Asbury Automotive Group Inc (ABG) 2016 Q3 法說會逐字稿

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  • Operator

  • Good day and welcome to the Asbury Automotive Group Q3 2016 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Matt Pettoni. Please go ahead, sir.

  • Matt Pettoni - VP, Treasurer

  • Thanks operator, and good morning everyone. Welcome to Asbury Automotive Group's third-quarter 2016 earnings call. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay later today. The press release detailing Asbury's third-quarter results was issued earlier this morning and is posted on our website at Asburyauto.com.

  • Participating with us today are Craig Monaghan, our President and Chief Executive Officer, David Hult, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Keith Style, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. At the conclusion of our remarks, we will open the call up for questions, and I will be available later for any follow-up questions you might have.

  • Before we begin, I 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. All forward-looking statements are subject to significant uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those suggested by the statements. For information regarding certain of the risks that may cause actual results to differ, please see our filings with the SEC from time to time, including our Form 10-K for the year ended December 2015, and 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.

  • It is my pleasure to hand the call over to our CEO, Craig Monaghan. Craig?

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • Good morning everyone. This morning, we announced adjusted earnings per share of $1.52 for the third quarter, a 6% increase over last year. With unit sales at $17.5 million, SAR was down 2% in the quarter. While our new unit volumes moved in line with the industry, we experienced new margin pressure due to a combination of lower manufacturer incentives and aggressive sales objectives. Despite these challenges, we successfully reduced our new vehicle inventory levels during the quarter.

  • Our used vehicle business was adversely impacted by stop-sale inventory associated with ongoing factory recalls. But despite the challenges we face in both our new and used businesses, our strong parts and service growth enabled us to hold gross profit flat on a same-store basis.

  • In summary, our adjusted results represent another third-quarter EPS record and our 29th consecutive quarter of EPS growth.

  • Going forward, we see further opportunities to grow our used vehicle, F&I and parts and service businesses. Assuming a stable SAR environment, we believe the operational initiatives we have underway will provide the platform for us to deliver modest EBITDA growth in 2017, which will be further enhanced by capital deployment.

  • With that, I'll turn the call over to Keith to bring us through our financial highlights. Keith?

  • Keith Style - SVP, CFO

  • Thanks, Craig, and good morning everyone. This morning, we reported record third-quarter adjusted EPS of $1.52. This represents a 6% increase from last year.

  • Adjusted net income for the quarter excluded a $1.8 million pretax real estate related charge, or $0.05 per diluted share. Adjusted net income for the third quarter of 2015 excluded a $21.4 million pretax gain on divestitures, or $0.50 per diluted share, and an $800,000 tax benefit, or $0.03 per diluted share.

  • Before I get into a more detailed review of our financial performance, I'd like to provide a high-level overview of our third-quarter results. First, our total revenue for the quarter was down 2%. However, on a same-store basis, our revenue was up 1%. The majority of the decline in total revenue is attributable to strategic divestitures we made during the second half of 2015 to realign our dealership portfolio. Second, we added leveraged our balance sheet with our $200 million add-on in the fourth quarter of last year, increasing other interest expense by $2.5 million for the quarter. Finally, we deployed $206 million to repurchase our stock over the past year, reducing our average share count by 15% and enabling us to deliver 6% EPS growth for the quarter.

  • With that summary behind us, let's turn to SG&A. Our SG&A as a percentage of gross profit for the quarter was 69.9%, up 70 basis points from last year. As we discussed on the call last quarter, increased enrollment in our employee medical insurance plans put pressure on our overall personnel expense. Adjusting for the $2 million increase in our benefit plans, our SG&A ratio would have been flat with last year. We expect that the cost of employee medical insurance will continue to impact our SG&A. And as a result, we expect our SG&A as a percentage of gross profit to be between 70% and 71% for the fourth quarter.

  • In terms of capital deployment, CapEx, excluding real estate purchases, totaled $19 million for the quarter. For 2016, we continue to plan for $80 million of CapEx, which includes $45 million associated with our core annual CapEx plan, and $35 million of CapEx associated with recent acquisitions and construction which will enable us to move out of facilities that are currently under lease.

  • In addition to executing on our CapEx plan, for the year, we have purchased $20 million of previously leased property and $11 million of property for future expansion. We now own approximately 70% of our real estate portfolio, which we believe provides flexibility and long-term value for our shareholders. Going forward, we will continue to seek opportunities to purchase real estate currently under lease and acquire properties in connection with future dealership relocations.

  • From a liquidity perspective, we ended the quarter with $4 million in cash, $36 million available in floorplan offset accounts, $90 million available on our used vehicle line, and $240 million available on our revolving credit line.

  • Our total leverage ratio stands at 3.1 times, and on a net basis, our leverage ratio was 2.6 times, which is in line with our target range of 2.5 to 3 times. Going forward, we are committed to remaining in our targeted range while maintaining flexibility to deploy capital on an opportunistic basis.

  • With respect to managing our broader dealership portfolio, we are currently in the process of divesting our remaining stores in Arkansas, which we anticipate closing late in the fourth quarter. We intend to redeploy the majority of the proceeds from this sale on an acquisition with a more favorable return. Naturally, both transactions are subject to manufacturer approval.

  • Now I'll hand the call over to David to discuss our operational performance. David?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • Thanks Keith. Good morning everyone. My remarks will pertain to our same-store performance compared to the third quarter of 2015.

  • New vehicles. Our new unit volumes were in line with SAR. From a margin perspective, luxury grosses improved, while both midline import and domestic margins declined, the declines were concentrated in two of our brands where we saw lower dealer incentives and aggressive sales objectives. These factors resulted in our new vehicle gross profit decreasing by 7% for the quarter.

  • Despite the challenging sales environment, we were able to reduce our new vehicle inventory by 11 days from last quarter to a 72-day supply on a trailing 30-day basis. Our new vehicle inventory totaled $695 million.

  • Turning to used vehicles, our used vehicle retail gross profit was down 6% due to lower unit sales and margin pressure. Our margins were impacted by the influx of off lease vehicles into the market. While we did not meet our used vehicle sales expectations, we are pleased with our 7% increase in CPO unit sales. We believe there is additional opportunity to grow our used vehicle unit sales, specifically our CPO sales, as additional off lease inventory comes to market.

  • Our used vehicle days supply was 40 days, which is above our targeted range of 30 to 35 days. Adjusting for the $11 million of stop-sale inventory, our used vehicle days supply would have been slightly above our targeted range.

  • Turning to F&I, our team continues to deliver strong results, delivering F&I per vehicle retail of $1,393, flat with last year. We have not seen any changes in the lending environment.

  • Now for parts and service. Parts and service was the highlight of the quarter. We were able to offset the declines in our new and used business with strong growth in parts and service. Over the past couple of years, we have focused intently on growing this part of our business, including building out our leadership team, implementing business processes, and integrating technologies to enhance the customer experience. These efforts have resulted in consistent growth in our parts and service business, which continued into the third quarter with our teams delivering 7% gross profit growth, including 7% growth in customer pay, and 11% growth in warranty. Looking forward, we believe we can continue to grow our parts and service gross profit in the mid-single-digit range.

  • Finally, we would like to express our appreciation to all of our teammates in the field and in our support center who continue to produce best-in-class performance in many areas. Again, thank you.

  • We will now turn the call over to the operator and take your questions. Operator?

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions). Rick Nelson, Stephens.

  • Rick Nelson - Analyst

  • Thanks. Good morning. I'd like to ask you about TPU. There was quite a convergence there from big declines with domestic brands and increases in the Premium Luxury segment. I guess similar color around that, and your expectations as we push that forward.

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • The way we look at it, as you pointed out, Luxury was certainly a positive for us with a couple of our partners. I'll talk globally when you think about the incentives and year-over-year how it looks. It's not just a component of hitting a sales target, but it's the dollar incentives. So you could actually hit the dollar incentives this year, but the numbers or the money that they pay out could be significantly lower than prior year. So, we have experienced some of that. It's a little bit of both. In some cases, we've missed sales targets. In some cases, we've had them. But the payouts have been significantly less.

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • It's Craig. I'll give you a little more color. The most challenging incentives we saw this quarter were on the domestic side of the business. (technical difficulty) and for many of the other brands.

  • Rick Nelson - Analyst

  • Thanks for that. Also, I'd like to ask you about the proceeds in Arkansas with that divestiture. It sounds like maybe you've got something lined up on the acquisition upfront. If you could size both of those up, that would be helpful.

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • Yes, that's correct. We do have something sized up, lined up. We expect to sign the contract on that any day now. The profit from the stores that we are acquiring would actually more than offset the profit from the stores that we are divesting, so we think it's a good value-added transaction for the Company.

  • Keith Style - SVP, CFO

  • This is Keith. Just from a modeling perspective, the assets that were placed and held for sale during the quarter equate to about $240 million in revenue.

  • Rick Nelson - Analyst

  • And would the acquisition be similar sized or --

  • Keith Style - SVP, CFO

  • As Craig mentioned, it will be, on a revenue basis, not as large, but on a profitability basis, it will exceed what we are divesting at.

  • Rick Nelson - Analyst

  • Thanks for that. Also, service and parts has been tracking well above that mid-single-digit guidance now for several quarters. Any comments on the sustainability of that nice increases in customer pay and warranty?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • This is David. We've implemented a lot of initiatives over the last couple of years, and quite honestly, they are not fully out in the field at all locations yet, so we are still in the process of rolling everything out. We are very happy with the progress that we have in parts and service, and we feel that we have a very, strong stable base going forward.

  • Rick Nelson - Analyst

  • And if I could ask a final question about October, what you are seeing there, some of our channel checks are indicating that things may have weakened some in October.

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • You know, the hurricane, because of our location of our stores, impacted about a third of our business. While we didn't sustain a lot of damage, it was certainly a disruption for a few days to our business.

  • Rick Nelson - Analyst

  • Thanks a lot and good luck.

  • Operator

  • Bill Armstrong, CL King and Associates.

  • Bill Armstrong - Analyst

  • Good morning gentlemen. On parts and service, obviously you had a nice increase in same-store revenue. (technical difficulty) about 60 basis points, so I was wondering what was the driver there for the relatively soft margins.

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • This is David. It was really pretty stable. It's really just the mix between internal customer pay and warranty. With our declining used car sales, there wasn't as much internal growth which we recognized at 100% margin. So that's really what pulled it down a little bit.

  • Bill Armstrong - Analyst

  • Okay, got it. And used growth GPUs, you mentioned off lease, more off lease vehicles. I was wondering if you could maybe flesh that out a little bit more. Why would that have a negative impact on your overall used gross profits?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • This is David again. It really just goes down to the basic law of supply and demand. We've been forecasting -- the industry has been forecasting this influx of vehicles coming. I think we are all seeing it a little bit, and we seem to be somewhat in line with our peers as far as our margin depression.

  • Bill Armstrong - Analyst

  • And is this because you're converting a lot of them to CPO, and CPO has relatively low margins because of the reconditioning costs?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • We certainly -- when you look at a used car sale, we benefit obviously, through parts and service, we benefit from F&I and clearly we benefit on used car margins. Normally, our CPU gross per unit is very good. This quarter, it was slightly depressed, but, to your point, we were up 7% in CPO sales.

  • Bill Armstrong - Analyst

  • Got it. Okay, thank you.

  • Operator

  • Bret Jordan, Jefferies.

  • Bret Jordan - Analyst

  • Good morning guys. A question on the stop-sale inventory. I think you said you had about $11 million in the quarter. What's the flow of the recalled vehicle looking like now? Is the airbag parts supply smoother? And I guess are you seeing any benefit in the customer pay from cross-selling that recall volume?

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • It's Craig. Let me start and David can jump in. We, in some of our brands, when we came into the quarter, we had as much as 40% and our used vehicle inventory on stop-sale. We made a lot of progress during the course of the quarter. That number now is, in all same stores, is down to about 20%. So we are starting to get the parts. We are starting to get the cars back out on the front line. Progress is being made, but clearly, when you've got a store and you've got that much inventory sitting on your lot, it's going to impact sales.

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • I'll just jump in with this to your comment on customer pay. We are heavy with Honda and Acura and some of the brands that have suffered. And obviously, that's why our warranty is up 11%. When we think about a warranty customer coming in on average, and this will vary a little bit, but recent trends, we are typically upselling that customer a little over $100 a repair order on that warranty ticket. So customer pay is benefiting when the warranty customer comes in.

  • Bret Jordan - Analyst

  • Okay, great. As far as -- just one last question. If there's going to be a flood of Honda CRVs because you got the parts finally and you were able to fix and sell that used unit, is there going to be depreciation or I guess deflation in particular brands as the supply really hits the market, and is that something that the manufacturers are helping out the absorption of?

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • It varies by manufacturer. Some of the manufacturers have been providing with us -- providing us with assistance both to carry vehicles and for depreciation. So, obviously, we won't feel much of an impact there. There are other situations where there could be some impact on the vehicle. But I would say, broadly speaking, a lot of these vehicles are vehicles that are very much in demand and we are actually looking forward to bringing them to market. David may have more color to add.

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • I clearly agree with you. That particular model you mentioned, the demand is very high, so I can't imagine ever having too much supply. We do have a new model coming out soon, which will probably create a lot more trade-ins, but we look at that as a very positive going forward.

  • Bret Jordan - Analyst

  • Okay, great. Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Mike Montani, Evercore ISI.

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • I just wanted to follow up on the GPU decline that we saw this quarter. I guess the question I had was twofold. One is how should we think about new vehicle GPUs into the fourth quarter? Do you look for more of a 2015 step-up sequentially of like $90 to $100, or is it more like 2014 where you could get $150 just because the results were somewhat depressed last year? And then a follow-up on that.

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • It's Craig. Let me start. It's very difficult for us to give you a precise forecast on how these incentive programs are going to play out in the future. And as you've seen our results this quarter, these GPUs are very much a function of what is happening with these sales targets and incentive programs. Some of them -- we've seen some of the manufacturers -- certainly one of the manufacturers has made some production cuts. I think that helps. We've seen some modifications to some of the incentive programs. We think that helps. But I think it would be unrealistic for us to say that we can give you a hard forecast where this goes certainly next quarter or the quarter thereafter.

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • The only comment I would add to that is one of our domestic partners recently stopped their stairstep program. So, going into the fourth quarter, we don't have those incentives, and when you look at the fourth quarter of 2015, those incentives certainly existed if you hit the targets.

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • Okay. That was actually what I was going to follow up on. So I guess, from that domestic partner, it sounds like, sequentially, they stopped the program, if I'm not mistaken, October 1. Is that right?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • That's correct.

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • So I guess, sequentially, is it fair to say for that one that it actually is a firmer GPU environment all else equal?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • It's too early to tell.

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • Okay. If I could, on a separate note, the F&I per unit has been flattening out here a little bit, even though transaction prices are rising. Can you just talk about kind of what's going on with attach rate, and then is there some kind of an impact due to capped markups there that's constraining that?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • I would tell you it's a combination of a few things that our F&I team got in the quarter. It's a combination of chargebacks, some turnover in folks, and in some cases, in some locations, just poor performance in product sales.

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • So, if some of your peers like AN and GPI are like $1,600 a retail unit and you all are more like $1,400, is it realistic to think that that continues to improve, or have we kind of hit a near-term limit here?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • We think this quarter was a small setback for us when it comes to F&I, and we are pretty positive about the fourth quarter as it relates to (multiple speakers)

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • Last, if I could, was on tax rate. Can you guys just clarify how to think about that into fourth quarter, and then kind of moving forward, given some of these parts that we've been discussing?

  • Keith Style - SVP, CFO

  • This is Keith. Our tax was moving around a little bit with some discrete items during the quarter, maybe a $0.01, $0.02 pickup on tax rate from discrete items. For planning purposes, we should be looking at 38% to 38.5% into the fourth quarter and into next year.

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Jamie Albertine, Consumer Edge Research.

  • Jamie Albertine - Analyst

  • Great. Thank you for taking the question and good morning gentlemen. I wanted to -- sorry to do this, to the labor the point on GPUs, but on the used side of the business, I think, as you mentioned, it seems like the industry is expecting this broader supply improvement. You got some pricing in fact in the quarter, it looked like a positive year-over-year basis from a comp store sales perspective, and yet margins were under pressure. I imagine it is going to be volatile here on out, but it looks like your compare eases significantly for used vehicle gross margins in the fourth quarter. So what I'm really asking is how do I balance sort of an easier compare with what I would imagine is further increase in supply that could pressure prices looking into the balance of the year?

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • They are all factors that we take into account as well. Again, I come back to it's -- we think we can do better in use; we think we can do better with CPO. It's an area where, quite frankly, we did not live up to our own internal expectations, and it's going to get a tremendous amount of focus from us as we move forward.

  • Jamie Albertine - Analyst

  • Is there a reference point you can provide? I think you said historically that some of your better stores may be as high as 2 to 1 used to new retail ratio, maybe even higher if I recall. Your average is about 0.75, if I did the math right here. So, how quickly and how many opportunities are there within the portfolio? How quickly could we see that trend higher, and what are some of the best stores running at right now?

  • Keith Style - SVP, CFO

  • Some of the best stores we have run a little bit over 1 to 1, which is well above, obviously, the industry average. When we -- we're trying to look at used vehicles in a holistic approach, and understanding what it generates for parts and service in that internal growth and how we benefit from that.

  • As far as margin pressure going forward, I think it will look similar to what it looks like right now, but our opportunity is within the volume aspect. Again, I've said it, I'll say it again. We are very happy with that CPO increase. We think there's more opportunity there, and we think some things that we've been working on within the last -- within this past quarter will tend to come to fruition, plus the benefit of these stop-sale vehicles actually freeing up.

  • Jamie Albertine - Analyst

  • I appreciate that. And if I can sneak just a strategic question in very quickly. Within your portfolio, and I know you span a lot of geographies, obviously a lot of brands within those geographies. Have you seen a diversions between the best and the worst markets sort of in the last few months, as it seems, just from the outside looking in, like SAR has gotten a lot choppier depending on who you talk to. And I'm wondering if your markets have widened in terms of best versus worst, and in the worst performing markets, if the offsets are occurring as you would imagine, parts and services picking up, F&I is stickier maybe than last recession. I'm just trying to get a sense of the resiliency in those underperforming markets.

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • That's a big question. Let me take a shot at it and maybe Keith and David have more to add.

  • Markets are different, just as you would imagine, I think based in part on the strength of the local economy. Clearly, our stores in Texas are more challenged than the stores we see in Florida, as an example, just the kind of thing you would expect. But I think brand is also important. And if we were to sit down together and go through a list of stores and markets, I think brand might jump out at us more here this quarter than markets. And you see it here in these GPUs. It's hard for us to absorb this type of a GPU movement and not have a material impact on the bottom line at the store.

  • Jamie Albertine - Analyst

  • Got it. That's very helpful.

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • If I could just continue, with that in mind, the way we are thinking about the business is let's attack the things that we can control. As we mentioned earlier, we think there's opportunities for us to do better in F&I. It's a 100% margin business for us, so it's an area that we continue to focus on. There's clearly opportunity to grow our used vehicle business. As I mentioned earlier, I think it's -- we didn't live up to our expectations in the quarter. We think there's a lot of growth opportunity there, and in many ways, that's a key driver across the entire stores, as David mentioned, because it brings us incremental F&I benefits as well as benefits in parts and service.

  • And then like David said earlier, parts and service is where we are making a lot of our investment in people; we are investing in systems; we are putting a lot of our marketing initiatives behind our parts and service areas. There's a lot of capital that's being invested in our collision centers. It's an area that we feel very good about.

  • So, we step back from everything that we see happening, there's still a lot we can control, there's a lot going on, there are a lot of initiatives that will come to fruition, and we feel pretty good about how we can manage through this softness, if you would, as we move forward.

  • Jamie Albertine - Analyst

  • Got it. Extremely helpful, as always, gentlemen. Thank you again and good luck in the fourth quarter.

  • Operator

  • John Murphy, Bank of America.

  • Liz Suzuki - Analyst

  • This is Liz Suzuki on for John. You may have mentioned this already, but were there any particular brands or vehicle classes that actually experienced any year-over-year improvement in gross profit per unit, or was it pretty much just weak across the board?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • We certainly -- obviously, the Luxury segment was up year-over-year and we did have some midline imports that were up year-over-year as well.

  • Liz Suzuki - Analyst

  • Okay. Any particular brands in there that you would call out as being strong?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • You know, we prefer not to mention any of them.

  • Liz Suzuki - Analyst

  • Okay. And it looks like it took a break on share buybacks even though the average share price was pretty similar in the third quarter versus the second. In fact, it was actually down a little bit. Are you getting more cautious about the Company's liquidity needs given the tough selling environment, or was there another channel of capital deployment the looked more attractive this quarter?

  • Keith Style - SVP, CFO

  • This is Keith. I think, when we look at capital deployment, we take a lot of things into consideration. We look at our business, the performance throughout the quarter. We look at the broader markets. We look at where we are trading from a share buyback perspective. There's a lot of things taken into consideration.

  • To answer your specific question from a liquidity standpoint, no. We are still well within our targets on our leverage ratios. You can see that with the list of liquidity position I provided. We have plenty of liquidity. Quite frankly, we are very well positioned. We are generating and anticipate generating about $100 million in free cash flow a year and our leverage ratio being net at 2.6 times, we are in a very good position. As Craig mentioned in his prepared remarks, we anticipate that capital allocation will enhance our future share performance or earnings performance.

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • Maybe if I could just jump in there and give a little more color. If you were to look at the months across the third quarter, July was a very soft month for us and caused us to reconsider our capital -- our share repurchase programs in light of the softness that we saw in July. August and September actually performed considerably better than July.

  • Liz Suzuki - Analyst

  • All right. Thanks very much.

  • Operator

  • Chris Bottiglieri, Wolfe Research.

  • Chris Bottiglieri - Analyst

  • Thanks for taking the question. Your plus 7% CPO was actually really strong, especially relative to peers in the market. So I was wondering if you could remind us what your CPO penetration is. And then two, more broadly, how you think about the CPO market overall. Are the OEMs still being supportive right now, given new vehicles are flattening out? Do you think we are reaching, at the industry level, are we reaching like the upper band of consumer demand? Just some thoughts there?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • From a CPO perspective, like I said, we're up about 7%, but as a percentage of our total business, it runs about 35%, 40% of our total used car sales. We see that there's opportunity there to grow that number further. I don't know if I answered fully your question or if I missed a piece of it.

  • Chris Bottiglieri - Analyst

  • I was just wondering. The market itself seems like it's slowing. Obviously, it's not for you guys, but maybe just thoughts overall on the CPO market, if you have any.

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • From talking to peers and what I hear in our industry, it doesn't appear to be slowing at this point from what we can see.

  • Chris Bottiglieri - Analyst

  • Okay. The next question I had was on stop sales. It seems like, if I calculate that correctly, that 7% of your used inventory is now on stop-sale versus 10% last quarter. So I guess, one, is it safe to assume the worst is behind you and for the industry.

  • And then two, I was just wondering if you could talk more broadly. It seems more mixed from your public peers in terms of the exposure to stop-sales, but would you say the large privates are experiencing similar headwinds than some of the smaller privates, or is it kind of just harder I guess to directionally quantify?

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • It's Craig. I'll start and David can give us more color. The issue with stop-sale is that it's concentrated in certain brands. And we've got a couple of brands where our stop-sale inventories, used vehicle inventories, are in the 15% to 20% range, and that's got an impact on the operations of the store. We mentioned earlier it is -- the situation is improving. We saw good improvement over the course of the quarter, but until we get this completely behind us, it does cause some disruption, again, in selected brands.

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • The only thing I would add to that, when you talked about the public and the private side, it really comes down to the brand mix and what someone has, what the impact will be.

  • Chris Bottiglieri - Analyst

  • Okay. And then one final question. I noticed that, for the Q auto, it looks like you're kind of cobranding that with your Courtesy brand now. So, one, I was just kind of curious on your learnings from that. I know this is a longer-term question, but if you decide roll out Q auto across other markets, how do you get to the branding? And then does your experience thus far kind of maybe rethink like a national rebranding strategy down the road?

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • Q is -- it's a distribution channel that we continue to experiment with. You're correct. We are experiencing, especially on the Web. That's probably where you saw that branding modification that we've made. It's still Q. If you were to drive by a store, you would see a very large Q on it. We are concentrating in the Tampa market, but we are moving to the sub-brand of Q auto Courtesy quality outlet. And we -- our view is that we are going to experiment with this, see how it works. We've got three of the stores that are using that concept on the Web. The fourth store is still a pure Q store, so we are continuing to experiment with our positioning. But our view is that, if we can make that approach successful in that market, we could move to another market, Atlanta for example, and we could still have a model where it's a large Q on the store, but instead of it being a Courtesy quality outlet, it could be a Nalley quality outlet.

  • Chris Bottiglieri - Analyst

  • That's very helpful. Thank you for the time -- for the questions.

  • Operator

  • Mike Montani, Evercore ISI.

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • I just wanted to follow-up, if I could, on the SAR and the new car environment. Understanding hurricane Matthew impacted you for a few days, but if you were to try to back that out and just look at the daily selling rate excluding that, did you notice any divergence from the 3Q trend? Is it consistent? Better? Worse? Can you just discuss that?

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • I would say it's consistent.

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • Okay. And then, if I could, just to follow on with the stop-sale, if I heard correctly, I think you said 20% of the units are still on stop-sale, and that had been 40% to start the quarter. I guess, first of all, is that correct? And then within that, are you seeing down 40% to 50% volumes for those units that are on stop-sale? Because I guess I'm trying to get my arms around the potential headwind, and that would really suggest that, all else equal, it could be high single-digit headwinds in the used business.

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • I'll start off. In one of our brands, we started the quarter with some of those stores at 40% of their inventory on stop-sale. That same brand is now down to 20%.

  • The second, if we were to look at where to rank these stores, I think our second-highest brand is in the 17% range, possibly, and then we're going to drop down into the low teens. But again, this is probably three brands where we see this issue.

  • You're going to have to help me with the rest of the question. I missed that.

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • I guess what I'm trying to get at is, for those stores, are you seeing a material divergence in their used unit comp performance versus the stores that are not impacted by this Takata issue or stop-sales? (multiple speakers)

  • David Hult - EVP, COO

  • Absolutely.

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • Can you put anything around that? Like on a similar geography, are we talking about 100 or 200 BPS or is this like 800, 900 BPS kind of impact, or divergence in trend rather?

  • Keith Style - SVP, CFO

  • This is Keith. We don't have that data all set in front of us right now, but it's certainly something we can talk about and share with in the future.

  • Mike Montani - Analyst

  • Okay. Thanks a lot.

  • Craig Monaghan - President, CEO

  • That concludes today's session. We appreciate you participating with us, and we look forward to talking to you at the end of next quarter.