With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Industries included in the sector are automotive retail, general merchandisers, internet retail, and specialty retail.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Retailing

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-308-Sonic Automotive

The automotive retailer operates more than 100 dealerships and 25 different brands of automobiles.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500 2020 301 Sonic Automotive

The Charlotte, N.C.-based automotive retailer sells new and used cars and light trucks, replacement parts, and vehicle services via a network of dealerships in 12 states.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Profits as % of Stockholder Equity

Earnings Per Share (last Fiscal Year)

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EPS % Change (from prior fiscal year)

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Total Return to Investors (last year)

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Total Return to Investors (10 year, annualized)

Sonic Automotive is one of the largest automotive retailers in the United States. Operating over 100 dealerships across 13 states, Sonic represents more than 25 automotive brands, offering new and used vehicle sales, replacement parts, vehicle maintenance, and collision repair services. The company also owns EchoPark Automotive, a rapidly growing network specializing in pre-owned vehicles, providing a unique car-buying experience. Committed to delivering exceptional guest experiences, Sonic emphasizes transparency, efficiency, and customer satisfaction through its innovative One Sonic One Experience approach.

Q2 2026

Q1 2026

Q4 2025

Q2 2025

Q1 2025

Q4 2024

Sonic Automotive (SAH): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Sonic Automotive

sonic automotive

Good morning, and welcome to the Sonic Automotive fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. This conference call is being recorded today, Wednesday, February 18, 2026. Presentation materials which accompany management's discussion on the conference call can be accessed at the company's website at ir.sonicautomotive.com. At this time, I would like to refer to the Safe Harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. During this conference call, management may discuss financial projections, information, or expectations about the company's products or market, or otherwise make statements about the future. Such statements are forward-looking and subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In addition, management may discuss certain Non-GAAP financial measures as defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please refer to the non-GAAP reconciliation tables in the company's current report on Form 8-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier today. I would now like to introduce Mr. David Smith, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sonic Automotive. Mr. Smith, you may begin your conference.

Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Sonic Automotive fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. Again, I'm David Smith, the company's Chairman and CEO. Joining me on today's call is our President, Jeff Dyke, our CFO, Heath Byrd, our EchoPark Chief Operating Officer, Tim Keen, and our VP of Investor Relations, Danny Wieland. I would like to open the call by thanking our amazing teammates for continuing to deliver a world-class guest experience for our customers. 2025 marked the third consecutive year of delivering all-time record customer satisfaction scores for our franchise dealership guests, and EchoPark once again retained the highest guest satisfaction rating among pre-owned vehicle retailers. We believe our strong relationships with our teammates, guests, and manufacturer and lending partners are key to our future success.

As always, I would like to thank them all for their continued support and loyalty to the Sonic Automotive team. Turning now to our fourth quarter results. Reported GAAP EPS was $1.36 per share, excluding the effect of certain items, as detailed in our press release this morning. Adjusted EPS for the fourth quarter was $1.52 per share, a 1% increase year-over-year. Consolidated total revenues were $3.9 billion, down 1% year-over-year. Fourth quarter record consolidated gross profit grew 4% and consolidated Adjusted EBITDA was flat compared to the prior year, fourth quarter. For the full year, reported GAAP EPS was $3.42 per share, and Adjusted EPS was $6.60 per share, an 18% increase from 2024.

Consolidated total revenues were an all-time annual record of $15.2 billion, up 7% year-over-year, and consolidated total gross profit was an all-time annual record of $2.4 billion, up 9% year-over-year. For 2025, consolidated Adjusted EBITDA grew 10% to $615 million. Moving now to our fourth quarter franchise dealership segment results. We generated reported revenues of $3.4 billion, flat year-over-year and down 5% on a same-store basis, driven by an 11% decrease in same-store new vehicle retail volume, offset partially by a 5% increase in the same-store used vehicle retail volume year-over-year.

Fourth quarter new vehicle volume faced headwinds from pull-forward consumer demand for electric vehicles ahead of the expiration of the federal tax credit in the third quarter, combined with strong luxury demand in the prior year fourth quarter. Reported franchised total gross profit was a fourth quarter record, up 4% and declined 2% on a same-store basis. Our fixed operations gross profit was a fourth quarter record, and F&I gross profit set an all-time quarterly record, up 8% and 6% year-over-year, respectively, on a reported basis. These two high-margin business lines continue to increase their share of our total gross profit pool, once again, typically contributing over 75% of total gross profit for the fourth quarter, mitigating the tariff headwinds on new vehicle volume and margin to our overall profitability, while also leveraging our SG&A expenses more efficiently than incremental vehicle-related gross profit.

Same-store new, excuse me, same-store new vehicle GPU was $3,033 per unit, down 7% year-over-year, but up 6% sequentially due to a higher luxury mix in the fourth quarter. On a reported basis, new vehicle GPU was $3,209 per unit, down 1% year-over-year and up $208 or 7% sequentially from the third quarter. On the used vehicle side of the franchise business, same-store used GPU decreased 2% year-over-year and decreased 10% sequentially from the third quarter to $1,379 per unit. Our F&I performance continues to be a strength, with fourth quarter record franchised F&I GPU of $2,624 per unit, up 8% year-over-year and up 1% sequentially. Turning now to EchoPark.

Adjusted segment income was a fourth quarter record, $3.6 million, up 300% year-over-year, and Adjusted EBITDA was a fourth quarter record, $8.8 million, up 110% year-over-year. For the fourth quarter, we reported EchoPark revenues of $481 million, down 5% year-over-year, and fourth quarter record gross profit of $54 million, up 9% year-over-year. EchoPark segment retail unit sales volume for the fourth quarter decreased 6% year-over-year, and EchoPark segment total GPU was a fourth quarter record, $3,420 per unit, up 15% per unit year-over-year and up 2% sequentially from the third quarter.

For the full year, EchoPark segment Adjusted EBITDA was an all-time record, $49.2 million, up 78% year-over-year. Going forward, we remain focused on increasing our mix of non-auction sourced inventory to benefit consumer affordability and retail sales volume and GPU. When combined with the strategic adjustments we have made to our EchoPark business model, we believe we are well-positioned to resume a disciplined store opening cadence for EchoPark beginning in late 2026, assuming used vehicle market conditions continue to improve. In the long term, we intend to expand our EchoPark platform to reach 90% of U.S. car buyers, selling over 1 million vehicles annually, while continuing to provide a superior guest experience.

We believe investment in brand marketing will be key to our long-term EchoPark growth plan, and we expect to begin to invest in this effort during 2026, potentially increasing advertising expense by $10-$20 million this year. Turning now to our Powersports segment. We generated fourth quarter record revenues of $36 million, up 19% year-over-year, and fourth quarter record gross profit of $9 million, up 25% year-over-year. Fourth quarter combined new and used retail volume was up 18% year-over-year, and we are beginning to see the benefits of our investment in modernizing the Powersports business and the future growth opportunities it may provide. Finally, turning to our balance sheet.

We ended the quarter with $702 million in available liquidity, including $306 million in combined cash and floorplan deposits on hand. Our focus on maintaining a strong balance sheet and liquidity position allows us to strategically deploy capital in a variety of ways to deliver value to our shareholders. During the fourth quarter, we repurchased approximately 600,000 shares of our common stock for approximately $38 million, bringing the full year share repurchase to 1.3 million shares for approximately $82 million. In addition, I'm pleased to report today that our board of directors approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.38 per share, payable on April 15, 2026, to all stockholders of record on March 13, 2026.

We continue to work closely with our manufacturer partners to understand the potential impact of tariffs on vehicle production, pricing and volume forecasts, vehicle affordability, and consumer demand going forward. The full year 2026 outlook and guidance on page 13 of our investor presentation considers these uncertainties and represents our current expectations for 2026 financial results. As always, our team remains focused on executing our strategy and adapting to ongoing changes in the automotive retail environment while making strategic decisions to maximize long-term returns. This concludes our opening remarks, and we look forward to answering any questions you may have. Thank you very much.

We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Jeff Flick with Stephens, Inc.

Oh, great. Congrats on a standout quarter. It's pretty impressive results relative to the others in Q4.

I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about EchoPark. I was just curious if you think about, you know, the used car options that are out there right now, and there's obviously big players like Carvana, CarMax, at the time. I'm just wondering, as, as you're starting to understand the EchoPark business, you know, better, where do you guys see how, how you fit into the used car ecosystem in terms of when someone's looking to buy a new car, a used car, you know, where, where do you guys view as, like, where you really kind of overindex and, you know, solve a problem directly at a customer? Where do you fit in the used car ecosystem?

This is Jeff. We've always kind of looked at EchoPark as the Costco sort of of the pre-owned world. There are 35-40 million pre-owned cars sold every year in this country, and, you know, if you look at what Carvana is doing, 500,000-600,000, you looked at CarMax in the 800,000-900,000 range. There's a lot of room for us, and prior to COVID, we said we'd, you know, be at 90% coverage of the country and sell over 1 million vehicles. We feel very comfortable over the last 3 or 4 years, we've worked very hard on the model. We can slowly and accurately build stores. Like we said, we're going to open 1 or 2 in the fourth quarter of this year.

We'll open more in 27, and we will methodically grow the EchoPark business. But we're the low-cost provider in this arena. And when you look at how we price our vehicles and you compare to those two competitors, we're anywhere from $3,000-$6,000 cheaper than those guys, and it gives us the ability to sell, you know, a lot of vehicles on a per rooftop basis versus our competitive set. And we're seeing that. We see it in the 17 stores that we have open now.

We believe that being that low-cost provider and really taking care of our guests like we do with our great guest satisfaction scores, which are industry-leading, that combination is just going to be really hard to beat as we slowly begin to grow this brand.

And Jeff, this is Heath. I'll add one point, is exactly what Jeff was alluding to, is that objectively, we are the lowest cost provider. You can look at the data, and the facts are there. Objectively, we have the best customer experience. We've won for the last 16 quarters with Reputation.com, comparing to Carvana, CarMax, and others. And now that we are starting the expansion again in a disciplined way, where we still have profitability going forward, you combine that with our brand initiative, which we mentioned earlier in the press release and in the statements. Now, people know.

I mean, I think the biggest thing is that we get our name out there, and you've got the two main things that people are looking for, and that's just going to give, you know, additional tailwinds to EchoPark, especially as the inventory is returning. It's going to be a really nice situation for growth for EchoPark.

Yeah, just a quick follow-up. You talked about non-auction sourcing. I'm just curious, like, you had a little bit of a, you know, a hiccup with the with the commercial rental car fleet returns and that gumming up sourcing a little bit. Just any updates on, you know, where you're sourcing non-auction related and then how you see the sourcing, like, you know, unit availability for your business model in 2026?

Yeah, you know, we are. We're incentivizing our team to buy vehicles all over the country, and we're finally beginning to leverage our new car franchise dealerships for inventory. We've always kind of kept that separate, and we have found a way, we believe, to leverage the heck out of that as lease returns begin to come back, as we can trade for more cars out of those 111 franchise stores. And we'll begin to see the beginnings of all this and the inventory sort of feeding into EchoPark will start in March and April timeframe of this year. And so we're very excited about that in reducing, you know, our dependence on the auction lanes.

That's happening, but it's methodically happening with a very strategic plan around that. And buying more cars off the street certainly is happening, and engaging our experienced guides in that kind of model is going to make a big difference for EchoPark as we go forward. It's a very important part of our growth plan.

Well, thanks for taking my questions, and best of luck in 2026.

Our next question is from John Babcock with Barclays.

Hey, good morning. I guess, just first question while we're on EchoPark. When do you plan to do the advertising spend? And then also, is that going to be more focused on building the brand or driving trade-ins? How are you thinking about that? And then also, if you could just talk regionally about, you know, whether you're going to target certain regions or if this is going to be more of a broad-based, you know, nationwide type advertising.

Yeah, that $10 million-$20 million is brand-based and focused on that, strategically focused on that. We'll start spending that money, call it now, beginning of second quarter, somewhere in that timeframe. And we've got to build, you know, commercials and do different things. We've got a lot of fun ideas that we'll present to the public. But I wouldn't expect any of that to be put into action for the public and you guys to see until the fourth quarter as we begin to launch stores again. So that'll all kind of come together. Unfortunately, you got to start spending some money now, so the return doesn't come until fourth quarter or 2027.

And then that'll be, you know, focused on our markets, but then as we move into 2027, we'll even start marketing our brand in markets that we don't exist in. We've seen some of our competitors do that, and they've done a great job with that. So, you know, we're the EchoPark, as Heath was saying earlier, we're going to bring the EchoPark brand to life, and we're going to start sharing with the world, you know, what our pricing model is and how great our guest experience is, and that's a one-two punch that's going to be very difficult to deal with, on top of an amazing selection of inventory.

So put all that together, and we think we're sitting in the catbird seat, and you know, we've got a lot of runway in front of us, and there's a lot of pre-owned cars being sold in this country, so we're very excited about it.

This is David. Something to note is that, remember, the first EchoPark store opened in 2014. So this is, you know, something that factually, we know that when people know us, like in markets like Denver, that, you know, we get a far higher market share, we get more for our cars, we, you know, they, they know about us, they refer their friends and family to us.

... We've got a lot of people who have bought from us over and over again. So it's not something that we're wondering, Well, what if we advertise, will it work? It, it absolutely works. They just need to know about us.

All right. That's very helpful. Thank you. And then, my last question, just on GPUs, fared pretty well in the fourth quarter. Just kind of curious how you're thinking about the cadence of that in 2026.

Yeah, from us, Jeff, from a new car perspective, we put it out there in our franchise segment of $2,700-$3,000 a copy. Probably could, yeah, be a little stronger than that in the first quarter of the year, maybe April, tax return season, all the good things. We're going to see what happens with tariffs. I mean, thank God for our manufacturer partners last year in 2025, they made up. You saw their balance sheets and what they all lost and what they've done for our industry. They are going to pass those expenses on. Our average retail selling price just got to $60,000 in the third quarter, over $62,000 in the fourth quarter. These are all-time record high prices.

So the affordability issue, while maybe not being felt in 2025, we believe as you get into May, June, July, August, you're going to start feeling it, as, as new car prices have nowhere to go but up. And that's, that's a difficult situation. It's a great situation for us with EchoPark, because it's going to put, you know, put us in the catbird seat with affordability from an EchoPark perspective and our used car business on the franchise side.

That's exciting for us, but I think that everybody needs to keep a real close eye out on the inflationary effects and what's going to happen with new car pricing as we move into the early parts of the summer, late spring here, and our manufacturer partners start moving that cost on to the consumer in a more, in a way that we did not see in 2025.

Actually, as a quick follow-on to that, are you starting to see indications that the OEMs are planning to push on more costs? I don't know if you have any additional commentary there.

Absolutely. They're lowering margin, rebates that we get, they're pushing-- prices are going up. There's no question that you're going to see that. They're not going to sit back and lose billions and billions of dollars. They can't. It's just not going to happen. It's going to be really interesting to see the elasticity in new car pricing as we move forward over the next six months. You know, look, January was a hell of a month. You know, without the snowstorms, it would have been a magnificent month. We'll see.

I don't know if it's the tax stuff that's helping that, but definitely prices are higher, and so maybe there's some great elasticity, but it does bring in the affordability discussion, and it really rings a bell from a used car perspective. We're going to have that gap that we've been missing between new car and pre-owned cars again, and that's just going to be fantastic for the industry and really good for EchoPark.

Our next question is from Rajat Gupta with JP Morgan.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to quickly follow up on, you know, the EchoPark commentary. You know, given, you know, the store openings later this year, you know, the increase in advertising, it looks like, you know, the year-over-year growth should accelerate in the back half. And are you setting up for 2027 to be an even stronger year from a growth rate perspective than the high cycle that is this year? Is that the right takeaway?

Got it. Okay, that's, that's helpful. And maybe I want to look a bit to, like, parts and services. You know, understandably, warranty comps were tough here in the fourth quarter. Can you give us an update on, you know, where you ended up with respect to, you know, Same-Store technician growth and any targets for 2026 that you're going after there? Would be curious. Thanks.

I think since March of 2024, where we started our technician focus, we're now plus 400 technicians from that original date that we started talking about this, and that's been a big part of our, you know, success since then from a fixed operations perspective. We're all in Houston right now at our annual meeting, and our whole annual meeting today is focused on fixed operations and our ability to grow this business significantly. We think we've got $100 million a month in fixed operations growth that we can do. That's $1.2 billion. We did a little over $1 billion in 2025. So we're really excited about the opportunity here.

There's just too many customers that, and for the industry, that don't come back to a new car store, to have their vehicle serviced, and it's like 50/50. And we think we can attract a lot of customers. We've got the time to sell, we've got the base, we've got the technicians, and we're going to take advantage of that as we move forward over the next year or two.

Understood. And then just on your balance sheet leverage, just, you know, a question on capital allocation. It looks like, you know, that we could define it, you know, it's 2.1 in terms of net debt to EBITDA based on, you know, the add backs are allowed from rating agencies. I'm curious, you know, how much could you stretch? And would you plan to stretch that?

... you know, in 2026 or in the medium term, to either deploy more capital into either more M&A or buybacks? Thanks.

Yeah, if you look at that rate, I think we are the first or 1 or 2 in leverage ratio, and we're comfortable with that. We wanna have a very strong balance sheet. We would be comfortable going to a 3.5, but we can actually execute our plans for next year and still maintain that low leverage ratio. If a nice acquisition shows up that requires some debt funding, then we could do that as well. We have plenty of room. But we've got enough dry powder to implement our plan for 2026. You can see we had the big acquisition in 2025. That was a majority of our capital spend.

You can see that from a returning capital to shareholders, dividend, you know, that's been increased by 200+ over the last several years, and so that's always something. We wanna stay within 20%-25% payout on the dividend. That's our target. And share repurchase, that's one of those things that when we see opportunity, you know, when we have a price that, that pencils out and it's the best return, we're gonna continue that as well. And then the last piece is returning, you know, basically investing back in the business. And as we start growing EchoPark, you'll see that bucket fill up a little bit more, as we build new EchoPark stores. So very comfortable with our balance sheet, all of our covenants, and got the dry powder we need to execute for 2026 and forward into 2027.

And, Rajiv, this is David. I think just to, just on M&A, just to note that, you know, we—these opportunities we, in our industry, you know, come along and, and they can come along quickly. And just—and we're, you know, we're excited, so far about our, big acquisition of the JLR stores last year. It's been a great acquisition, and that one came along pretty darn quickly, and, it was a great one. So hopefully we'll see some more, some more like that and more—some great opportunities to, to grow the business and grow earnings.

Great. Thanks for all the color. Good luck.

Our next question is from Bret Jordan with Jefferies.

Hey, slide 13, you know, I guess, down in 26, roughly by the amount of your marketing, ad, advertising expense. Do you see that inflecting positively in 27, or is there sort of ongoing rollout expense as you start rebuilding the business?

But you broke up right there at the beginning. Is that on EchoPark?

Yeah. Yeah, I was wondering, do you see that in 2027 accelerating as you're sort of passing this initial marketing expense?

Yes, that's exactly how you should look at it. We're gonna have some initial spend here, while we get prepared for launch. That's really not gonna happen until the fourth quarter as we begin to open a few stores, and then we'll have a cadence of stores that we can open next year and a different level of spend that we'll talk about, as we begin to grow the brand across the country, and focus on driving our million+ sales and our 90% coverage. And as we go through the quarters, we'll continue to update you guys on, where we are in the progress that we're making.

You know, we gave you a $10 million-$20 million range, kind of. We can narrow that gap a little bit as we get towards the fourth quarter for you, but that's exactly how you should look at it.

And just to add to that, Brett, this is Danny. You know, we guided to high single digit volume growth for EchoPark in 2026, but as Jeff said earlier, that really doesn't reflect any benefits from this brand investment. So you can look at that as accelerating in 2027 and beyond, as we get the benefits of the brand investment and increase our store base. So that'll, that'll help drive both the volume-based growth that we're projecting, as well as some EBITDA leverage, in, in 2027 and beyond.

Okay, great. And then a question. On Q4, some of your peers talked about luxury consumers acting a little softer than normal for that, for that seasonal period, and you guys didn't mention that. Do you see any behavioral change, whether it's, you know, people pushing back on these high ASPs in luxury or in the parts and service? Or is there any, you know, move to decline recommended services, anything at the consumer we should read through?

Yeah, you know, that's what I was saying earlier. I'm concerned about the tariffs and from a pricing perspective, what's gonna happen as we get into the early summer. You know, if you'd have been with us and you were looking at October and November and the cadence, you'd have gone, "Holy cow, you guys better have a big December. This is gonna be a rough fourth quarter." And then December came along, and it was just, it was one of those great Sonic Decembers that we always count on, and it was just amazing. We sold a lot of everything, in particular in our luxury segment. And surprisingly, you know, $62,000+ average selling price is that mix change to luxury, and you know, we were prepared. We've been doing this for so long together as a team.

We had the right inventory mix. Our manufacturer partners stepped up, and so we had a great, you know, quarter. We think it was a great quarter and an amazing December. And then we came in and had a really good January. You know, when we report, we can talk about it on the first quarter, but the snowstorm slowed things down a little bit, but it was still a great January, even with the damn snowstorm.

Now, had we not had that, you know, wow! And so we'll see. I am, you know, cautioning and concerned about what is going to happen, how far—how much elasticity can we deal with or can the consumer deal with from a new car perspective? And something's gonna have to give here. The prices are getting... are just getting too high. And now didn't show up in January. It's, you know, really not showing up in February. We'll see. I think a lot of people are counting on big tax returns. We'll learn a lot this summer. Great news is the service business is great and has lots of upside. The F&I business is great, and then the used car business should just be fantastic as that gap widens.

You know, you really want your average retail selling price of a used car to be one half that of a new car, and we're beginning to see that gap come back. And, you know, during COVID, it got all the way to 80%-90%, sometimes 100%, depending on the brand. So a lot of great opportunities as we move into the year, but a big caution on exactly what's going to happen from a pricing perspective on new.

Do you have visibility as to what the OEs are going to pass through in the higher price, sort of on a same SKU basis? You know, if a BMW X series was $50, is it now $55 with the pass-through?

You know, I mean, based on what I've been seeing, we're seeing 3%-5% increases, and that, you know, can be a 1%-2% increase on a normalized basis, right? So they're definitely passing on, but they're also doing a great job of cutting spending where they don't need to spend, and cutting programs that, you know, were nice to haves. And I've spent a lot of time on a bunch of different dealer boards, and that's a great topic of conversation with the manufacturer partners. So they are making some really good decisions on spend so that they don't have to impact pricing and they don't have to impact margin.

But the tariffs are too high, you know, on some of these brands, and you're gonna-- they're, they're gonna pass pricing on. It's already happening. They're gonna cut margin. It's already happening. And they paid for it all in 2025, and that's a, a big point here. They really paid for it, and, and you can see it in their reported numbers and the amount of money that some of these manufacturers were losing in the billions of dollars. That's just not gonna-- that's unaffordable. That's not gonna continue to happen, and something's gonna change as we move into this year. And we'll, we'll see. You know, that it's a... We've got to really pay close attention. I was calling this out, if you all remember, in the third and fourth quarter, watch these numbers. And I'm telling you, watch these numbers.

Watch new car pricing as we move forward, in particular on luxury. The luxury buyer will push back at some point.

Our next question is from Chris Pierce with Needham and Company.

Just kind of looking at fixed ops, I was just wondering if maybe you could speak to possibly, like, the subscription nature of this business or... I mean, I guess you're trying to bring people back into the funnel, but when people buy cars, I know there's a pre-buy option for three years of service, that type of thing. Is that something you're seeing and that gives you confidence in growing this business? Or is that so small right now that it's not really a factor?

No, I mean, I think that, you know, we have an opportunity to sell more products like that for sure, to bring the customer back. But the industry as a whole is doing something wrong if, you know, ten customers come in, buy cars, and five of them don't come back to a dealership to have their vehicle serviced. In some manufacturers, as high as 70%. This is something as an industry we must address. Why would you not come back to a dealership where you have ASE Certified Technicians, you've got the best equipment, the best parts, the best service you can get, and they're going to mom-and-pop store, or half of them are going to a mom-and-pop store down the street? That would indicate that there's a pricing opportunity from my perspective. And there's an opportunity.

We filled the bucket up with technicians and the amount of hours that are available. Now we need to put that to work for us, and that's where we are at this point in time of our journey, is really sharpening our pencils, making sure that we've got the right pricing out there, and that we're bringing customers in the marketing, and we're bringing customers into our service drives. There's more out there to get, a lot more out there to get, a lot of upside, and we're just scratching the surface from my perspective.

Well, we've got to get the perception versus reality, where the customer knows that our prices are actually competitive or better than the independent down the street.

That is what I was going to say. Literally, the marketing is a new concept from, the Sonic perspective. We have a focus through Salesforce. We have a focus campaign now, which we used to never have that on the service side. So that, coupled with having products, warranty products, that drive the consumer back to the franchise dealer, those two things are going to help our market share.

One other point there, you know, we guided the mid-single-digit % growth in fixed ops on a same-store basis. You know, fourth quarter, our warranty was only up 2% year-over-year. You know, that had been growing 20, 30, 40% year-over-year for the last several quarters. So we're finally seeing kind of a normalized level there. But we think that these opportunities on the customer pay side are what's going to drive sustained, you know, mid-single-digit % growth above that long-term 2-3% average. But continued opportunity with the additional technicians, the marketing efforts, the efficiency of, of selling the hours and loading the bays, you know, there's some real upside there in that piece of the business. That, that just crested $1 billion in gross for the first time this year.

So it's, you know, the larger numbers with a, you know, mid-single-digit % is a significant opportunity from a gross profit growth perspective.

And just on that, is it something... I know you guys have to take the ball and run with it, but it's something the OEMs can help with as well? I know the cars are getting smarter. You don't just see a check engine light. You can actually push a message, what needs to happen, maybe the price. Like, do the OEMs help on this front as well, with the cars getting smarter, or is it 100% you guys have to kind of take this and execute here?

... One hundred percent. You sit down and talk with many of our OEM partners, they see the exact same issue, and it's at the top of discussion with all of them, is how do we drive more customers and that we're selling cars to now, back into our service drive, and what products do we need to use in order to make that happen? I've, you know, had this exact conversation with the leadership at Toyota and Lexus not too long ago. It is a big, big focus point. And we need to drive more, we need to drive more customers that we're selling cars to back into our service drive, and we can do it. The industry needs to do it, but, but we're certainly going to make that happen, you know, at Sonic Automotive.

Sonic Automotive (SAH) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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