Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So we think there’s a lot of tailwinds down the road with leasing coming back with the OEMs with the adoption of electric vehicles at some point in time and with further consolidation. We always have opportunity to deepen our relationship with our client base within our markets that we’re in from a service retention standpoint. And as these vehicles become more complicated, we just think that we’re the obvious choice to service a vehicle compared to independent shops. So while the next couple of years might get a little bit bumpy with what goes on economically, what goes on in the world, we think as things start to settle down and get back to normal in the future, we’ll be well positioned in the markets we’re in with the brands that we’re in to really deepen our relationship within the communities to expand our service retention and hopefully grow our new car numbers both through leasing and additional lift through SAAR.

Operator: Our next question comes from Rajat Gupta with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Rajat Gupta: Great. Thanks for taking the question. Just had a couple here. On the Parts and Services impact from the integration and the software change, is there any way to quantify that impact at all in terms of how many points of same-store impact might have had? And I have a couple of follow-ups.

David Hult: Rajat, you integrate from an accounting standpoint, a consolidated look on your accounting through 50 stores, it doesn’t go equally across all some stores. Some have issues, some don’t, some have more complicated issues that take a week or two to figure out and get the numbers correct and then you have the service software. I would tell you the stores that were impacted from a customer base standpoint because that’s kind of the number that we focus on, it was anywhere from 10% to 15% disruption within those stores during the quarter. Some brands were more than others, depending on parts availability that on top of that. But generally speaking, it was between 10% and 15% of those stores out west.

Rajat Gupta: Got it. Got it. That’s helpful. And just related to Parts and Services, we’ve had the Detroit three parts plant strike now almost five weeks into that. Could you give us a sense of when should we start to get concerned about, any kind of part shortages? Any way to quantify what the for day or impact could be with every day or shortage that you might see eventually? And also relatedly, do you expect to recover any of that once the strike and if you do end up having an impact? And I have one last follow-up.

Daniel Clara: Rajat, This is Dan. I’ll start and then turn it over to David to add any additional comments. I will tell you that the time of — we’re seeing the biggest impact is starting now. We had enough day supply within our parts inventory when this all started, where we were still able to service our cars and take care of the guests in a timely fashion. But as the delivery centers, the parts warehouses have no employees and how the OEM is doing everything within their power to continue to ship parts to us, in some cases, we are not delivering, we’re not receiving shipments and it’s been days, if not weeks, since we received them. The good news about our size and our scale is we’re able to transfer parts amongst our stores where some of them have the partner that we need for to satisfy another guest across whether it’s in the East Coast or the West Coast.

So we’re working that to the best of our ability. But as this continues to prolong, the impact is going to be greater. And unfortunately, the one that gets affected is the end consumer.