I do think the ’24 model year is moderating will help. And then I just think there is probably a longer-term thing here, which is consumers getting used to money not being free. And I don’t know how long that takes. But if you step back, and I’m old enough to remember, I mean, a 7% or 8% auto loan isn’t bananas. It’s just that for the last decade, if you didn’t have 0.9% financing or 1.9% financing, it seemed really expensive. And so how long it takes for that to socialize across the buyer base, I don’t know, but my suspicion is eventually people will sort of forget that money used to be that cheap. And then I think that it will be easier for people to accept. We financed a lot of RVs for 180 or even 240 months if they’re over $50,000. So in terms of the absolute payment, I just don’t think it’s that material.
I think you’re talking in the 10s, not in the hundreds, of dollars. And so I don’t think that most consumers can’t avoid that. I think it’s also just more of the sticker shock.
Mike Swartz: Got you. Okay. That’s helpful. And then just one final one for me with you guys freeing up some additional liquidity. And I think you made the comment that you’re maybe more aggressively seeking out acquisition opportunities in the back half of the year. Maybe just give us a refresher on kind of some of your core acquisition criteria.
John North: Yes. I think, in general, we’re focused on a few different things. Number one is probably size. So I think you’ll see us be focusing on larger revenue opportunities in terms of the individual dealership or box. I think from our perspective, it’s as much effort to run a $50 million revenue box as a $15 million revenue box. But obviously, the earnings potential is significantly higher in the former than the latter. So we probably defer to larger. There’s lots of dealerships in the country that are probably below those thresholds. And those are the ones, I would say, that have been more recently coming to market or there’s been a more – a greater quantity of those. So that’s first. Second is real estate ownership. So we’re very focused on locations where we can own the dirt, and the acquisition we did in Knoxville this week is a good example of that.
We were able to buy the real estate there as well. So we have site control, which is critical. The third consideration is OEM relationships. And there are certainly good relationships with all of our OEM partners, but I think we’re focused on trying to be a little bit selective and look for some of the OEM partners and relationships and expanding those because we have very good relationships with certain OEMs. And so I think we’re prioritizing some of that. And then probably the last is just thinking about geography. And there’s value in the network effect of having dealerships clustered because you can share the benefits of marketing and personnel, and people can move around and support more easily. But there’s also a benefit in diversification.
And so as I think about Florida, we have stores in Tampa, we have a store in The Villages and a store under construction in Fort Pierce. I’d love to diversify away from Florida, not because we don’t like the market, but just because it’s prudent for us to have roofs elsewhere and to create more of a nationwide network, particularly as we look to build our brand and our reputation with consumers coast to coast. So it’s probably that order, and those are the considerations for us as we think about going forward.
Mike Swartz: Okay. Great. Thanks.
Operator: Thank you. Next question is coming from Brandon Rollé from D.A. Davidson. Your line is now live.
