AutoNation, Inc. (NYSE:AN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 9 of 11

Mike Manley: I’d say the interest in buying a used car is very strong. That converting into sales is, as I mentioned, still be and will continue to be impacted by availability of inventory, particularly in those age profiles that historically have been the bulk of used vehicle sales for franchise and public dealers, so we’re seeing that. Joe mentioned it in his opening remarks, we have — we like, I think, all of our competitors are recognizing this and we’ve redoubled our efforts. That redoubling of efforts means that prices that’s for sure stabilized, you’ll see some upward pressure on prices. I think ramping is going to necessarily impact margin, because it’s just a relatively short time before that hits retail. But what we saw in Q4 continues in Q1 and it’s an area of great focus and we’ve got our teams focused on that every day, but that’s how it started. Hopefully that helps.

Rajat Gupta: No, that’s helpful. Great, thanks for taking the question and I’ll get it back in queue.

Operator: Thank you. We have time for one more question. Our final question comes from David Whiston of Morningstar. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

David Whiston: Thanks. Good morning. I guess, first looking at the segment income, domestic was down especially hard about 25% and just wondering kind of related to that, you’ve got a large brand mix decline from Ford, but then at the overall segment level for domestic, was there just lack of inventory from Ford or others, or is it more due to unfavorable pricing?

Mike Manley: Well, there’s no data, you had some interesting movements in — from all of the domestic, both up and down. I think there are three things that play. For sure inventory, there’s no doubt about that inventory still was for those areas really that their mainstream brands, I’m not talking about the premium parts of their brand, Lincoln and Buick and Cadillac, but the main parts of the brand. You had pockets of inventory that are not available. You had movement in terms of net price position and it’s incredibly competitive. And I also think all of the OEMs are adding towards the end of the year and what they like to do — look to do is to plan not just the end of the year, but how they’re going to start the year. And those dynamics resulted in what we saw.

So we’ve already, I think, seen some of the OEMs talk about how they finished off the year. That will be wrapped up. And then I don’t want to comment for them on how the year the New Year started. But the great thing is that invariably there is not just one silver bullet that they did it and that’s why this business is beautifully complex.

David Whiston: Okay. And on service, that’s — from a growth perspective that’s a positive outlier. And I’m just curious is a lot of people — are there just a lot of people coming back to the market now who have deferred for a long time? And is the growth mostly customer pay or warranty?

Mike Manley: Yes, growth is coming mainly to customer pay, but it isn’t about significant volumes of additional customers coming into your dealership or dealership at least. I think it really is a reflection of the fact that they have been more miles driven, there’s a direct correlation between miles driven and expense to keep the vehicles on the road in the safe fashion. So what you’re actually seeing is you’re seeing the revenue and the gross per repair order actually drift up for a largely stable number of customers that are coming in. It’s obviously very dramatically dealership by dealership depending on their penetration of their after sales part, but broadly across the piece, that’s what you’re seeing. And internal work as well, which obviously has an impact, is continuing to improve as well. So broadly, as I said, more mouse driven, more repair and maintenance.

Page 9 of 11