Asbury Automotive Group Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Navigating DMS Friction and Weather Headwinds

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies0: Greetings, welcome to the Asbury Automotive Group First Quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Chris Reeves, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Chris Reeves, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer, Asbury Automotive Group: Thanks, operator. Good morning. As noted, today’s call is being recorded and will be available for replay later this afternoon. Welcome to the Asbury Automotive Group’s first quarter 2026 earnings call. The press release detailing Asbury’s first 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; Daniel Clara, our Chief Operating Officer; and Michael Welch, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. At the conclusion of our remarks, we will open up the call for questions and will 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 Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 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 presentation on our website, investors.asburyauto.com, highlighting our first quarter results. It is my pleasure to now hand the call over to our CEO, David Hult. David?

David Hult, President and Chief Executive Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter earnings call. Our first quarter results highlighted efforts to transform our business by optimizing our portfolio and successfully migrating to Tekion. Today, over 50% of our stores are running on Tekion. We remain on track and anticipate to be fully converted by the fall of this year. After which time, we expect to begin fully realizing the cost and efficiency benefits enabled by the new technology platform. The first and second quarter of this year represent the peak in terms of number of stores making the transition. As a result, costs related to integration and temporary disruption to store operations will also remain elevated as team members become fully acclimated to the new technology. Michael will provide additional color behind the transition and its impact on our financial performance.

The first quarter also showcased a number of capital allocation decisions which position Asbury for future success, while also returning capital to our shareholders. We divested 10 dealerships and a collision center at attractive multiples, representing approximately $600 million in annualized revenue. $147 million of the proceeds went towards repurchasing 678,000 shares of our stock, with the rest directed towards reducing our debt. In our view, our trading price undervalues the earning potential of the company, we took advantage of this price-to-value dislocation to accelerate our repurchase activity. Moving on to our first quarter 2026 operational performance. Our results reflect the expected decrease in volumes as consumer demand moderated from last year’s tariff-driven spike in sales. More challenging weather was also a factor, as was the temporary disruption for the stores going through the Tekion conversion.

While new vehicle volumes were down, gross profit on a per unit basis held up well. On an all-store basis, new vehicle PVRs were down just $73 sequentially and $177 on a year-over-year basis, an indication profitability is beginning to approach normalized levels. Similarly, used vehicle PVRs on an all-store basis was $1,847, which is up sequentially 5% and 16% year-over-year as the team continues to execute our strategy to maximize per unit profitability. Parts and service had a more challenging quarter, driven by a variety of factors, including weather, a more cautious consumer, and temporary disruption from our DMS transition. That said, we still expect fixed operations gross profit to grow at mid-single digit rate over time. Now for our consolidated results for the first quarter.

We generated $4.1 billion in revenue, had a gross profit of $727 million. A gross profit margin of 17.7%, an expansion of 22 basis points. We delivered an adjusted operating margin of 5%. Our adjusted earnings per share was $5.37, and our adjusted EBITDA was $207 million. Before I hand the call over to our incoming Chief Executive Officer, Daniel Clara, I wanna take a moment to thank our team members for helping to make Asbury Automotive the company that it is today. Together, we have transformed our organization from a regional player to one with national scale in highly desirable markets, a balanced portfolio, and a leader in technology-focused investments.

It has been an honor and a privilege to serve as a steward of this business for the past eight and a half years, and I know our best days are ahead with Daniel running the company. Daniel, I will hand things over to you to discuss our operational performance in more detail.

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Good morning, everyone. Thank you, David, for the kind words. I feel I can speak for everyone here in saying that Asbury would not be as strong as it is today without your vision for growth in seeing the potential in this company. We all wish you the best in your next role as Executive Chairman. Now moving on to the quarter. I would also like to thank the team members for handling the challenges that were thrown at them this quarter, including severe winter weather in nearly all our markets and across multiple weekends. Our teams have been working diligently to make the transition to Tekion a smooth process, and we are pleased with the early progress our stores are making.

Changing the DMS is a complex endeavor for any dealership group, let alone one of our size, but it is necessary in order to elevate the guest experience and enhance our capabilities for strong operational performance. As an example, we converted the Koons dealerships last summer, and they are starting to show the power of the software. For that specific group in March, we saw gross dollars per technician up 21% year-over-year and average productivity per service advisor up 16%. We are seeing efficiencies extend beyond the service day as support costs in the stores decreased by 5% at the same time. Now I’m going to provide some updates on our same-store performance, which includes dealerships in TCA on a year-over-year basis, unless stated otherwise. Starting with new vehicles, same-store revenue year-over-year was down 9%.

While we believe the winter weather impacted sales activity, we are also monitoring consumer behavior in light of ongoing geopolitical events. New gross profit per vehicle was $3,061, as luxury maintained GPUs in line with the prior year and import and domestic moderated as expected. On an all store basis, which includes the positive impact of the Chambers platform, new gross profit per unit was $3,271, only down $177 year-over-year. Across all brands, our same-store new day supply was a healthy 54 days at the end of March, which we believe support resilient gross profits per unit. Turning to used vehicles. First quarter total used gross profit was up 1% sequentially.

Used retail gross profit per unit was up 12% at $1,828, a $201 increase over the prior year and a $79 increase over our reported fourth quarter 2025 number. Our efforts in used continue to pay off. This represented our second consecutive quarter of progress in growing GPUs. We have seen sequential increases in GPUs in 6 out of the last 7 quarters, thanks to our teams executing more consistently. We anticipate the pool of used vehicles will increase through the year, aided by lease return activity, which can give us the opportunity to increase volume and maintain this level of PVR. Finally, our same-store used DSI was 30 days at the end of the quarter, down from 35 days at the end of the fourth quarter. Shifting to F&I.

We earned an F&I PVR of $2,307. The non-cash deferral impact of TCA was $45. Without the year-over-year impact, the PVR would have been $2,351. We are on track to implement TCA in the Chambers stores by year-end, which will complete our rollout across all our platforms. Finally, in the first quarter, our total front-end yield per vehicle was $4,806. On an all store basis, our front-end yield was up $70 year-over-year at $4,921. Moving to parts and service. Our same-store parts and service gross profit was down slightly year-over-year due to slowdowns associated with the winter storms.

In addition, it is also important to note that when we convert stores to Tekion, there is a short-term effect of adjusting to the new software at the store level. We believe it takes about 4-6 months to overcome the muscle memory of the legacy software and start to see efficiencies take hold like those I mentioned earlier. Going back to the quarter’s results, Customer Pay gross profit was up 1%, with warranty gross profit higher by 3%. During the month of March, we generated 4% growth for both Customer Pay and warranty grosses, which was encouraging to see. April to date is trending similar to March. Overall, we believe our stores are well-positioned for the extended period of growth within parts and service, supported by the aging car park and increased vehicle complexity.

Before I pass the call to Michael, I want to thank the team again for your hard work to deliver a guest-centric experience and striving for improvement to unlock further performance. With that, I will now hand the call over to Michael to discuss our financial performance. Michael?

Michael Welch, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Thank you, Dan, good morning to our team members, analysts, investors, and other participants on the call. For our financial performance in the first quarter, adjusted net income was $102 million. Adjusted EPS was $5.37 for the quarter. In addition, the non-cash deferral headwind due to TCA this quarter was $0.26 per share. Our adjusted EPS would have been $5.63 without the deferral impact. Adjusted net income for the first quarter of 2026 excludes net of tax, net gain on divestitures of $94 million, $5 million related to Tekion implementation expenses, $3 million of weather-related losses, and $1 million related to the duplicate DMS-related expenses. In our consolidated results, we estimate that the weather impacted gross profit by $19 million and EPS by $0.56.

As stated in our press release this morning, during the quarter, we divested 10 dealerships and terminated seven franchises, which included exiting the Alfa Romeo and Maserati brands. Combined, these stores generated an estimated annualized revenue of $625 million. Adjusted SG&A as a percentage of gross profit on a same-store basis came in at 66.9%, which includes $2 million related to legal expenses for a specific matter. In March, we saw adjusted same-store SG&A in the low 60s. We believe the SG&A number would have been more solidly within our expectations for mid-60s range without the severe weather headwinds. As Dan mentioned, there are some frictional costs associated with changing our DMS that will take time to work out.

In the short term, the stores are slightly less efficient in the first 2 months of operating in the new DMS. In months 4 to 6, we see the stores become more efficient. It is encouraging to see our team members leaning into the tool and embracing the operational improvements the new platform can provide. Overall, we believe any short-term headwinds are outweighed by the benefits to come. Before I move on, I will note that the one-time implementation cost at the stores and the cost of duplicate software have been adjusted out of our non-GAAP SG&A numbers, as shown in our press release this morning. Next, the adjusted tax rate for the quarter was 25.1%. We also estimate the full year 2026 effective tax rate to be approximately 25%.

TCA generated $15 million of pre-tax income in the first quarter. The negative non-cash deferral impact for the quarter was $7 million. We generated $166 million of adjusted operating cash flow during the quarter. Excluding real estate purchases, we spent $46 million on capital expenditures in the first quarter and still anticipate approximately $250 million in CapEx spend for both 2026 and 2027. Adjusted free cash flow was $120 million for the first quarter. We ended the quarter with $1.2 billion in liquidity, comprised of floor plan offset accounts, availability on both our use line and revolving credit facility, and cash excluding cash at Total Care Auto. Our transaction-adjusted net leverage ratio was 3.2 times at the end of the first quarter.

As David Hult mentioned, we took opportunities to optimize our portfolio through strategic transactions. Our divestitures in the quarter also reduced our CapEx burden, further allowing us to deploy cash to higher return options. The proceeds of the divestitures, combined with the robust cash flow in our business, allowed us to balance our capital allocation priorities, both reducing our debt level and repurchasing 678,000 shares. Our dilutive share count is approximately 18.6 million shares before adjusting for any future buybacks. Finally, before we open to Q&A, I would like to thank David Hult for his years of valuable leadership. David Hult guided Asbury through a new level of growth and instilled a team-focused and guest-centric culture that makes Asbury what it is today. With that, this concludes our prepared remarks. We’ll now turn the call over to the operator and take your questions. Operator?

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies0: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Jeff Lick with Stephens. Please proceed with your question.

Jeff Lick, Analyst, Stephens: Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. David, just wanna extend my thanks, and you’ll be missed. Since we’ve got you, I was wondering if, you know, look, 1Q was obviously a pretty noisy quarter on a variety of fronts, weather, you know, being one of the most. I wonder if you can just give a state of the union of kind of where we are for yourselves and in the industry in 2Q. You know, just thinking about, you know, new and then new has some implications for used, and then obviously service and parts was a little lumpy. I mean, you did mention it was up in March.

You know, just kinda where do you think things stand now that the tax refund season’s over and, you know, obviously we’re not gonna be getting balloons anymore the rest of this year?

David Hult, President and Chief Executive Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Sure, Jeff, I’ll take a shot and Dan can jump in. You know, January and February were really rough for us from a weather perspective. We got far behind the eight ball at that point. Before the weather started hitting in mid-January, we were actually pacing well the first half of January. Then once we got hit with all the weather, we kinda didn’t recover. March was a good sign for us. Last March and April were extremely strong with the tariff presales, for lack of a better term. We really bounced back. To Michael’s comment, you know, being in the low sixties for SG&A for March was a telltale sign for us. We see the same going into April.

Very difficult to predict much beyond that with what’s going on with the war and gasoline prices and other things and how long that lingers. One would think the longer that lingers, the more impactful that’s gonna be on our business. We’re definitely feeling the slowdown. It’s not all the same by brand. But we’re still seeing a slowdown in new car sales into April as well. Just you take top level, we’re essentially back about 4,300 units or so in the quarter on new on a same store basis. Roughly you’re gonna take in 2,300-2,500 trade-ins on those 4,000, and you’re gonna retail 80% of those cars. There’s a chunk of pre-owned that we normally have internally to sell that we don’t have.

It’ll be a balancing act the next few quarters if new doesn’t pop back where we’re gonna source vehicles. I think parts and service is gonna bounce back nicely and continue to grow as the year goes on. It does take us 4 to 6 months with Tekion to get the muscle memory right in the stores. It doesn’t matter the market or the brand, it’s just human behavior, it takes time. Once you get past that 6-month window, you can really start to see some efficiencies as to why, you know, we would make this change in the DMSs. We do believe it makes our folks more efficient and more productive, while certainly lowering our costs at the same time. I don’t know if there’s anything you wanna add. No, I think you covered it well. Nothing to add.

Jeff Lick, Analyst, Stephens: Just a quick follow-up for Dan maybe is, you know, if you wonder if you could just give us one thing with Tekion where you look at it and say, you know, it manifests itself in, you know, financial benefit, where you say, "You know what? We’re making the right decision here. Yeah, it’s, it might be a little noisy for four to six months, but, you know, when you, when you start to look at our P&L one year or two years from now, we made the right decision." I was wondering if there’s one thing you could highlight?

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: I think, Jeff, good morning. I think I covered just one example of several that we’re seeing earlier today. When you think about the efficiencies that the new software brings, when you look at the gross dollars per technician being up 21% at Koons and the average productivity per service advisor up 16%, and then you add the fact that support cost has also decreased, it’s a pretty nice mix and aligned with what we expected. Then to put icing on the cake, the guest experience is definitely improved upon by the ease of using the technology, the ability to enhance how fast a guest can be served.

We believe that it definitely gives us a competitive advantage that we need for the future, and it is definitely the right thing to do.

Jeff Lick, Analyst, Stephens: Well, thanks very much, and I’ll let someone else jump in.

David Hult, President and Chief Executive Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Thank you.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies0: Our next question comes from the line of Rajat Gupta with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies1: Great. Thanks for taking the questions, and then David, best of luck and hope to catch up at some point again. I wanted to just follow up on some of the first quarter results, especially around the new car units and even used car. You know, of the 11% same store decline, and the 12% in new, is there any way to break up how much of it was weather, how much of it was just the Tekion productivity, and then how much of it was market? Any way to parse that out would be helpful. I have a quick follow-up on SG&A.

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Yeah. Rajat Gupta, good morning. This is Daniel Clara. I’ll start it. When you look at the weather impact, I’m talking about from a same store basis, we believe the snow closure in Q1 affected us somewhere in the 500 car range and similarly in used car volume. Then when you go down to the fixed revenue as well, obviously that had a tremendous impact somewhere on the same store basis, somewhere around a $13 million impact. It was a significant impact. As you know, when we have weather-related issues, it’s not just the day that we’re closed, it’s the days leading up to with all the media frenzy that happens and the days after the fact recovering.

David was in the Northeast at that time. As you know, the Northeast was hit pretty severely, and there were piles and piles of snow. It was definitely a big impact. Glad that it’s behind us and glad that March showed that we are directionally correct and glad that April is similar to March so that we can continue to build on the momentum.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies1: How much, how much do you think you lost due to, like, just the Tekion rollout in 1Q? You know, because, you know, you’ll probably close the store for, like, a day and, you know, like the Mondays. I’m curious if that had any meaningful impact on the units. I know it probably impacted services, but anything on the units that you could flag?

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: I don’t have the exact number. Michael, I don’t know. We have not shared that number. You bring up an excellent point because when we roll out the Tekion stores, we go through the conversion Saturday and Sunday, and we close operations on that Monday. That is definitely a day that we lose from being able to serve our guests. Tuesday we reopen, but again, that’s a completely new system. We’re much slower than what we used to be until we develop that muscle memory that, like I explained earlier, it takes between four to six months to get back to the efficiency levels.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies1: Got it. Got it. And just to clarify Mike’s comment on SG&A on the call, in the prepared remarks, I think you mentioned mid-60s excluding the weather headwinds. Just wanna make sure we heard that correctly. And is it mid-60s even excluding some of the productivity losses from the DMS transition? I’m curious, like, what’s a good steady-state number post Tekion, you know? If it did not have weather, if it did not have DMS transition, what would have been a good steady-state SG&A to gross number in the quarter?

Michael Welch, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Yeah. I think, you know, based on the March results that we saw that were in the low sixties, I think mid-sixties, without the weather would have been the right number for the first quarter. We’re still comfortable in that mid-sixties range, going forward. Some point in the back half of the year, as we start to see the Tekion efficiencies come through, don’t know if that’s fourth quarter or where that shakes out, but sometime we’ll start seeing, you know, an approach toward the mid-sixties as we get the Tekion efficiencies, running through the system.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies1: Got it. Got it. Just a final one on buybacks. You know, given the fact that you’re ramping up buybacks here, while EBITDA is coming down, I’m curious, is this just your Is this you taking a view on the benefits of, you know, the Tekion rollout and the benefits you might see into 27 and beyond, that’s giving you that confidence given, like, the cyclical backdrop still looks a bit choppy here. Curious, like, just the thinking around, you know, the buybacks ramping up. Thanks.

Michael Welch, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Couple things in there. In the first quarter, you know, we disposed of the stores, we used those proceeds to buy additional shares in the quarter. Also, you know, as the share price continued to dislocate and get to, you know, low levels and attractive prices for us, we took a view that we need to take advantage of that stock price. We do think the back half of this year and into 2027, the EBITDA comes up dramatically with the Tekion rollout behind us. We’re, we’re kinda trying to balance the leverage ratio and the share buybacks. If the share price is low, we’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna lean in a little bit on share buybacks.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies1: Understood. Great. Thanks. Thanks for taking the questions, and good luck in Q.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies0: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Glenn Chin with Seaport Research. Please proceed with your question.

Glenn Chin, Analyst, Seaport Research: Good morning. Thank you. Just another follow-on related to Tekion. Can you just confirm for us sort of the contour of the Tekion impact throughout the year? Do the costs and inefficiencies from the transition peak in 2Q?

Michael Welch, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: No. If you think about just the stack-up effect, we have first quarter was pretty heavy rollouts. 2Q has a decent amount of rollouts, and then we go kind of handle the less in 3Q. Just the stack of all the stores, if you think about that, you know, 4 to 6-month window, it’ll probably peak in 3Q. At some point, you know, call it sometime in 4Q, we should be able to flip over the, you know, where we have more stores that are past the 4 to 6 months. I would say the peak of it’s gonna be, you know, very late 2Q into 3Q is kind of where the peak will be.

Glenn Chin, Analyst, Seaport Research: Okay, very good. I understood that you’re going to adjust out sort of the explicit costs from Tekion. Those timeline around those, Michael, is also same?

Michael Welch, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Yeah.

Glenn Chin, Analyst, Seaport Research: Is that different?

Michael Welch, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: No, it should be similar, you know, two Q and three Q. two Q probably has a few less stores in it, and three Q has a few more. Just from an implementation cost perspective, you know, it’ll be in a similar ballpark to one Q, but maybe a little lighter in one Q and similar in three Q, when you compare it to one Q.

Glenn Chin, Analyst, Seaport Research: Okay, very good. I think Daniel Clara, you mentioned in your prepared remarks as well as last quarter, just hesitation around the consumer with respect to parts and service. Any further elaboration on that, if you will?

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Yeah, Glenn, good morning. You know, we saw a pullback, as you mentioned, in Q4. Going into Q1, there’s a lot of uncertainties going on out there. I would say that it is somewhat consistent. You know, keep in mind, there is a new war that has started, that is with oil prices at an all-time high, is just keeping people on more of the defensive side of it. Again, when I go back into my remarks earlier today. It’s encouraging to see what we saw in April, customer pay up, and seeing that same trend going into April. I’m sorry, in March going into April.

Glenn Chin, Analyst, Seaport Research: Okay. Very good. Thank you. That’s it for me. David, we’ll miss you. Good luck with everything, and your new position.

David Hult, President and Chief Executive Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Thank you.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies0: Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Perry with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Alexander Perry, Analyst, Bank of America: Hi, thanks for taking my questions here. I guess just first, I wanted to double-click a little bit more on sort of the current state of demand with where gas prices have gone and just the impact to consumer confidence. On the new vehicle side, you know, when did you start to see the slowdown? Is that more sort of an April comment? You know, just on new, are you seeing any impact to mix yet in terms of the mix of vehicles that consumers are buying, and what are you sort of seeing on used?

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Yeah. On the new car, you know, it really goes back to what I mentioned this on the fourth quarter, we didn’t really get the pop, for lack of a better term, that we get in December. January, as David mentioned earlier today, the first half of January before we got hit with the weather, we were pacing okay, and then we just never recovered from the weather. From a new car perspective, I will tell you that really after the weather never recovered, February about the same, in March, the same trend continued.

From a mix, you know, typically when you see gas prices hit the levels where we are right now, it usually takes five to six months for consumers to start really changing their buying habits. We have not seen that, what I mean by that is a consumer that is gonna trade in a Chevrolet Tahoe for a Honda Civic or what have you. We have not seen that, the longer the war goes, I think the closer we’re gonna be getting to see a shift in consumer behavior, but we’re not there yet. From a used car standpoint, you know, the demand of used cars is there, especially with the difference in the cost of sale between a new and used car.

When you factor in all the items that have gone up, insurance rates, the average cost of maintaining a car. When you look at all that, the demand is definitely there for used cars. We strategically have made the decision to not chase the volume and to maximize the gross profit. As we showed in Q4, we were heading gross profit. Q1, you know, when you look at March, again, even though we were backwards in volume, our gross profit was ahead year-over-year for used cars. We believe strongly that that is the right strategy to continue to execute.

As the availability of used cars become readily available as we move throughout the year, then we can pull that lever while still protecting the margins that we have delivered over the last few quarters.

Alexander Perry, Analyst, Bank of America: Gotcha. Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense. I guess, I just wanted to ask a little bit more on the, you know, parts and service trend. If we think about comps from here, I think you mentioned them, you know, rebounding, you know, earlier in the call. Is that primarily a factor of, you know, just getting past the weather impact? Is there something you’re seeing in terms of, you know, sort of, you know, delayed effect from people that would’ve came in the first quarter, you know, starting to come in? Can you just maybe talk about how you, how you think about the parts and services and what sort of drives that rebound?

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Yeah. You know, the parts and service, we’ve always been saying mid-single digits. We’ve developed a very strategic plan to go and grow our fixed operations, meaning parts and service. No different than what we’ve done with used cars, it’s about the execution. When you think about, and you can see it on the IR deck, the average miles coming through our shop are continue to be in the 70,000 mile range. That gives us a lot of stability, that we are retaining the guests, and obviously, that, you know, that we have the opportunity to continue to maintain those cars for those customers.

The last factor that I see tremendous potential is growing the CP RO count and really focusing on what we call the cycle time. How fast can we serve our guests? Which is also one of the benefits that I mentioned earlier of going to Tekion. The faster we get that guest in and out, the higher the retention and the higher propensity for that customer to come back and do business with us, and the more throughput that we can push through our service departments.

Alexander Perry, Analyst, Bank of America: Perfect. That’s really helpful. Best of luck going forward.

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Mm-hmm.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies0: Our next question comes from the line of John Babcock with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

John Babcock, Analyst, Barclays: Hey, Coran, thanks for taking my questions. I guess just first of all, I was wondering if you could talk about Herb Chambers, how the integration is going there, and if there’s anything new to share on that front. Then also if you can just remind us, you know, when you’re planning on implementing Tekion into that business.

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Yeah. Herb Chambers integration is going well. We very happy with the talent, the people. We got some great team members, great stores. What they have built together is impressive and now is up to all of us to work together as a team to take it to the next to the next level. Tekion rollout at Herb Chambers started last month. We’ve already converted, I think we have 22 stores, 22 or 24 stores, call it in the 20 range. With the rest of the stores, I think we have 8 more that are going to be converting in the month of May or June, I’m sorry, in the month of June. By June, Herb Chambers will be completely converted to Tekion.

John Babcock, Analyst, Barclays: Okay. Thanks for that. The next question just on GPUs, ’cause you do break it out across luxury imports and also domestic, and it seems like quarter-over-quarter there was pretty good stability in luxury and imports, but domestic was down a decent bit. Is there anything we should take note of from those trends or?

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Listen, the biggest impact that I’m seeing on domestic side is, we still have the headwind of Stellantis. We are well aware of it. We’re focusing on performing better with Stellantis, getting that inventory turned and maximizing the gross profit. It really the biggest impact in the domestic was our Stellantis stores.

John Babcock, Analyst, Barclays: Okay. Great. Just my last question, just was wondering if you could share how much, if any, shares you’ve bought back in April?

Michael Welch, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Yeah, any shares we would’ve bought back in April would’ve been disclosed as part of the press release. We did our, you know, we did our share buybacks early on in the quarter, took advantage of some share prices then. That all those, all those shares were kind of purchased January through March.

John Babcock, Analyst, Barclays: Okay. Sounds good. Thank you.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies0: A final reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Bret Jordan with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies: Hey, good morning. On the Stellantis, are you seeing any improvement in the trend? I mean, it seems as if maybe they’re making some product adjustments or maybe pricing adjustments. Are you seeing any traction there or is it pretty much the same?

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: From a high level, there are changes being made that make total sense, and it is a step in the right direction. You know, it’s a double-edged sword because when they make those changes, I’ll give you an example, they adjust the pricing for the new models coming in, but we still have the same model that is a year older that is more expensive than the new model coming in. That is where there is some pressure to the margins to be able to make sure that we liquidate that old inventory in under the old pricing structure to make room for the new decisions that the management team is making.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. I guess on the parts and service side of the business, you had a pretty hard warranty comp year-over-year. Could you sort of talk about, you know, what you’re seeing? Are there any major warranty programs that are popping up that might give you some tailwinds in volumes in the balance of this year?

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Yeah. We had some big warranty comps. I’ll tell you one of the, I wouldn’t say surprises, but one of the, I guess, obstacles that we faced is one of our import OEMs had a major decrease in warranty issues last quarter, which, you know, obviously, warranty is something that we don’t control. We happily service the customers when they come in, but it’s really outside of our control. Moving forward, we’ve seen some of the domestics that have issued some recalls and some additional warranty work, it’s hard to tell. Like I said, warranty is important, I pay attention to it, I cannot control it. That’s why our focus is always on the customer pay.

We’ll just happily serve the guest when the OEMs have any warranty issues.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies: Great. Thank you.

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Mm-hmm.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies0: Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

Matthew Raab, Analyst, Craig-Hallum: Hey, thanks. This is Matthew Raab on for Ryan. Just wanna go back to the new GPUs, maybe putting a finer point there. You know, we’ve talked in the past about settling out in that $2,500 to $3,000 range. You’re at $3,271. Feels like inventory’s pretty rational and you’re certainly getting the benefit of the Herb Chambers mix. I mean, at this point, is there any reason why GPUs can’t settle out near the higher end of that range? You know, if you have any expectation for new GPUs for 2026, whether it’s a year-end number or quarter-over-quarter decline to the rest of the year, that’d be great.

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Matt, thank you. Great question. I agree with you. I think, you know, for the last several quarters we’ve been talking about 2,500 or 3,000. We believe now that that number is moderating and it is closer to that 3,000 range. To your point, excellent question.

Matthew Raab, Analyst, Craig-Hallum: Thank you.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies0: We have no further questions at this time. Mr. Hall, I’d like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments.

Daniel Clara, Chief Operating Officer, Asbury Automotive Group: Thank you, operator. We appreciate everyone joining our first quarter earnings call, and the team here looks forward to discussing our second quarter results in the future. Have a great day.

Bret Jordan, Analyst, Jefferies0: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.