms of subsidies and targets.

And then just a second quick follow-up on the gross. I mean, you mentioned a fade and it sounds like more on the new GPU side. But front end gross is kind of how a deal is traditionally, I think, worked in the dealership. As you look at that, I think it was 4,974 in the fourth quarter, it was 4,748 hundred for three quarters of the year. I mean, what is the opportunity that a salesperson or a GM has to work that front end gross to maybe offset some of that pressure on new?

And that pressure on new has really not been that great. But I mean, are there ways that through the used transaction and the F and I, they might be able to help offset that and stay closer to the high $4,000 s as opposed to dipping down to where we were before?

I think the reality of pricing in the marketplace is one of those areas that there's so much transparency. Your ability in terms of being able to influence that dramatically as a dealer is relatively small. And I think the way that we've talked about this before and the way that I think about this is that there are many elements that go into putting together a transaction with a customer that meets what they need. In 90% of the cases when I've been involved in it is around monthly payments to make sure that you give the customer what they are looking for not just in their vehicle, but also in products to help manage their cost of ownership during that period of time. And our teams are focused on trying to come up with the best blend for that individual customer.

You may expect me as the CEO of an automotive retail group to put it in that fashion, but genuinely that is the best way not just to sell a car, but also to keep customers happy. And if you look at some of the things that we've been able to do, that's how it is done. And at the end of the day, obviously our team are focused on trying to maintain profitability of transactions, but they really do understand the value of continuing to grow our customer base and continuing to make sure our customers come back in our service and parts departments to look after their vehicles. So I don't think it's necessarily as controllable as your question suggests. I think they genuinely try and put together a package that meets what the customer is looking for and then we can sell a car.

Our next question will be from the line of Rajat Gupta with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. I had one question on automation finance. Based on your expectations for loan originations in 2025 and the fact that your equity funding is reducing. I mean the combination of that, would you be able to size how much funding would you need for AN Finance this year?

And I have a quick follow-up on parts and services.

So Rajat, you're talking about the absolute level of non recourse financing for the portfolio. So that was

Yes. And just like the equity funding, how much of your own balance sheet would you be using to fund that?

as we talked about, we went from roughly 60% funding, non recourse funding at the end of twenty twenty three to around 75% in 2024. As that portfolio continues to mature, we work with just the warehouse lenders in increasing that funding percentage. So we'll get some benefit there. I think a bigger benefit will come from on the ABS side. I think you can start with 90% and work your way up there depending on the way the rating agencies rate the portfolios, which is we've tried to emphasize, we think are pretty strong.

So we think we'll get good funding rates. And it just depends on the amount of and the quantum of the funding depends upon the growth of the portfolio. The originations have continued to be very strong. They improved month over month throughout 2024. That has continued in the 2025.

So we'll at the current pace, we'll outpace originations from 2024, which will mean more funding on a quantum basis. But in terms of the coverage by non recourse debt, that what will continue to grow from 75%. I can't give you an exact number because the size of the ABS transaction will be meaningful. And the outcome on the advanced funding on that will be determinant in terms of what our overall funding is. But starting with 90% kind of assumption on what we do on the ABS side.

Understood. That's helpful color. And then just on parts and services, you mentioned I think in the prepared remarks that you expect mid single digit growth in the medium term. Presumably 2025 would be higher because you have some easy compares on CDK from 2Q and 3Q. Can you give us a little more color on what makes up the medium term targets and maybe a little more granularity on 2025?

And what kind of technician headcount addition are you baking in within that framework?

Yes, this is Mike. Obviously, we were I think we tried to be as transparent as possible regarding the impact of CDK both over Q2 and Q3. And I think Tom did a good job in terms of isolating that out. And obviously, our expectation is that that will not be a repeatable event this year. So you can just look back and look at some of the commentary we had in those quarters to see how it impacted our business in what area.

In terms of the way that we think about after sales opportunity going forward, I've talked a lot about our penetration in the vehicle parts that we have. It is still a great opportunity for us and the teams are focused on breaking it out into addressable sub and segments. So zero to three years obviously being the most addressable for us is a continued opportunity for us to grow. And if you look at a couple of things, our underlying productivity in our business is good. I think with training and I think with the way that we approach loading our workshop, there's opportunity to grow that a little bit more.

We certainly have a better utilization where we can increase the productivity of our assets. That's not in question at all. And fundamentally unlocking this will be two things. One will be encouraging customers to return back to a franchise environment. So that's all conquest business.

That's not easy to do. We will not try and do that through price. What we will try and do that is through added service and value. So price for me will not be a driver of that, but it will come with some impact on growth because the added service and value to me is important to encourage customers to come back. But to your point, the constraint as I see it will be technician count and technician numbers.

We had moderate growth of technician in 2024. We in house all of our recruitment during 2024, Lisa and her team, and I think they've done a really strong job and thank you Lisa for that. But I think she if she was on this call, she would tell you it's a big, big focus for her to drive up those recruitment numbers. I think from memory and Derek you need to circle back because I don't want to give wrong information. From memory, I think our total technician growth was somewhere in the order of 2% to 3% something like that for the year.

When I look at that, I would say my expectation and what I want the teams to do is to try and grow that at a higher rate. It is going to be difficult. I mean you also the national campaign from Carmax I'm sure in terms of their recruitment on technicians and National Recruitment Month and everything else. It is a limited resource out there in a competitive marketplace. And when you get those situations, obviously that can come with some additional costs.

So a long answer to a very, I think straightforward question, which I apologize for. I'd like to see our techs, I'll try and summarize. Big focus for us, three to seven years. Our penetration is in line with industry, which means that we're all average and I think we want to be better than average there. To really unlock that is conquest business, bringing people back.

That's not easy, but the constraint is in technician count. I think our productivity, we can squeeze some additional hours out of that, but we and the teams do a good job there. So big focus on recruitment. Last year, we ended at 2%. I'd like to end above that.

And the CDK thing, we'll see I think we'll see the benefits of not having that obviously in Q2. Remember the big impact of last month, the quarter and rolling into Q3. So hopefully that answers your question.

That's great color. I appreciate it. Thank you and good luck.

Our next question will be from the line of Douglas Dutton with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yes. Hi, good morning, team. Congrats on the great print. My first question is just on SG and A. And it looks like it took a meaningful step down here versus what we saw in the earlier part of the year.

Is there anything structural changing there where this might be lower into 2025 whether that's lower promotional dollars, advertising, something else?

Thanks, Doug. This is Tom Allynsson. And by the way, congratulations on the addition to the family. Hope you're

Yes. And I think when you look at the fourth quarter, very strong gross profit wise when we talk about all the factors that contributed. So I think it was more of leveraging in the fourth quarter, very strong new unit vehicle sales and good performance on CFS and in some of the places in Portfolio that drove that growth up. It had the effect of a modest impact on the overall ratio. As we go forward to 2025, we do expect modest improvement in the ratio as we continue to drive growth and to pay close attention to some of the cost drivers, more meaningful cost drivers.

But I think on balance, we'll make the progress that's going to be notable, but I wouldn't say it's going to be radical in terms of its impact on any given quarter, but a slow steady improvement in that ratio.

Okay, great. And then just another quick one for me on after sales gross margins and the improvement there. So 110 bps driven by some of those input costs being lower according to the presentation, labor parts. Is this sort of strong pass through of costs and the associated revenue going to be able to continue while keeping those repair tickets higher? At some point, is there a natural limit in what your customers are going to accept paying for these repair orders and costs will normalize a bit lower in terms of the top line?

I think you have to consider the mix of the growth in the quarter for sure. A lot of good external based revenue in the quarter between warranty and customer pay. Those can influence the margin rates. And I think when we talked about the contributions to the gross profit improvement, it was a combination of that more favorable mix, but also the productivity points that we talked about as well as higher value type orders. So mix amongst customer pay, warranty are definitely favorable to internal type work.

So productivity as well as some of the other initiatives as well will enable us to keep growing that, but I wouldn't count on 110 basis points on a continual basis.

And I'm just going to add in there as well, if I may, Tom, just a couple of things. Obviously, when you talk about mix, I think we should point out that obviously, Wholesale Parts had a tough year across the industry, particularly around collision shops and actual repair order volume, which has been widely reported. And that business is lower margin. So you saw the benefit of that come through in terms of margin. And obviously, I think Collision will recover a little bit as you come into here, which will again change the mix as you get into this 2025 decreed to the year.

I think it is competitive. You asked the question about is there a limit that customers compare. The fact of the matter is we don't try and push that limit. I think if you found out what that limit is, you probably got your profit, you probably got yourself a problem on your hands. I think what we do is we regularly look into the marketplace both on franchise and non franchise service providers and understand the value we add as a franchise and a non franchise service provider and try and make sure that we're priced effectively in the marketplace for what we're trying to do.

And as everything, at the end of the day, elasticity in service applies in the same way as it does on vehicle sales. So Christian and his team are very, very focused on that. And I talked at length about three to seven years and that's obviously one of the three categories he's focused on. And part of that will make sure that we're competitive clearly from a price point of view, but very, very competitive from a service point of view. And that's part of his aspirations for this year.

So a combination of Tom and my answer hopefully gives you the detail you need.

Yes, perfect. Congrats again, gents, and great quarter here.

The next question will be from the line of Brett Jordan with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning guys. When you talked about stabilization in used good morning. When you talked about stabilization in used, I guess looking back ten years, the margin rates in used obviously can approach double digits. Do you think we are forever less profitable on the margin rate of those units now just given the competition for inventory and price transparency from online product search? Or is the stabilization used also maybe some meaningful upside in those unit profits?

No, I think that the way that used cars are transactioned in the marketplace is always with reference to the actual retail price and then all of the people that buy used cars invariably with the exception of some specialists and some very niche products step off of that price. And it has been a pricing model that whether you have come to market with a disruptive model or a more traditional model has remained and been pervasive. And I think because of that, when I think about used margin as a percentage basis, it's been moderated and that's why I tend to talk about used margin on a dollar basis rather than a percentage basis. And I think that's what's going to continue because as we've said in the past and I think we've debated at length, wholesale and retail prices, there's a short time difference between the effect of changes in wholesale prices into retail, but they are in lockstep. You just need to take the time period into account.

Okay. And then in your prior question, I think you mentioned you talked about collision being a challenging compare, but you expected some recovery. Are you seeing that yet? Is it seasonal recovery just as you lap what was a very mild winter last year or is there something more structural that might be improving the collision trend?

So as we really through the summer and as we closed out the year, what we were seeing was that the repair order as a percentage of collisions was dropping and that was as more vehicles either the size of the impact or the value of the vehicle more total losses and therefore less work flowing into the shops in the industry and that has continued. So that was really my reference with regard to that. But I think from my point of view as you get through the winter months and you get into and you get into spring, you naturally see an improvement in terms of your collision business. And for us in particular, given the fact that we've got a big collision business of well over 50 collision centers around. Our focus has got to be regardless of what's happening with regard to that ratio of repaired to crashed vehicles growing our share.

AutoNation (AN) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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