ACV Auctions Inc (ACVA) 2021 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the ACV Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the call over to Tim Fox, ACV's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining ACV's conference call to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results. With me on the call today are George Chamoun, Chief Executive Officer; and Bill Zerella, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we get started, please note that today's comments include forward-looking statements, including statements regarding future financial guidance. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and involve factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. A discussion of the risks and uncertainties related to our business can be found in our SEC filings and in today's press release, both of which can be found on our Investor Relations website.

During this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is provided in today's earnings material, which can also be found on our Investor Relations website. And with that, let me turn the call over to George.

Thanks, Tim. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Let me begin by reflecting on ACV's first calendar year as a public company, which was capped off by a strong performance in the fourth quarter. In 2021, we transacted nearly $8 billion of GMV on our marketplace, which is 140% year-over-year growth and pretty incredible when you consider ACV launched just 6 years ago. As I will discuss in more detail later, the automotive industry continues to experience competing cross currents with increased vehicle values while also resulting in less ecosystem supply. Despite these crosscurrents, we delivered over $350 million of revenue and over 70% growth, well above the targets we provided during our IPO last March. This was accomplished by having the broadest and most differentiated digital solutions in the market that are being delivered by the best team, enabling ACV to expand our dealer network and gain market share.

As Bill will cover in more detail later, our plan for 2022 is to continue investing in driving strong revenue growth, further differentiating our digital solutions and scaling our operations, all while delivering an adjusted EBITDA margin 600 basis points higher than our IPO model. We remain committed to achieving adjusted EBITDA breakeven exiting 2023, and we are excited to share details on our 2026 financial targets at our Analyst Day on March 1. With that, let me turn to fourth quarter highlights on Slide 3.

As you can see, our market momentum continued in the fourth quarter where we transacted $2.5 billion of GMV, growth of nearly 170% year-over-year. We sold 139,000 vehicles in our digital marketplace, a 35% increase year-over-year and an increase of over 80% on a 2-year basis. We delivered a record $100 million of revenue in the quarter, an important milestone for the ACV team, which was 86% year-over-year growth.

Our revenue outperformance can be attributed to 3 factors: First, we executed on our playbook to grow market share by attracting new dealers into our ecosystem and expanding dealer wallet share; second, ARPU benefited from a higher mix of newer vehicles and strong used vehicle prices; and third, high attach rates of our value-added services. Overall, we're very pleased with strong execution by the ACV team and continued customer adoption of our growing suite of services.

To frame the rest of our discussion today, we will focus on the 3 top-level elements of our strategy to drive long-term shareholder value, marketplace growth, TAM and product expansion and operating scale. Let me begin with the marketplace growth.

On Slide 5, let's cover more details from the quarter. We transacted 139,000 units in Q4, which was 35% growth year-over-year, and 84% when compared with Q4 '19. For the full year, we transacted over 560,000 units, representing 43% growth year-over-year, and 132% growth compared to 2019. The positive market trends I referenced earlier related to vehicle values helped contribute to fourth quarter GMV growth of 170% year-over-year. Consistent with trends during the first 3 quarters of 2021, vehicle mix on our marketplace moved upmarket in Q4. In fact, since last year, the percentage of vehicles valued over $15,000 doubled to nearly 40% in 2021. While elevated vehicle values may normalize over time, we believe this higher mix of newer vehicles in ACV's marketplace is sustainable, resulting in long-term tailwind for ARPU.

Moving to Slide 6. We thought it would be helpful again this quarter to provide some context on the dealer wholesale market in relation to the broader automotive market. As I mentioned earlier, this is a case of competing cross currents. The 2 charts on the top row highlight trends in the used vehicle market. Sales of used vehicles remain elevated, nearly 70% above pre-COVID levels, reflecting strong consumer demand and strong retail values. The chart on the right shows how this demand and environment translated to historically high prices for wholesale vehicles. Strong demand and pricing have been nice tailwinds for ACV, which you saw reflected in record level ARPU last year. The 2 charts on the bottom highlight the trends for new vehicles, which continue to paint a very different picture. The semiconductor chip shortages and other automotive supply chain issues resulted in a steep decline in new vehicle sales.

The latest SAAR reading of around 13 million units is down 30% from pre-COVID levels. The days supply of light vehicles and franchise dealerships contracted to around 22 days versus historical levels in the 60s. As a reminder, this supply picture matters to ACV because consumer trade-ins for new vehicles are critical input into the dealer wholesale market, historically representing a significant portion of the annual supply. With new inventories at such acute levels, the volume of trades entering the wholesale market has declined, resulting in a temporary contraction in the market we serve. We continue to believe it's temporary because the chip supply picture will no doubt improve in the coming quarters. And given the investments we're making about territory expansion and our differentiated product suite, ACV is very well positioned to benefit from the resulting recovery in the wholesale market.

Turning to Slide 7. Let me put a finer point on the supply dynamics in the market. Based on our proprietary analysis, we estimate that the U.S. dealer wholesale market contracted 12% quarter-over-quarter in Q4, and contracted about 5% from Q4 2020. Despite these transient supply headwinds, we continue to gain market share and attract new dealers to our marketplace. Given our 35% year-over-year unit growth in Q4 '21 and our estimate that the market contracted 5%, this implies ACV gained 40% share year-over-year.

For all of 2021, we believe that the U.S. dealer wholesale market grew modestly at about 5%. With the growth benefiting from a strong first half compared to 2020, where COVID had a significant impact. As such, we believe that ACV gained 38% market share in 2021. The takeaway here is that while our industry is facing temporary supply constraints, ACV is gaining market share, attracting new dealers at an impressive pace and delivering strong revenue growth.

Next on Slide 8. We are pleased with the progress our ACV team made on territory expansion, and we are now positioned to engage with nearly all franchise dealers in the U.S. Following each territory launch, we execute our proven go-to-market playbook by growing our inspection team, attracting dealers to the marketplace and creating the powerful network effect that we've proven across the country.

Moving on to Slide 9. Auction marketplace revenue growth was 73% year-over-year and nearly 200% growth versus Q4 '19. Full year auction marketplace revenue of $164 million was up 66% year-over-year, driven primarily by 43% unit growth and, to a lesser extent, higher ARPU during the year.

Turning now to Slide 10. Over the last few quarters, I've highlighted our consumer sourcing offering, Live Appraisal, that contributed to our strong unit growth in 2021. We were an early mover in this category, enabling our dealers to offer to their customers a unique and effective way to sell their vehicles on ACV's marketplace. Live Appraisals gained significant market traction, delivering over $200 million of GMV in Q4 alone. Live Appraisal is being leveraged by dealers across the country with sales in 48 states last year. We continue to invest in this category and look forward to detailing our vision to further penetrate this large market opportunity at our upcoming Analyst Day. Let me turn to the second element of our strategy, to drive long-term shareholder value, TAM and product expansion.

Moving to Slide 12. Let's touch on 2 offerings that are creating incremental growth levers, starting first with programmatic buying. We are very excited about the market traction of our programmatic buying offerings. It's still early days, but this innovative way of enabling dealers to engage with our marketplace already contributed to a mid-single-digit percentage of units in Q4. Our Buying API is live with dealers who have technology platforms that integrate directly with ACV's real-time APIs to generate bids in our marketplace. We're engaging with a diverse set of customers that include large dealers, rental car companies and a leading specialty auto parts supplier.

In addition, our new programmatic buying user experience launched in Q4. This offering enables the rest of our dealer partners to leverage programmatic buying on our marketplace by creating inventory wish lists to automatically source their inventory needs. These programmatic buying capabilities together with our nationwide inspection team enables ACV to offer a highly efficient and trusted experience which we believe delivers superior results for our dealer partners.

Moving to our private marketplace offering. Recall that this private auction platform leverages ACV's open marketplace technology to enable large dealer groups to optimize intragroup trades. Private marketplaces provide ACV with another avenue to engage with the largest dealer groups in the country who collectively own about 6,000 rooftops across the U.S. We are seeing strong initial demand and look forward to updating you on the adoption of private marketplaces in the coming quarters.

Moving to Slide 13. We are very excited about the market traction we're seeing with our MAX Digital SaaS and data offerings. MAX Digital's pricing guidance, merchandising and inventory management products are a natural complement to ACV's data services that together create exciting growth synergies. In fact, the MAX Digital pipeline has grown by over 150% since the acquisition closed last July. We look forward to sharing updates on ACV's broader vehicle intelligence strategy at our Analyst Day.

Turning to Slide 14. Let me wrap up this section with an update on our value-added services. We are making significant investments in the technology and resources to scale ACV Transportation and ACV Capital. These investments are driving strong top line growth by delivering highly differentiated services to the market while also creating efficiencies for both our partners and for ACV. ACV Transport continues to be a key enabler of attracting new buyers to the platform. Our growing carrier partner network and fast cycle times resulted in attach rates exceeding 50% in Q4. This is a full year ahead of our original plans. A huge shout out to the ACV Transportation team for achieving this milestone in such short order.

ACV Capital continues to gain traction in the market, and like our transport business, is tracking ahead of the milestones built into our long-term targets. Capital attach rates reached the mid-single digits in Q4, with 200% loan volume growth year-over-year. The new finance offerings we launched last June are translating into strong revenue per loan growth. We continue to be excited about the revenue and margin opportunities for our capital business as this business scales in the coming years.

With that, let me hand over to Bill to take you through our financial results and how we're driving growth at scale.

Thanks, George, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We are pleased with our Q4 financial performance, having again delivered upside to both our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance despite the challenging macro factors George outlined earlier on the call.

Turning to Slide 16, I'll begin with a review of our fourth quarter results. Revenue of $100 million was above the high end of guidance and generated year-over-year growth of 86%. Adjusted EBITDA loss of $16 million or 16% of revenue was also very favorable relative to our Q4 guidance. This performance was driven by our solid revenue results in the quarter and underscores the inherent operating leverage in our business model. As expected, cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue increased year-over-year and was modestly above our expectations. The year-over-year increase was driven primarily by the mix of ACV Transport revenue which increased approximately 800 basis points year-over-year and exceeded our expectations. As a reminder, we believe through the scaling of ACV Transport, we can deliver a better SLA to both sellers and buyers while also scaling this offering to generate better economics over time.

Total operating costs, excluding cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue decreased by approximately 200 basis points year-over-year, which demonstrates operating leverage in our model. This operating leverage was achieved despite investments across our technology portfolio, operations and go-to-market functions, the investments we're making to fuel our long-term growth strategy.

Turning to Slide 17, I will cover some additional detail on revenue. We have a diverse revenue mix with approximately 86% of revenue evenly split between auction marketplace and service revenue with the balance in customer assurance. Auction marketplace revenue increased modestly quarter-over-quarter and was better than our expectations due to both higher ARPU and unit performance in the quarter. For 2021, auction marketplace revenue was up 66% versus 2020, reflecting strong dealership acquisition and continued penetration of the wholesale market. Profitability in our auction marketplace remained strong in the quarter and consistent with the high 80% historical rate. Our services business continued to outperform expectations with strong results in transportation and capital.

Moving to Slide 18, I would like to discuss the operating leverage of our business. Here, we're showing the historical adjusted EBITDA margin along with results for 2021. As I mentioned earlier, 2021 was a year of significant investment for ACV. And as you've heard throughout our discussion today, we're delivering on our territory expansion plans, launching new digital offerings to drive additional market share and investing in technology to scale our operations. These investments translated into a 56% year-over-year increase in operating expense, excluding cost of revenue. And despite this increase, our adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 300 basis points year-over-year, again highlighting the underlying operating leverage in our business model.

Now I'll turn to guidance on Slide 19. For the first quarter of 2022, we are expecting revenue in the range of $100 million to $102 million, a growth rate of 45% to 48% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be a loss in the range of $17 million to $18 million. For the full year 2022, we are expecting revenue in the range of $450 million to $460 million, a growth rate of 26% to 28% year-over-year and approximately $45 million or 10% above our IPO model. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be a loss in the range of $53 million to $57 million or 12% of revenue at the midpoint of guidance.

Note that the 2022 adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be an improvement of approximately 600 basis points relative to our IPO model, which puts us firmly on a path to achieve adjusted EBITDA breakeven and exiting 2023. As it relates to our 2022 guidance, although the ongoing automotive supply chain issues have made it challenging to predict both used vehicle values and vehicle trade volumes on our marketplace, we believe we have multiple levers in our business model and therefore, multiple paths to achieve our 2022 revenue guidance.

We are also providing newly established 2026 financial targets of $1.3 billion in revenue, a 30% CAGR and $325 million in adjusted EBITDA, a 25% adjusted EBITDA margin. We look forward to providing you with more color on our path to achieve these targets at our upcoming Analyst Day in a few weeks.

To wrap up my comments, let me highlight our strong capital structure on Slide 20. We ended 2021 with $580 million in cash and equivalents and marketable securities, $164 million of which reflects the float in our auction business. Note that we generated $85 million of cash flow from operations during the year due to an increase in the float on our marketplace since December 31, 2020. The amount of float on our balance sheet can fluctuate meaningfully driven by business trends in the final 2 weeks of each quarter. We ended 2021 with $500,000 of long-term debt associated with our ACV Capital business. Given our strong cash position, we continue to optimize our cost of capital and at current levels are self-funding the ACV Capital business.

And with that, let me turn it back to George.

Thanks, Bill. Before we take your questions, let's summarize. We are very pleased with our continued strong execution while navigating through unprecedented times in our industry. We are especially proud of our ACV team, has delivered these results while also navigating the challenges created by the global pandemic. We continue to gain market share by attracting new dealers to our marketplace and by gaining wallet share within our existing customer base, which positions ACV for strong growth going forward.

We are executing on our territory expansion plans. Our marketplace offerings are gaining traction in the market and see some very promising growth synergies emerging from our SaaS and data services such as MAX Digital. Lastly, we are on track to generate over $1 billion in revenue with attractive margins through a proven business model that delivers scalable growth with strong unit economics and operating leverage, that we believe will drive significant shareholder value.

With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator to begin the Q&A.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Andrew Boone with JMP Securities.

Just to start off, given the volatility that we've seen within vehicle pricing, can you just talk about the puts and takes for that as we think about 2022? And then secondly, on programmatic buying and your private marketplace, are you seeing traction there with dealers that are newer to the platform? In other words, is this kind of a tip of the spear in terms of go-to-market? Or is this gaining traction with older customers where you guys have more trust there?

Yes. Thanks, Andrew. I'll kick this off. And then, Bill, if you want to add some more context, please, please do. So first, when you look at what's going on as far as GMV prices, the Q4 was definitely -- could possibly have been a peak for the industry. Andrew, none of us know, but without a doubt, Q4 GMV was high. If you look at some of the industry data and that's coming out, both I would say retail data of consumers starting a little -- some softening in the consumers willing to pay certain retail values, a little bit of data out there on the wholesale from various folks. I think we'll -- so far, we're seeing a very slow but small change in GMV, but nothing radical yet. So I think we'll start to see that. We believe we will start to see that happen throughout the year, a moderation on GMV.

So that helps you think but, as you know, the other puts and takes as we think about 2022 is volume. We do think volume will also start to slowly come back. So when you think about our sort of puts and takes about ARPU first units, they do kind of go hand in hand. And so if we do see GMV start to go down, in a way, we could start to see volumes start to come up. So hopefully, that gives you a little context. Bill, if you want to add any more, please do.

Yes. What I would add, Andrew, is George just described the levers, which basically gives us multiple ways to kind of get to the same results. What we observed last year, obviously, record ARPUs because of record GMV, although units, especially in the second half were more challenging. But those 2 served to more than -- actually the higher ARPU more than offset the lower units. So in this coming year, it will all depend on how the supply picture changes and evolves through the year. If it continues to be more challenging, we would expect that our ARPU would be higher and conversely. So again, multiple paths to get potentially the same result depending upon what happens with the supply of new vehicles.

And then Andrew, in your second question related to programmatic buying. Some of the early participants were existing buyers, large buyers who have now adopted programmatic, and some of the buyers who are now leveraging programmatic have never participated previously with ACV. So we do have both constituents of buyers who are buying more in a way we're getting more wallet share out of that buyer because they now have programmatic or look at its persistent demand on ACV, and we also have new participants, who are now buying on ACV, where this was our opportunity to win them over and that they now can set it up, look at the way they're buying, change it however many times they would like a week, but they've got a very simple and efficient way to buy initially on ACV, we're saying initially. And then in the future, that might be beyond ACV. Hopefully, that answers your 2 questions there.

Our next question comes from Bob Labick with CJS Securities.

Congratulations on some very strong operations. I wanted to start with Live Appraisal. You highlighted it in the slide deck and presentation a little bit. And maybe you could -- we could dig a little bit deeper. It's co-branded with dealers. How do you market it to the dealers? And how penetrated is it now versus where do you see it going over time in terms of the numbers of dealers that you're penetrated with? So that's kind of the first part of the question.

And then the second part is where would those cars otherwise go? Are those like peer-to-peer cars before and coming now into the dealer market? Or were they going to go to a different avenue? Or where do you think the cars are coming from that are going through Live Appraisal?

Yes. Thanks, Bob. On your first part of the question there, so one, we're thrilled, right, with our growth and our traction of Live Appraisal. The way dealers are using the product does vary. So in our slides, we showed some images there. One of the images was like a tent event, where the dealer is marketing to consumers in their market, it could be via radio, it could be via television, billboards, come auction your car. Some of them are using the ACV brand, some of them don't, some of them just market the function of auctioning their vehicle. And we don't today prescribe exactly how to go to market with the dealers who are participating. But the commonality here is Live Appraisal enables a dealer to market transparency to their consumers. And as you know, this is a hot topic. It's a topic that -- why just have what one dealer is willing to pay for your car? Why not have what the market's willing to pay? .

And so a lot of research we've been doing, our own research, we'll start to circulate this in the coming quarters is consumers love the idea of transparency, consumers love the idea fair, consumers love the idea of knowing the market determining the value, not just one dealer. So hopefully that adds -- a little bit of like this, various ways they're going to market, various ways they're leveraging our brand, but there is a consistency in this whole transparency.

There's a second part of your question related to where is, in a way, this share coming from? And I'll put it under really 2 buckets. And it's hard for us to tell at this point in our journey what percent comes from bucket A and what percent from bucket B, but I'll describe the 2 buckets. So the first bucket would be a consumer wants to trade in their car and buy a car. A consumer would like to understand the value of their car. And they're looking to buy. They're looking to understand the value, and Live Appraisal is an incredible way. So you look at -- if you look at the overall dealer wholesale market, retailing dealers is one segment of overall TAM. That's one segment.

And then to your point, another segment that funnels through into dealer wholesale is some portion of peer to peer, which in any calendar, it might be 9 million to 11 million vehicles. Why would a consumer sell another -- a car to another consumer? If dealers are willing to pay more, they're willing to pay in a fair way, it's easy, it's no hassle. You don't have to worry about sending a title to another consumer, dealing with fraud, dealing with everything. And our research is showing -- and again, over time, we'll start to share our research, that consumers -- many consumers would favor getting a fair price and no fiction.

So what portion is coming from bucket A, let's call that dealer wholesale that comes from the trade portion; or b, which is the portion that rolls up into dealer wholesale that traditionally would have came from peer to peer. We don't have a great breakdown just yet, Bob, of what -- where the share is coming from, but without a doubt, it's coming from both.

That's great. I appreciate the detail very much.I'd like to ask one more question though. Just since the IPO, obviously, there's been a lot of change in the marketplace, and there's been some new entrants and new announced entrants, CarBravo or CDK's DMS offering and things like that. So could you just tell us how you stack up? How do you think the competitive landscape may have changed and your differentiation versus some of these new entrants even in the last year?

Yes, certainly. So Bob, as you know, you've been doing research on this market for a long time. We've had hundreds of competitors from day 1. Hundreds. And that's not -- there's nothing new about us having competitors. This is not an industry where there is 1 or 2 players. This is an industry where there was national players, local players, national players that have physical and digital. There's been a lot of different participants in this ecosystem. So when you look at our Q4 results and you look at the fact that quarter-over-quarter, the market -- dealer wholesale might have shrunk as much as 12% according to our proprietary analysis. Even among all of these new competitors, former competitors, we're taking share, right? So there will be new entrants. There will always be new entrants.

I'll now kind of give you another way of looking at this. There's different types of wholesale. And when you look at different types of wholesale, we started our journey with the lower-priced assets that were the typical trade and these were the higher mileage, lower price, you saw our GMV in the early years was lower, you saw that if any of you were watching our auctions, you would have saw the typical car had 80,000 to 100,000 miles on it, and you might even -- you might have heard us even call it the typical wholesale car. That was our early years, and we did a fantastic job of bringing the best condition report.

We made digital happen because we brought transparency and trust to these vehicles that really needed the strong condition report, can sort of come to light and be something that would be contracted simply over the Internet, we made that happen.

Over the last couple of years, you've seen us grow. We now are no longer just a marketplace for lower-priced cars, the high mileage, a lot of issues. The participants have changed, both sellers and buyers, the trust in ACV has changed. If any -- some of you have done research on this, you say -- I've read some of your research, I said, we wish the inflection was on every car. And so look at -- as we grow and we grow the use cases, we can broaden our share of the overall wholesale sector. So we went from an early lead in one category, and we've definitely now started to grow our share and as we continue to invest in our platform and we continue to add more and more trust and we add the additional elements like programmatic and making things simple, we think we're in a great spot.

Your next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

I wanted to go back to slides 12 to 14, where you're sort of laying out TAM and product expansion and drivers of the services business over the long term. How much of what's ahead of you in the years forward are elements where you still need to invest to build scale and services and tackle this product expansion opportunity versus it's already been built and you're now in execution mode. So we can better understand the mix of investments that are needed versus pure sort of execution that's going to drive mix in the business in the years ahead.

Yes. Thanks, Eric. Obviously, great question and broad, so I'll try to get in there. If you want to ask a follow-up, please go right ahead. So when you look at the journey we're on from a technology perspective, some of the elements in slides 12, 13 and 14, some of these are early parts of the journey and some are our endeavors that we -- were many years in, right? So we're -- when you look at something like programmatic, obviously, we just launched that last year. We're really -- but this isn't like an R&D skunk work.

We've got big -- some of the largest dealers in the country buying lots of cars and other types of constituents. So yes, there's an investment here to keep it going, but it's in market, it's going it's working. Same thing with private marketplace. We've got some of the largest dealers in the country already using private marketplace. And of course, they've got requirement. They've got the next thing. The beauty about tech is, you get in the hands of your customers, and they would like to go have a little more of this, a little more of that. So there's definitely continued investment, but what that investment has with it -- the exact requirements we're hearing from dealers are saying, "We'll do more with you if you do the following."

And when you look at products like MAX, MAX Digital was already in the leader in the category for some of the items like merchandising and really understanding car by car, how they're unique and how that relates to pricing. So we had a fantastic base to work from. But with our national sales force, and now we're trying to integrate it into the core here, what you're seeing there, we're getting leverage of the pipeline there from when we bought it to now and looked at it like the growth from a joining ACV has been fantastic. Whereas products like Transportation and Capital, when we went public, we were pretty open. We said we had 2 engineers on Transport -- we had public, because we didn't yet have the resources to go invest in all the things we wanted. I was very transparent on that.

Now fast forward, we've got a dozen or so or more folks just focused on Transport. Look at how well we're doing on taking Transport, what was a losing business from a margin perspective, to now we're showcasing confidence that this is a business where we're going to hit our long-term targets. We're investing in the tech. Our team feels great about it. So something like that, when we went public, we had a couple of engineers and now at least we've got a small team while we're going. And we're looking at attach rates on Transport at 50%, it's because we can optimize lanes. We can be scientific about our pricing.

So all you're really hearing me say, whether it be capital, are you seeing our attach rates grow, our tech investments have been incredible. Our acquisitions are getting us more and more excited about this broader product suite. So we're feeling good. I mean at the end of the day, when we look at what we're doing for our investors, our -- the shareholder value we're getting out of the several hundred folks we have in product and engineering is paying off.

Your next question comes from Ali Faghri with Guggenheim.

So I recognize there's a lot of different ways this could play out in terms of volume and revenue per unit in 2022. But maybe you could help us understand what volume growth assumption right now is embedded in your 1Q and 2022 full year guidance. I also have the same question about the volume assumption that's embedded in your 2026 $1.3 billion revenue guidance.

Hey, Ali. It's Bill. So Ali, we really don't get to that level of fidelity. And the reason why is because, again, the multiple ways that we could get to the same results, right? So we know, obviously, we're still in a challenging environment in terms of supply. We believe that will start to abate by the time we get to the second half and that supply will start to increase as new car production improves. And that, obviously, as I mentioned earlier, sort of -- there's a play between ARPU and units, right? And that -- they're both related to each other, right? With supply challenges, used car prices are typically higher, which generates higher ARPU and then conversely vice versa, right?

So we purposely don't get to that level of fidelity since, again, we can model our business in a few different ways and see that there's multiple paths to get to the same results. And that's why we don't get to that level of fidelity.

That makes sense. And just as a quick follow-up here. In terms of your GMV outlook, so that makes sense that it would gradually normalize through the year, but it does look like you took your fees higher in the fourth quarter. So is there a potential that we could see GMV normalized, but your revenue per unit actually remains at elevated levels as those fee adjustments kind of offset that underlying price normalization? And then on top of that, I guess, what is the opportunity here going forward for further fee adjustments upward? Again, it seems like you made one in December. I'm curious how you think about your pricing power longer term.

So I'll take the first question then, George, you could take the second question. So the way we've modeled the business through the rest of the year, Ali, is to look at the adjustment we made in buy fees in December, has really -- potentially mitigating any downdraft in ARPU as a result of lower used car prices, right? So how much it mitigates, again, all depends on this dynamic in terms of supply and used car prices that consumers are willing to pay. So it clearly is a factor that we bake into our modeling. But again, we're assuming that GMV per unit will certainly come down through the year. And we're already starting to see some of that.

We're already starting to see that buyers are a little more tentative in terms of the prices that they've been paying, understanding that consumers are reaching a point where potentially they will not -- they are not willing to pay more for a used car, and that will adjust over time. So yes, it plays a role, whether or not it would fully mitigate, any reduction in buy fees as a result of a reduction in used car prices, I think it's too soon for us to say. And again, I hate to repeat myself, but it sort of gets back to these multiple levers that we've got.

Ali, on your other sort of follow-up to your question, we're not planning to increase fees again this year. Like that's not part of the current plan. But I guess the broader question really, is there room to? And the answer is yes, there's room to. We are still priced in some of the price segments under market.

At this point, where I'm sitting right now, I think no reason to raise at all where it could be long-term at this point. We just raised it. I think we're in a good spot for right now. We feel good about our ARPU targets for the year. It's a great business, strong unit economics, even where we're at right now. And we'll always ask ourselves that question, Ali, like when it's the right time. But you're not really hearing a sense of like we need to do that anytime soon. It's not currently on our docket, but we do always ask ourselves the question of how long should we keep our prices as low as they are, but we feel good in where we're at.

Our next question comes from Rajat Gupta with JPMorgan.

Maybe just a follow up on Ali's question on revenue. You talked about multiple levers there, in the event like pricing moderates faster than expected and more volume. Curious like what's embedded in terms of commercial opportunity or international expansion, within that. Anything you can frame around that? And then I have a follow-up.

Yes, certainly. So I'll start on commercial. Bill and -- or Tim, you could add. So today, we have limited but some commercial partners using ACV. We've got some rental car companies selling an ACV, which has been great. We've started our journey. We've been able to show them that ACV is a great place if they don't sell it direct. As you know, in the rental car category, many of them first try to sell it direct. If they can't sell it direct to dealers, then they traditionally would then send it to a physical auction. That's kind of like the historic path.

And we've been able to put ACV in a few dozen places across the country. We've been able to put ACV as an alternative second lever for them, going from their direct efforts to digital before they just send it off to physical. So that's been one. Not a huge number, but at least we're getting started with them.

Also some small fleet companies, these are companies that own assets. So very small though. But the good news is at least I'm going to end the year with some case studies. I'm going to end the year with proof we're in the market. and I'm excited about the long-term potential in commercial. And there's also products that we've -- we're in the very early stages. On commercial, specifically, we've got a pilot going with a smaller regional fleet company on our private marketplace. Still very early, but it's always great that you can get these products built, get them to market. But we don't have huge assumptions in our model right now to -- on the commercial category.

We still look at this year as getting out there, case studies, proving we're a player and in the out years, we'll start to take more share because we think we're in a great spot, and we're feeling good about where we're at. International, very little. It's assumed in the model at this point. We don't have a big assumption on international at this point.

Got it. Got it. That's helpful. And maybe on the expense side, I mean, we expected maybe like a slower increase there given some of the volume challenges or industry challenges. But curious like, is there some catch-up happening there with respect to inspector hiring versus last year? How much would you characterize inflation playing a role in that expense increase year-over-year? Maybe if you could just parse that out.

Yes. Hey, Ali. It's Bill. Yes, you nailed it. So as you know, last year, we got off to a slow start in terms of ramping our product and tech resources. I think we did a pretty good job on the go-to-market side. We had a lot of focus in terms of building out that team. But on the product and tech side, it took us a while to really get started. So the good news is our recruiting team is really executing well now in terms of bringing in more and more talent on the product and tech side.

So there is some catch-up as a result of that. But just to put it all in context, though, if you look at our OpEx growth based on the midpoint of our guidance for the year, it's going to be about 33%. That said, that's still $10 million lower for the year when you do the math versus our IPO model on $45 million more in revenue.

So we're kind of in line. I mean all of that results in about a 600 basis point improvement in EBITDA margins versus our IPO model. So kind of, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, kind of firmly puts us on the path to exit next year at breakeven. So -- but it's exactly what you thought. It's just catching up, and we're actually going to get to a lower run rate when we're done.

Our next question comes from John Colantuoni with Jefferies.

Just wanted to start with programmatic buying, went from low single digits in Q3 to mid-single digits as a percentage of units in Q4. Just given how nascent that product is, can you talk about what sort of contribution we should expect over the next few years? And also, are you starting to see any signs that marrying programmatic buying with your core auction marketplace has helped increase overall conversion rates? And I have a quick follow-up.

Yes. Certainly, John. So on the -- on these early days of -- obviously, we're just getting started on the programmatic. We're really listening to the market on what else they would like to see, what additional data, what additional capabilities. Let's say, for example, they want X, Y, Z, more fields in there. They want certain things. They want to be able to leverage the capabilities to bid at specific vehicles higher than another. So we've been busy at work and we've got our -- not only in the market, but we're listening to our dealers, and we're also hearing from them the next level of requirements they would like to buy in -- and I think it will create even a larger take right here.

So John, I think this is going to take us several quarters before it's a very large percentage. But the great news is we started our journey, right? The great news is it's part of the plan. The great news is, whenever you get a product to market and you hear great feedback, you just keep going. So think, these are still early days. With software, you need to go listen, build, release. And we'll get to your question on how material -- we'll get to a point where it becomes very material. I think, towards the end of this year, early next year, because that's just the way software works. You listen, you grow, you invest, you keep going to market. And I think that puts us in a great spot for next year because we're not stopping here.

As far as this contribution to a higher conversion rate, it's definitely helped us with the higher priced vehicles. Without a doubt. I mean we are -- think about it in the back of your mind, we're not there yet. We're almost at the point. We're almost there, where we have a programmatic offer in almost every car above a certain price point, a certain type of mileage. And that's going to be awesome, and we're getting there. And I think we'll hit that sometime in the next couple of quarters where -- now that price may not be where the seller is willing to sell it for. But at least we're going to start getting what is the ACV, what is the actual cash value of that vehicle? And this is what the market says.

So John, I think -- you're a student of this whole category. Think about, this isn't just about selling cars. This has helped us -- it's going to help us go back to the sellers because their assets are going to be going down in value throughout the year. And honestly, you should have sold it yesterday in our platform for what we got, like, why are you -- what's going on here? No longer are used cars going to appreciate. That didn't make sense, right? This is really the message to all of our dealers. And so programmatic is going to become pretty significant not only to help us sell more cars, but provide us the data that at the end of the day help our sellers understand the actual cash value of their assets.

Great. And I just wanted to ask about customer acquisition. You have strong customer acquisition in the first half. Maybe you could just update us on how that's trended in the second half and in Q4.

Yes, certainly. So we -- when you look at overall share -- and not to repeat what I said earlier, when we look at our share gains in Q4 and really study that based on at least our proprietary analysis of dealer wholesale shrinking, Q4, we ended the year very, very strong. And so we continued -- and maybe just a little taste of Q1, obviously, we'll just be careful on this. A number of sellers and listings are actually starting to, I would say, are starting to come back and away from a listings perspective as well. We now will also start to guide them on price, okay?

But what we're feeling, John, really good about not only our share gains in Q4, but we're feeling really good on how the year has started with a number of sellers on the platform. And I feel like we've got the data to help guide them on what these assets are worth. So hopefully, that gives you a little -- without me talking too much about Q1, a little color.

I would add, by the way, John, that at our Analyst Day, March 1, will we'll more fidelity in terms of the specific seller and buyer accounts. So that's on the agenda.

Our next question comes from Michael Graham with Canaccord.

Just 2 quick ones. One is congrats on getting to like basically 100% territory coverage, I guess, in the U.S. And I just wonder if you could refresh any thinking around like the cohorts, like sort of where are you with some of your best markets and key metrics like share of wallet or margins or whatever you think is appropriate relative to some of your newer markets? And then I also just wanted to ask on the capital side, like is there a volume level or some sort of size where you would think more critically about taking some of those loans off your balance sheet?

Yes, I'll start, Michael. And then, Bill, will hand it over to you. We're -- and when you look at -- as we mentioned, on Analyst Day, we're going to go into cohorts, Michael, we're going to spend some time and feel just absolutely great about where we're at. It will be nice to have several hours with you all versus these quick calls. So our thought was that's -- I don't know, 1.5 week from now or so. So we would spend some time then going through this and really walking you all through how we're doing from a cohort.

But I would say a more generic answer is we're feeling good about the -- not only the markets that are established and growing wallet share out of the current markets that are established but also feeling great about opening up markets across the country and starting our journey. So feeling really good about where we're at, and I would say more to come. But Bill, maybe on the capital side of things, you could take that one.

Yes. Yes. Yes, happy to. Yes. So Michael, we ended last year with $44 million on the balance sheet in ACV Capital receivables, which, again, we're kind of carrying that because of our strong cash position. So we are actually working now on looking at, as we continue to grow that portfolio, the different options available to us to finance those receivables. We've got some pretty aggressive growth targets in place this year. So as we continue to execute, I would expect at some point -- what I've said directionally is when we get to $100 million of -- $100 million in receivables portfolio level, then we would expect to not be financing that on our balance sheet. And we may decide to look at alternatives and do something different than what we're doing today even before we get to that point. So we're literally in the throes of looking at the alternatives as we speak today.

I would now like to turn the call back over to Tim Fox for any further remarks.

Thank you, Josh, and I like to thank everybody for joining us on the call today. Just note that the registration details for the Analyst Day are both in the press release and on our IR website. And we look forward to seeing you live, hopefully, if not, you can still join virtually on March 1. And lastly, thank you for your interest in ACV, and have a great evening. Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.