Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (ABG) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the Asbury Automotive Group Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Chris Reeves, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator, and good morning. As noted, today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay later this afternoon. Welcome to Asbury Automotive Group's fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. The press release detailing Asbury's fourth quarter results was issued earlier this morning and is posted on our website at investors.asburyauto.com. Participating with me today are David Hult, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Dan Clara, our Chief Operations Officer, and Michael Welch, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. At the conclusion of our remarks, we will open the call up for questions and be available later for any follow-up questions. Before we begin, we must remind you that the discussion during the call today is likely to contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements other than those which are historical in nature, which may include financial projections, forecasts and current expectations, each of which are subject to significant uncertainties. For information regarding certain of the risks that may cause actual results to differ materially from these statements, please see our filings with the SEC from time to time, including our upcoming Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, any subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our earnings release issued earlier today. We expressly disclaim any responsibility to update forward-looking statements. In addition, certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC rules may be discussed on this call. As required by applicable SEC rules, we provide reconciliations of any such non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures on our website. Comparisons will be made on a year-over-year basis unless we indicate otherwise. We have also posted an updated Investor Relations presentation on our website, investors.asburyauto.com, highlighting our fourth quarter results. It is now my pleasure to hand the call over to our CEO, David Hult. David?

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. As I said in our earnings release, 2025 was a productive year for Asbury. We grew the size of our business, both in terms of revenue and in the geographic areas of the country in which we operate, acquiring $2.9 billion in revenue. More importantly, the composition of our portfolio continued to improve through strategic divestitures. Because of the discipline in running our business, we were ahead of where we thought we would be from a leverage perspective at 3.2x versus our forecast of 3.5x. We deployed $186 million in CapEx and continued our share repurchase efforts, buying back $50 million in shares for the quarter and $100 million for the full year. We transitioned 15 additional stores onto Tekion during the quarter, ending the year with 38 stores operating on our new DMS. Managing our portfolio and allocating capital to areas that generate the greatest returns for the business and our shareholders has long been a core pillar of Asbury's strategic plan, and I am proud of the team's efforts to both grow the company and maintain our focus on expense control. Moving into 2026, we are confident these collective investments and the strength of our team position us to win, delivering value to our guests and returns to our shareholders. Next, I'd like to highlight some same-store operating metrics for the quarter. New Vehicle sales volume were a reflection of prior year post-election surge. PVRs on new vehicles continue to normalize, and we reiterate our view that new vehicle profitability will eventually stabilize in the $2,500 to $3,000 range. In Used Vehicles, we are beginning to see the results of our efforts to improve our performance. And while volumes continue to reflect a supply-constrained environment, gross profit rose 6% year-over-year with Used Vehicle retail PVRs up 18%. On the ground, we noticed a pullback in consumer spending in Parts & Service. However, we are optimistic about the outlook and positioning of our fixed operations business. Later in the call, Dan will provide additional details on our operational performance. Our same-store adjusted SG&A as a percentage of gross profit was up 162 basis points versus prior year, reflecting the impact of lower New Vehicle profitability. We remain committed to operating our business in the most efficient way possible, and we'll continue to adjust our cost structure as business conditions change. Moving to capital allocation. We divested 4 stores in the quarter and are on track to divest another 9 stores by the end of the first quarter. These 13 transactions collectively representing $750 million of annualized revenue, are at attractive multiples and will further accelerate our path to reducing our leverage, giving us additional flexibility to pursue share repurchases. We expect to continue our repurchasing activity in 2026, the pace of which will be dictated by our share price, leverage profile, economic conditions and trade-offs with strategic tuck-in acquisition opportunities. And now for our consolidated results for the fourth quarter. We generated a fourth quarter record of $4.7 billion in revenue at a gross profit of $793 million, also a fourth quarter record, a gross profit margin of 17%, an expansion of 31 basis points. We delivered an adjusted operating margin of 5.4% and our adjusted earnings per share was $6.67. Our adjusted EBITDA was $250 million. I'm proud of what the team accomplished in 2025. And with the foundational investments we've made in our business, I'm excited about the path ahead for 2026. Now Dan will discuss our operational performance in more detail. Dan?

Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. I would like to start off with a thank you to the team for the positive momentum going into this year as we undertook a number of growth objectives in 2025. Thank you. Looking back at the fourth quarter, we increased our same-store used gross profit, thanks to our continued progress and execution by our team members. We also rolled out Tekion to an additional 15 stores during the quarter and in January, added 8 more stores, which brings our current count to 46 or more than 25% of our portfolio. And on an all-store basis, we can see the positive lift from the Chambers Group in our new and used PVRs. And now I'm going to provide some updates on our same-store performance, which includes dealerships and TCA on a year-over-year basis unless stated otherwise. Starting with New Vehicles. Same-store revenue year-over-year was down 6%, which followed the SAAR contraction of 5%. We faced a tough comparable from last year's post-election surge and the pull-forward effect of demand earlier in the year. We did see some disruptions in our DC market as expected. New average gross profit per vehicle was $3,135, a slight decrease sequentially as import brand PVRs gave some ground but were offset by the seasonal strength in luxury. Across all brands, our same-store new day supply was 49 days at the end of December versus 58 days at the end of the third quarter. All 3 segments were at lower days supply versus the previous quarter, led by several luxury brands in the domestics. Through 2026, we will manage our business based on what we're seeing in our markets and execute accordingly. Turning to Used Vehicles. Fourth quarter total used gross profit was up 6% year-over-year. Used retail gross profit per unit was up 18% at $1,749, a $271 increase over the prior year and a $198 increase over our reported third quarter 2025 number. Our same-store used DSI was 35 days at the end of the quarter, in line with our DSI at the end of the third quarter. Shifting to F&I. We earned an F&I PVR of $2,335. The noncash deferral impact of TCA was $105. So without the year-over-year impact, the PVR would have been $2,440. We plan to implement TCA to the Chamber stores by year-end to complete our rollout across all platforms. And finally, in the fourth quarter, our total front-end yield per vehicle was $4,897, up $259 sequentially. Now moving to Parts & Service. Our same-store Parts & Service gross profit was up 2% year-over-year. When looking at our customer pay and warranty performance, customer pay gross profit was up 3% with warranty gross profit higher by 6%. We lapped tough double-digit comps in both customer pay and warranty, which in 2024 were up 13% and up 26%, respectively. For the quarter, we generated a gross profit margin of 58.1%, an expansion of 13 basis points. On an all-store basis, this was a record fourth quarter for our Parts & Service business as total revenue grew 12% to $658 million. We remain optimistic about the trends we see supporting the long tail of Parts & Service operations. The average age of the car on the road, combined with the increasing complexity of technology in vehicles positions us to reap the benefits of this large addressable market. We believe we're well positioned to unlock meaningful efficiencies as we navigate our journey to becoming the most guest-centric automotive retailer, enabled by the hard work of our team members and continued investment in technology. Thank you. And with that, I will now hand the call over to Michael to discuss our financial performance. Michael?

Thank you, Dan, and good morning to our team members, analysts, investors and other participants on the call. For our financial performance in the fourth quarter, adjusted net income was $129 million. Adjusted EPS was $6.67 for the quarter. In addition, the noncash deferral headwind due to TCA this quarter was $0.31 per share. Our adjusted EPS would have been $6.98 without the deferral impact. Adjusted net income for the fourth quarter of 2025 excludes net of tax, noncash asset impairments of $87 million, net gain on divestitures of $26 million, $5 million related to the Tekion implementation expenses, $3 million related to noncash fixed asset write-offs and $1 million of professional fees related to the acquisition of Herb Chambers Automotive Group. We divested 4 stores in the quarter, which generated an estimated annualized revenue of $150 million. Adjusted SG&A as a percentage of gross profit on a same-store basis came in at 64.1%. We feel confident in our ability to manage overall cost over the next few quarters as we progress the Tekion implementation across our stores and navigate normalizing New Vehicle unit profitability. The adjusted tax rate for the quarter was 25.8%. We estimate the full year 2026 effective tax rate to be approximately 25.5%. TCA generated $12 million of pretax income in the fourth quarter. The negative noncash deferral impact for the quarter was $8 million. Our updated TCA slide in our presentation reflects the rollout to Chambers during 2026, the disposal of our held-for-sale assets and revised our estimates based on external forecast. Now moving back to our results. We generated $651 million of adjusted operating cash flow during 2025. Excluding real estate purchases, we spent $186 million in capital expenditures this year. The assets we sold and have been held for sale allow us to avoid some low-return CapEx to deploy cash for more strategic capital decisions. We anticipate approximately $250 million in CapEx spend for both 2026 and 2027. Adjusted free cash flow was $465 million for the year. We ended the year with $927 million of liquidity comprised of floor plan offset accounts, availability on both our used line and revolving credit facility and cash, excluding the cash at Total Care Auto. Our transaction adjusted net leverage ratio was 3.2x at the end of the year. Our results were better than expected from a leverage standpoint, which we believe gives us room to continue with our path of disciplined strategic capital decisioning. And finally, before I finish our prepared remarks, on behalf of everyone, I want to thank our team members for their hard work in 2025, and we look forward to 2026. With that, this concludes our prepared remarks. We will now turn the call over to the operator to take questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Jeff Lick with Stephens Inc.

This is maybe for David and Daniel, kind of pack a few questions into one. I guess if you look at 2025 as your base year, obviously, it's like 3 or 4 years inside of that year. As you now look at 2026 lapping tariffs, lapping the EV credit, you got lease returns, potentially maybe there's -- you guys have highlighted some more GPU normalization. Maybe you could just kind of give us a little road map to how you see things playing out? And maybe if you could give some granularity in terms of the first half and the second half, just kind of the qualitative path of travel, what we should look for as the year progresses?

Thanks, Jeff. This is David. I'll start and Dan can jump in, if he wants. I think we're forecasting to go slightly backwards in SAAR, but SAAR is an overall number that includes fleet and wholesale. And I think it's going to vary by brands. We have a lot of Stellantis stores that were a percentage of our business that were challenging for us in '25. All brands are cyclical, and we believe Stellantis will come back. So hopefully, that will turn into a tailwind for us in '26. we have over 50 stores now in the Northeast. January has been ridiculously tough with weather. So it's been a challenge starting off the year, and we've even had a challenging weather in the Southeast as well. I would say the first half will probably be a little bit more of a struggle and the second half should start to free up a little bit. I don't know that the tariffs have fully settled across all brands. There's still movement on pricing, and it's yet to be known what incentives will look like in the future. We're optimistic about our Parts & Service business and where that's headed. We've had a lot of distractions in '25 between the acquisition and rolling out Tekion. Now having 1/3 of the company on Tekion and the rest of the company being rolled out by the fall. We think that's going to really bode well for us, not only from a cost perspective, but an efficiency perspective going into '27. We will have some headwind in '26 paying for both DMSs. And as you can imagine, when you transition a store into a new DMS other than the excessive cost for a period of time, there's a transition getting everyone comfortable with the software and efficient on it. So we think all this blocking and tackling and the heavy lifting we're doing is going to pay dividends going into the future. For us, we probably got 5, 6, 7 months of bumpiness and distraction of going through all of it, but we know the outcome will be very beneficial for Asbury.

And maybe just a quick -- go ahead, Jeff.

No, go ahead.

I was just going to add to David's comments on the -- when you think about from a Used Car standpoint, what we're expecting in the second half with lease earnings coming in, you can see the results of our renewed strategy and execution by the team. So we are very confident that it is working, and that has paved the way for a lack of a better term, to when that influx of inventory coming in that we can pull that lever and execute accordingly while still remaining disciplined to maximizing the gross profit per unit.

And then just a quick follow-up. I mean, because your GPUs are still north of that $2,500 to $3,000 kind of settling range you've talked about. I guess, where do you see -- let's say, you get to the middle of that range, $2,750, where does that come from? How does that decline in GPU manifest itself? Is that more inventory finally getting 3 million units on the ground? Is that because Toyota gives a little back? I'm just curious what -- because you guys have been pretty steadfast to that $2,500 to $3,000 mark. I'm just curious where do you see that further adjustment to come?

It's a great question, Jeff. I think as long as the inventory stays somewhat balanced the way they are, we kind of look at our brand mix and the way the incentives have been tracking. With the divestitures we've had and the several that are coming, our percentage of luxury goes up from 32% to probably about 36% which benefits us overall. I would say if the SAAR was going to stretch and the inventories were going to grow, that puts the most pressure on margins. But we're -- most OEMs are predicting a flat or a little bit backwards here. We don't anticipate sitting on a high day supply. Now the winter months, you tend to sit on a high day supply because you're coming off a busy fourth quarter and things slow down. But that should normalize over the next quarter or 2. I think we're conservative in our approach when we give estimates at $2,500 to $3,000 based upon our brand mix, but it's also difficult to predict the future. I think the biggest thing that's going to govern the volume this year is what we've all been talking about is the high cost of sale for New, we're over $52,000 in the quarter, and that's a stretch. So when people are stretching into purchasing, it tends to put pressure on margins as well to try and consummate the deal. Dan, I don't know if you have anything you want to add?

No, nothing to add.

Our next question is from Rajat Gupta with JPMorgan.

I just wanted to follow up on Parts & Service. The customer pay growth was a little weaker than we would have expected. I understand the warranty comps. I know you mentioned like you had a tough comp, but I also felt fourth quarter of '24 had some easy compares from fourth quarter of '23 because of the DMS transition. So I'm curious if the customer pay number is satisfactory to you? I mean, is there more opportunity there? Any sense you can give us around the outlook for '26? And I have a quick follow-up.

Rajat, this is Dan. No, we're not satisfied with the customer pay growth. We -- just as it is with Used Cars, we have a renewed strategy in fixed operations that we feel very confident in executing. There -- when you look at the age of the car on the road and then you look at all the technology enhancement that is coming with the new product, we know and we're ready to take advantage of that part of the market. So our forecast remains the same as it's been in the mid-single digits in customer pay like we have been talking about over the last few quarters.

Rajat, this is David. I would add in previous quarters, and I think it's the case for our peers, but I'm not confident, the growth in Parts & Service has been more top heavy on dollars than actual cars coming through the service drive or repair orders. And I made the comment in my remarks, the traffic counts were okay and normal for us. And based upon that, we should have been higher on the dollars. We saw less dollars being spent for the consumer. So it wasn't so much the traffic that took a hit as much as it did what the consumers were willing to spend. And as you can see, because I think we have it in our IR deck, when we talk about how much we're generating per ticket, combustible engine is over $550. These numbers keep going up, which is great, but it also puts a limit a little bit on customers. But I was shocked to see the pullback in October and November with the dollars being spent. It rebounded in December and January is starting off, the dollars are pretty good again. So I can't explain what happened in October and November. The biggest headwind we have in January is the traffic because of the weather.

Got it. Any preview on the renewed strategy for Parts & Service that you can give us going forward?

I would tell you, Rajat, the biggest thing is there's a massive difference between our current DMS and Tekion, and there's a learning curve there. And our original stores that went on it a year ago are performing better than most of our stores in our company because of the efficiencies and benefits of the software. But when these stores transition to the new software, and now we're up to over 40 stores, it takes them a few months. We actually become less efficient for the first couple of months as they're trying to get used to the software and work out the kinks. So we'll finish the Tekion rollout late in the fall. I look at '27 as a really efficient, productive year for us that you'll notice in both our production with Tekion, but our cost control with Tekion as well.

Understood. That's helpful. And maybe just a follow-up question, maybe for Mike around the leverage. Good to see the progress there. I believe you do have a few more divestitures in the pipeline that you're looking to execute. Any update on that? And how soon can you get below 3x? Is it earlier than '26? Any time line around that would be helpful. And then just related to that, how should we think about free cash flow deployment priorities as well in '26?

Yes. So from a -- we talked about the 9 divestitures that we have out there that will close in the first quarter. And that will free up some cash to get our leverage down some more. So we think kind of by the summer, we'll be below 3x. The only caveat to that would be with where our share price is, we think there's some opportunities to deploy some cash for share buybacks. And so our goal is still to get below 3x by the end of the year. And if we can do that and buy some shares back along the way, we'll kind of balance that as we go throughout the year. But if we just took the cash from the disposals and the free cash flow and put that toward the leverage, we'd be able to get there by kind of the summer of this year.

Our next question is from Glenn Chin with Seaport Research Partners.

Can you just clarify for us the path forward for Tekion? How many more stores you have to transition? It sounds like it will be done by fall of this year. And then to what extent you will incur these double expenses for running two DMSs simultaneously?

Glenn, this is Dan. So we have 125 more stores to roll out. We have 8 more going out -- being rolled out this weekend and then another 8 following the following week. But like David stated, we'll be done by the third quarter of this year. As far as the expense, I'll let Michael give clarity on that.

Yes. So once we roll out a store, you have to kind of -- you can't cancel it right away. You have to kind of roll it out, make sure everything is working, all the data comes across and then we can go cancel the other products. So there's a couple of months of duplicated costs in there when we roll it out. So the first half of this year, you'll see kind of a hit on SG&A for this duplicated cost plus the implementation fees. By the time we get to kind of midyear, we'll roll over and the savings from Tekion will more than offset the duplicated costs. So it's, I'll call it, a front half hit to SG&A and then a back half benefit to SG&A. And then to David's point, when we get to '27, the efficiency that we're going to see from it, you'll start seeing those as well. So it's -- that's kind of the pace is duplicate costs first half, savings from the software in the second half and then those efficiencies will come in during 2027.

Okay. But then Michael, to clarify, it looks like you adjusted it out for the dual expense you adjusted out this quarter, I guess...

We only adjust out the implementation costs, the cost of having to pay, to do the implementations. And then also in third and fourth quarter of '25, because of the SOX requirements from internal controls around the Tekion software, we had a pretty heavy lift on just, I'll call it, auditors and all those type of IT folks, third parties to help us get over the hump with the initial year of SOX compliance on Tekion. So those Tekion costs is heavy, heavy SOX control and then the implementation cost. We have not been adjusting out the duplicated cost of the software.

Okay. So it sounds like we should expect it to hit even adjusted numbers in the first half. And can you quantify for us how much that might be?

We have not quantified that number, but we can -- we'll work on that for first quarter to give you guys, an insight into the first quarter. It wasn't that material for fourth quarter because we didn't roll out a ton of stores, and we only rolled them out at the very end of December. But in the first quarter, we'll kind of give you how much that -- how much of an impact that was.

Okay. Yes, that would be helpful. Okay. And David, will you be on future earnings calls?

I think I'll be on the next earnings call, and that will probably be it for me.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from John Babcock with Barclays.

I did want to ask, I know it's still early in the Tekion rollout here, but with some of the first stores that were put on the system, are you starting to see benefits? Or is it still too early to tell?

John, this is Dan. Yes, we had the first 4 stores where we rolled it out, they were here in Atlanta, and we are seeing the benefits from an efficiency standpoint, from a productivity standpoint, from a guest experience standpoint. And then you can also see the flexibility that it gives us because it is a cloud-based DMS when you're talking about enhancing technology and AI, in conjunction with our internal development team, you get rid of all the bolt-ons and it's a lot easier to enhance the technology to improve the guest experience and efficiencies across the store. So yes, we are...

I'm sorry, Dan. John, one thing I would add, every store we roll out, technicians don't like change. They hate the new software. It's a lot of key changes and it's difficult. But If you went back to the original 4 stores, they would tell you they wouldn't work at a store that didn't have Tekion. So it makes the employees more productive. It increases the transparency between departments, and it also increases the transparency with consumers, which you can visually share with them. So there's a lot of benefits. There's cost savings for sure, but there's productivity benefits as well. Human behavior takes a little while to change and get used to a new software a new language for lack of a better term. But the early adopting stores that we have are really running efficiently well on it. Costs are lower, productivity is up, which is everything we anticipated.

Okay. And then just next question. I was wondering if you could talk about how -- just broadly how the demand environment feels right now, both for New and Used, if there's any discrepancy between the two? Just generally want to get a sense for what you're hearing from the dealership.

Yes. John, I'll start and David can add. if he wants to. I'll tell you for January, the beginning of January was good until we got hit by the weather. And so that pullback that we saw October, November was not there the first few weeks in January. But after the weather hit us, it impacted us pretty big because that storm came in through Texas, and it basically just follow our path of where we have stores all the way to the Northeast.

Our next question is from Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum.

This is Matthew Raab on for Ryan. Just quick on TCA. It looks like the SAAR assumptions were changed very slightly in '26 and '27 and the noncash deferral was raised a little bit through 2029. Just what drove that change? And just talk about where TCA stands today? Any color there would be great.

Yes. So on that one, we just looked at the third-party kind of different -- your guys' assessments and the other third-party providers out there for their SAAR projections, and most of the people were coming up 15.8% kind of 16.2% And we originally had that forecast in there based on those third parties at 15.7%. So we just bumped a little bit to 15.9% to reflect kind of the additional color out there from the third parties. And also, that's what we use kind of the base our budget off of, for '26 is that 15.9% number. So small adjustment there just as kind of SAAR, our projections came up a little bit during the fourth quarter. And the TCA, we talked about it on the earlier in our comments. Our last platform to roll out is Herb Chambers. We're going to roll them out on Tekion, and then following the Tekion rollout, we'll roll them out on TCA, so sometime this late summer probably. And that will complete the rollout to all the stores and then we'll be done with kind of the TCA rollout side of it.

Our next question is from Daniela Haigian with Morgan Stanley.

So kind of on that point of adjusting SAAR forecast, we also saw that Used, you made a comment about supply remains tight. How -- what kind of assumptions are you baking in on affordability, what the consumer is facing this year, consumer credit availability? And how does that flow through into Used? We definitely saw stronger Used margin and then a bit weaker on the volume side. So how does that play out into '26 in your view?

Yes, Daniela, this is Dan. We continue to stick to our strategy of not chasing volume and maximizing gross profit. There's several items that we have been executing on, really limiting the number of acquisitions through the auction and improving the number of cars that we take through the trades or that we purchase from -- directly from our guests. And that is working well. That's where you see how we're maximizing the PVRs and the impact that it had in the fourth quarter. There -- the average cost of our used car being over $30,000 is definitely something that we're focused to bring down because we know that the lower the cost of sale, the faster that inventory turns. And we believe that the opportunity to do that is going to be on the second half of the year, as lease turn-ins start to come in, we have better availability of inventory flowing and then we can really pull the lever if the availability of inventory is there, we can pull the lever of going after the volume while still maintaining our strict discipline on the gross profit per unit.

; Got it. And then second is just on your EV outlook for the year. Obviously, there's a big deceleration following the removal of the tax credits. Do you believe your inventory levels here are sufficiently rightsized? Or is there more room for that to play out?

I will tell you that overall company-wide, I would like -- I would say our EVs inventory is rightsized. There we have pockets, specifically Colorado, where there was a high demand for EVs that we have a little bit more inventory than I would like to. But overall, it's been rightsized. And in the fourth quarter of '24, our EV sales were like 5% of the total sales. And in the fourth quarter of '25, it was about 2%. So -- and I would expect that to continue as we go into '26.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to David Hult for any closing comments.

Thank you. We appreciate everyone joining our fourth quarter earnings call. We look forward to speaking with you after the first quarter. Have a great day.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you again for your participation.