Lithia Motors, Inc. (NYSE:LAD) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Bryan DeBoer: So remember, the mid-50% is including the adjacencies. So — and in terms of the U.K., I don’t think we see a world where SG&A is similar to what the United States are. They just don’t have the leverage of throughput. They do have some big advantages. Their average personnel cost is quite a bit different than the United States. But I wouldn’t see that the U.K. could get to those normalizations. Most of it is coming in the United States from network improvements, meaning reaching potential within the stores by growing market share and cutting costs, okay, as well as the adjacencies that I spoke to at the beginning of the answer.

Colin Langan: Got it. All right. Thanks for taking my question.

Operator: Our next question comes from David Whiston with Morningstar. Please proceed with your question.

David Whiston: Thanks. Good morning. Just curious with all the waiting for a Fed interest rate cut, even if we do get even just one this year, do you think that’s going to matter much to your customers? Or do they need to get multiple cuts to really bring a lot of people back?

Bryan DeBoer: Our customers are surprisingly resilient. I mean, we’ve been quite shocked of their ability to adapt. I mean, we now have an average rate at DFC about 10.2%. Our average rate as an organization is about 10%. We’re at 7% on new vehicles and about 12% on used vehicles. I don’t know that 0.25 or 0.50 is going to make much difference. I think it’s more general economic factors at this stage that they feel comfortable with their jobs. They feel comfortable with their family and their affordability levels.

David Whiston: Okay. And on the balance sheet, given you will do — continue to do some acquisitions, do you want to pay down that revolver balance at all? Or are you just going to let that sit there for a while and keep growing?

Bryan DeBoer: Well, you did probably notice, David. I mean, we are carrying some pretty big cost from M&A most recently. Our leverage is still quite nice, sitting at a little over 2 times, which is good. And if you remember, our covenants allow us to go all the way to 5.75. So we sit quite nicely to be able to constructively do M&A or balance that depending on stock price with share buybacks. You will find that we will be more constructive than we probably are in the past because we have put those two things at parity. But in terms of debt paydown, if that’s the best use of capital, then we would also use it to pay down debt.

David Whiston: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I’d now like to turn the call back over to Bryan DeBoer for closing comments.

Bryan DeBoer: Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and we look forward to updating you on Lithia & Driveway second quarter results in July. Bye-bye, everyone.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.

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