America's CAR-MART Inc (CRMT) 2016 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for holding and welcome to America's Car-Mart's fourth-quarter 2016 conference call. The topic of this call will be the earnings and operating results for the Company's fourth-quarter FY16.

Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and will be available for replay for the next 30 days. The dial-in number and access information are included in last night's press release, which can be found on America's Car-Mart's website at www.car-mart.com.

As you all know, some of Management's comments today may include forward-looking statements, which inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from Management's present view. These statements are made pursuant of the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

The Company cannot guarantee the accuracy of any forecast or estimates, nor does it undertake any obligation to update such forward-looking statements. For more information regarding forward-looking information, please see item 1 of part 1 of the Company's annual report on form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2015, and its concurrent and quarterly reports furnished to or filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on forms 8-K and 10-Q.

Participating on the call this morning are Hank Henderson, the Company's Chief Executive Officer, and Jeff Williams, President. Now I would like to turn the call over to the Company's Chief Executive Officer, Hank Henderson.

Well, good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us.

As you saw in our press release, we did see a solid increase in revenue for our fourth quarter. While a portion of that did come from an increase in our average sales price of $634, we did see a gain in unit sales of 5.5% for this quarter over the same time last year. We were particularly pleased with this increase, as a good portion of that was among our older, higher volume dealerships where we had been seeing a decline; so that is very positive.

And Jeff is going to give some more specifics on that in just a moment. Additionally, that increase is noteworthy as we did so with more stringent underwriting as compared to the same time last year.

As we mentioned on previous calls, we rolled out our new underwriting system last October, and that has likely cost us a couple hundred sales per month. The fact that we were able to grow unit sales year over year with that in place makes it particularly satisfying, as we continue to have confidence that these increases were realized the right way, and we still have better overall quality for loans and not just more quantity.

Unfortunately, with the higher wholesales and repair expense the gross margin was down for the quarter, and our credit losses were up a couple of points. So the improved sales results did not all translate to better bottom line results.

So let me go ahead now and turn it over to Jeff to give you more detail on our recent results here.

Thank you, Hank.

Total revenues increased 12.5% to $155 million, and same store revenue is up 7.8%. Certainly pleased to see that our stores in the 10-plus year categories was up over 10%, stores in the five to 10-year category was up around 2%, and then revenues for stores less than five years old was up about 31% to $37 million for the quarter.

The overall average retail unit sold per month per lot for the quarter was 28.2, up from 28.1 and up from 25 sequentially. At the end of the quarter, 42, or 29% of our dealerships were from zero to five years old, 23, or 16% were in the five to 10-year category, and the remaining 78 were 10 years old or older.

Our 10-year plus lots produced 30.3 units sold per month per dealership for the quarter, compared to 28.9 for the prior year quarter and compared to 26.8 for the third quarter. Our lots in the five to 10-year category produced 27.4 units compared to 28.9 for the prior quarter and 25.7 for the third quarter.

And our lots in the less than five-year age category produced 24.6, compared to 25.4 for the fourth quarter of last year and 21.4 for the third quarter. As Hank mentioned, the average selling price increased $634, or 6.3% compared to the prior year, and increased $42, or about 0.4% sequentially.

The increase from the prior year relates to an increase in overall selling prices, as we improved the quality of our vehicles along with the productivity improvements we saw within older dealerships. Also, we're selling more trucks and SUVs which are in high demand, and for the most part carry higher selling prices.

We remain hopeful that at some point we will see overall decrease in wholesale prices, giving us an opportunity to buy a better, more affordable car for our customers as we move forward. But certainly purchase prices in our markets continue to be elevated, especially for trucks and SUVs. We currently anticipate some increase in overall sales prices out into the future, but we will try to minimize those increases and focus our efforts on keeping our payments affordable.

Our down payment percentage was 8.4% compared to 9% for the prior year. Collections as a percentage of average financed receivables was up to 16.8% from 16.7% for last year's fourth quarter.

Our average initial contract term was up to 29.7, compared to 28.3 months for the prior-year quarter. That's up 1.4 months and up from the third quarter's 29.3 months. The increase relates to the higher average selling price, and again through the productivity increases for our older dealerships.

Our weighted average contract term for the entire portfolio, including modifications, was 31.6 months, which was up from 30.2 at this time last year and up from 30.9 months sequentially. The weighted average age of the portfolio was 8.4 months at the end of the current quarter, which was flat with last year and down slightly from 8.6 at the end of the third quarter.

Due to the increasing selling price and for competitive reasons, our term lengths may continue to increase some into the future, but as always we're committed to minimizing any increases. We will always be committed to our goal of ensuring that the term loan and the useful life of the vehicle are in alignment, and we will put our customers in good vehicles.

Interest income was up $946,000 for the quarter, due to the $21 million increase in average finance receivables, and we did have one more day in this quarter than we did last year. The weighted average interest rate for all finance receivables was approximately 14.9%, which is flat with the prior year.

For the fourth quarter, our gross profit margin percentage was 38.7% of sales. That's down from 41.5% for the prior year quarter, and down sequentially from 40.3%.

The reduction relates to higher wholesale sales and losses and higher repair expenses, some of which are related to wholesales, prior losses under our Payment Protection Plan product, and the effect of selling a higher priced vehicle. Also, our continuing efforts to improve the quality of our inventory and improved inventory turns and efficiencies had a negative effect for the quarter that will benefit us as we move forward.

We have very aggressive targets in place for inventory quality, repair costs, and inventory turns and stale inventory, and expect to get the overall gross profit percentage back above 40% soon. When we look at all the efforts we put into finding the very best affordable vehicles for our customers, we pass a lot more cars than we buy and we repair these cars, merchandise, and then we support our two add-on products. We really need to get that gross margin percentage back up above 40%, and all efforts are in place to make that happen.

For the quarter, SG&A as a percentage of sales was 16.7%, compared to 17.2% for the prior-year quarter. The $2.1 million increase in overall SG&A dollars related primarily to a higher payroll cost and other incremental costs related to the growth in the average number of stores of seven, and infrastructure costs that support our growth.

Total expenses were down about $250,000 from the third quarter. We believe that we have a very lean but effective cost structure. We will continue to leverage the investments we've made as we move forward.

At the same time, we remain mindful of how important it is in this high-touch business to ensure the infrastructure is solid and will support our customers before and after the sale in an effective manner. Through the current quarter, net charge-offs as a percentage of average finance receivables was 9%. That's up from 7.8% for the prior-year quarter.

The increase resulted from an increase in frequency of losses, which was about an 80-basis point effect, together with an increase in the severity of losses, about a 40-basis point effect. Once again, the higher severity of losses resulted from lower wholesale values at repo.

Our wholesale value recovery rates continue to come under significant pressure. Our recovery rates for the fourth quarter were close to 23%, which is up slightly sequentially from 22%, but still historically low and well below what we saw during the low point of 2010. Additionally, we did repossess more vehicles, and those cars that we did take back were worth less. Coupes and sedans and basic cars are not bringing much money at the wholesale market.

The increase in losses was more concentrated in our older dealerships due to a couple of things. Number one, we believe that the competitive landscape was, believe it or not, even more intense this year during income tax refund time when more people might qualify for car loans. We can speculate that some lenders were working hard to hit volume goals.

Additionally in hindsight, last year we may have been a little too optimistic that we could save accounts by the end of tax season, and this year we were more conservative with our approach. And number two, at this time last year we were in the depths of our software conversion, which did result in some delays in having visibility, which resulted in losses shifting to the first quarter of this year.

On a positive note, we did finish the year with our lowest 30-plus delinquencies, about 3% in the last five years. We've got about $11 million less in 30-plus at the end of April than we had at this time last year. Our delinquencies in less than 30-day categories were at historical low points at just over 10% compared to 15% this time last year. That's about $21 million less.

Now some of that does relate to the fact that the quarter end of the year ended on a Saturday. So there is a day of week effect there, but still a big reduction in all delinquency categories. Lower delinquencies combined with a higher quality car should set us up for better credit results down the line.

What happens on the competitive side is hard to guess, as competitive pressures both at the point of sale and at the default point continue to be very high. Hank will get into a few more details and discuss expectations on credit losses in a minute.

Principal collections as a percentage of finance receivables, again, 16.8% compared to 16.7% for the quarter. So a good improvement there. That increase mostly related to lower delinquencies, better tax time collections this year, the extra day, offset by an increase in the average term length.

The average percentage of accounts receivable current for the quarter was 80.5%. That's up from 76.6% for the fourth quarter of 2015. We will continue with good, solid expense management, and we're very pleased with the leveraging we saw during the quarter.

Over the last 12 months we've added six new dealerships and increased finance receivables by $20 million, repurchased over $14 million in common stock, completed significant infrastructure investments, all with about a $5 million increase in debt. We did pay down about $15 million of debt during our fourth quarter. At April 30, 2016, our total debt was right at $108 million. We did repurchase 151,000 shares for $3.7 million during the quarter. Our current debt to equity ratio is 47.2%, and debt to finance receivables ratio is 24.7%, an extremely healthy balance sheet.

We did have $61 million in additional availability under our revolving credit facilities at the end of the quarter. As we mentioned in our press release, we have decided to increase the interest rate we charge on our retail installment contracts to 16.5% from 15%. We had been studying this issue for sometime now, and we were hopeful that credit losses would trend back down as competition became more rational. That has not happened, and as a result, we need to make the adjustment to support the business and continue -- to serve our customers in the manner they deserve.

Also, as mentioned in the press release, we did close four dealerships toward the end of the year; two in Texas, one in Arkansas, and one in Oklahoma. Accounts have been transferred to nearby dealerships and will be serviced at a high level. These were smaller dealerships with limited growth opportunities.

And one final note, as we mentioned on our last call, the CFPD did finish their field work for the review of our compliance management system at the end of February. As is consistent with what we reported last quarter, they have not notified us of any material issues with our compliance management system, which would require us to significantly change the operational processes.

Now I'll turn it back over to Hank.

All right. Thanks, Jeff.

The competition was particularly fierce in the recent tax refund time months. We know this was a contributing factor to our increased credit losses. A very positive point with regard to our collections, as Jeff has already mentioned, is that we did end the year with our 30-plus delinquencies at the lowest point they have been in over five years.

We finished at 3% on April 30 as compared to 5.8% for the same time last year. Those credit losses had been on the rise for sometime. We've stepped up our efforts in collections in every regard throughout the year.

We led increased trainings and turnover, reduction with our accounts reps, better reporting, monitoring, and increased oversight. That is a very significant accomplishment, and we are seeing some positive results from that so far in our current month.

With these positive results and delinquencies, combined with our improvements in underwriting and inventory, we do expect to see improvements in our credit loss results going forward. I'm also pleased to say that we're in the process of getting our GPS system fully integrated into our own operational software, making it much more user-friendly and seamless, so we should see some increased efficiencies in the use of this tool, as well.

On our last call, we had announced we created the position of Field Operations Officer, naming Leon Walthall to that position. We also added the role of President for Jeff.

And additionally during this last quarter, we did make some changes and did some restructuring at our regional VP level. All of those are now fully in place in their new positions, and throughout this past quarter each of these individuals has gotten their feet under them in their new roles very quickly and they are all making a positive difference.

Just as we greatly stepped up our focus and improved our results with collections throughout this past year, we likewise have put significantly increased focus on our repair expense. During this past quarter, we rolled out some new reporting that gives our area operations managers greatly improved visibility on every expense on a daily basis so that we can be much more aware and responsive to any issues in that area.

The improvements in repair expenses can really move the needle for us in a big way. Being tight with every penny and being a low-cost operator has long been a very big part of our culture, and we think we may have lost a little bit of that along the way as we got bigger. Everyone here is committed to revitalizing that very important aspect of who we are and how we got where we are. And we are confident that we will see some positive results throughout this upcoming year in this area.

This past year, we did open six new dealerships, closed four. So that does put us at a total of 143 today. Our plan is to get our profitability back to a level that's much more in line with our capability, provide our future general managers best training possible as they are getting additional experience under their belt, and then we'll return to opening new stores.

Well, that concludes our prepared remarks. And we would now like to move on to your questions. So operator?

(Operator Instructions)

Our first question comes from the line of JR Bizzell from Stephens, Inc. Your question, please?

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions.

Good morning, JR.

Looking at the revenue, it came in ahead of expectations and you saw nice pick up. And I think, Hank, you even referenced it was the older stores. Just wondering there, you saw a nice cars per month increase.

Just wondering what changes you saw there, what trends you continue to see? And I know you said the very competitive nature of that older store getting the higher end customer leaving for the auto dealerships, just wondering even with that pressure, what you all did to increase sales sequentially at the older stores?

Well, I think there were several things. One, and we certainly talked about it on our last call, I think we have made some changes with our inventory throughout this past year. Jeff mentioned it in his comments earlier.

We've really put a lot of focus on better inventory and having the right mix, and we were up a little bit with our trucks and SUVs, and so that certainly made a difference. And truthfully, with a lot of these older stores, these are some managers that have been around a long time, have a certain way of doing things.

I think there's been an education period. They have had to adapt, and we do think through this past year a lot of our learning in how we have to be a better retailer of cars and more competitive in that regard and more aggressive when it comes to keeping our good customers and focusing on that repeat business. So I think all of those things combined made a positive difference.

Great. And then building on the interest rate change that you all are going to implement, and I don't know when it was implemented. I'm guessing it started the most recent quarter.

Building on that, did you test that in the markets? I'm sure you did.

Then secondly, what are your expectations on volumes? Do you think it will affect the volumes that you're seeing trending up that we saw in this last quarter?

We're going to implement that change at the end of May. Next week that change will go into effect. And we've been looking at that issue for quite a while now.

We are aware that most of our competition is 20% or higher on that interest rate. We've been below market for a while because we felt like our credit losses supported that lower rate.

So we've been looking at this for quite sometime, and at the end of the day this increase still keeps us below market to reward our better customers. And from a profitability standpoint and giving us the ability to keep investing in the business and supporting our customers, we felt like at this point we needed to make a slight adjustment to that rate.

And your question regarding the volumes, obviously when you make a change like this we involve our managers, get a lot of feedback, and there doesn't seem to be any concern whatsoever that this is going to affect volumes. Because as Jeff already pointed out, even with this increase we're still going to be well below market on these.

Great. And then last one for me, and speaking to the wholesale environment, I know you saw a slight moderate uptick to the positive this quarter. Just wondering about your all's comfort level around that, how you all are thinking about it for the remainder of calendar year 2016, and then maybe some anecdotes that maybe you're hearing from your wholesale employees.

Our expectations are it's not going to get any better. We're working hard to make sure we do everything we can so it doesn't get any worse. And I think that starts with buying a better car and taking care of our customers after the sale in the best way possible.

So it really starts with buying a good quality car on that front end, and all the efforts we've had recently in place to get inventory where it needs to be should benefit us all the way through to the point the cars that we do have to take back should hold their value. And we're not expecting to lose anymore ground, but we're certainly not expecting anything positive to happen there either.

Great. Thanks for the detail. I appreciate you all taking my questions.

Thank you, JR.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Hecht from Jefferies. Your question, please.

Good morning. Thanks very much.

So you attributed a few different things to the margins being under pressure, and you cited the fact that you're really hopeful to get it back above 40%. I'm just thinking, what near-term things can you implement and how quickly do those have an effect to get you back to 40% margins?

Well, to the two big things, and one as we've mentioned is certainly increased focus on the repair expense. That's a big piece of it.

And also lower credit losses. We're seeing in the current month we're in, we're seeing some positive results from our lower delinquencies and having fewer wholesales of the mix. So that helps with the margin as well.

And then just looking at stale inventory and setting some inventory turns expectations, a lot of indirect costs within cost of sales is shuffling cars around and getting cars repaired and working with repair shops. And we're really focused on more inventory turns and better quality, which should help us in a number of ways.

Just a few months ago we aggressively changed our internal policies with regard to our inventories and how long we're going to allow those to sit before they are shuffled around, and we've already seen some benefit from that. That probably also helps with the sales as well.

Fresh inventory does make a difference. We're in small towns and people drive by every day. We would like to keep that turning.

Okay. And then second question is if I heard you right the inventory cost is a little higher than you want it. Sounded like some of that was related to just repair fees and so forth.

But then at the same time, your repo or your recovery rate on repos is low. I wonder if you could juxtapose the difference there on the front end pricing versus the back end recovery rates? And what happens in the middle, and what can you do to try to take advantage of lower inventory costs but also capture better recovery rates?

It's kind of the worst -- well, on our supply side right now with all the financing that's available on those, that niche is a lot more desirable right now. And so we do see more of the new car dealers hanging on to some of those because they have some sources to get some of those financed now that they didn't a few years back.

And then the other end of the spectrum was the much cheaper cars, that market below us, and certainly cars are going to have some more mechanical problems and all of that. It's also impacted because now that people can drive a nicer car, there's a much less demand for those rough low end cars. And so that end has gone down.

So we're really dealing with it on both sides. As I mentioned, part of the increase also is just as we try to be more selective in what we buy and also try to make sure that we're having a better mix of our trucks and SUVs, that those are in higher demand and those push it up as well.

That's all great color. Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Rowan from Janney. Your question, please?

Good morning.

Good morning.

Just to go over, you talked a lot about the decline in delinquencies, but when I look at the overall contract term including modifications, it's up quite a bit. I'm curious how much modifications affected the delinquency level.

Modifications were up a little bit this year's fourth quarter compared to last, which is not a bad thing. That means that we're working with people on tax time payments and getting them right on some accounts.

But it was up just a little bit this year compared to last. Again, that should not be a negative as we go forward because those folks are in working with us and getting those contracts back current.

Now, when you modify an account, is it considered a TDR and then reserved at a higher level?

No, we're not -- all we're doing is maybe extending a little bit of time on the contract. There's no expectation that we'll collect any less.

In fact, the modification is done so that the customer can stay in that car and get back current with us. So there's no TDR treatment on that.

Okay. And then before you repossess a car, are you doing any field calls?

Pardon?

Do you do any field calls before you repossess a car on a delinquent account?

Yes, we do.

You are doing field calls. And then just last on the payments, so you're raising the interest rate, the duration's up. I'm curious, from the customer's standpoint how that affects the monthly payment.

Obviously you'll make more money because you're earning a higher interest rate over a longer tenure. But how does that affect the point of sale and the monthly payment that the consumer is expected to make?

It's about $10 a month more on a payment.

Okay, and you don't think that will affect your volume?

Well, no. With the competitive market out there, there's been a recent competitor indirect that's decided to wind down their business, and we have to think that everybody's pricing is going to have to go up a little bit at some point.

This should not be a negative. Our product offering is looking better and better each day, and as competition adjusts and maybe we look even better than that, but we don't think the $10 a month is going to be a big negative for us compared to the competitive offerings.

Okay. That's all I had. Thank you.

Thanks, John.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Hollenden from Sidoti. Your question, please?

Hi, thanks for taking my call. Can you expand on your press release comments? What specific terms are competitors offering that are enticing some of your good customers to default?

I would say in general it's the length. In some cases we're seeing some of the same type vehicles that we would finance out there for 30 months getting put on terms with interest rates in excess of 20% and over 60 months on the financing. We just don't feel like that's practical.

It's enticing because it's in the way the math works out, they can get a little bit lower payment. And also in some cases, it might be a vehicle that's a little bit newer than what they have been able to buy before. But when we see that financing going 60 and 67 months and that sort of thing, we just don't feel like that's practical for those vehicles.

So in your experience, how long can these unsustainable deal structures offered by our competitors go on for?

Well, apparently my experience isn't adequate enough because I would have thought it would have already seen more of a hiccup. But I think they are just -- as these things age, we're going to see more back.

I will tell you anecdotally going back to a question I think JR asked earlier about the sales. When I speak with some of our managers that have been around a long time, and we did see a bit of a sales pickup, I think some of those -- what I'm hearing, and again, this is anecdotal and not a huge part of it, but they are hearing customers are coming back to us because they recognize that face-to-face relationship right there.

We're dealing with people in many cases where they are living paycheck to paycheck, and there will be events, job changes, repair issues, virtual issues, so forth. They could realize there is a lot of benefit in having someone go sit down with face to face and work them through this so they can keep their car.

We might be seeing a few customers return to us. That's the sentiment of some of our older managers.

I think the first time we mentioned indirect lenders as competition was maybe July of 2012. That's when it first started. Then it ramped up after that.

So we're just now getting to the point where some of those deals might start showing some knocks or maybe already have. We've not seen a cycle like this before with these long terms way down in our markets.

I would add too, I think there was one component I left off when you asked about these deals. Again, we just had our big year meeting that we do every year in May.

We had our managers in and speaking with them, and a lot of them saw some payoffs from some new car dealers where they are aware that there is negative equity being stacked on some of these notes in addition. So I would add that on top of my earlier comments. That's something we do not do.

We don't even when we want to save a great customer all that we'll find another way, because we just don't believe that when we're selling used cars that stacking negative equity on these loans is a wise thing to do. But right now it appears to be a common practice with some of the financing that's going on out there.

Thanks for the color. Just one final question.

You closed four smaller dealerships in the quarter. Do you plan on closing additional dealerships in the current environment?

I will tell you we do have a few on the watch list. We don't have any planned for that right now. Every store out there, we've got plans in place to make them profitable, but this is obviously -- any time you're growing a company something that we have to review.

Three of the four stores that were closed had been small satellite locations. They were in close proximity to existing stores.

They didn't really have the capacity to, we didn't feel like, to ever get to the volume levels that we would really like. We felt it was more efficient to merge those in that they were located close to some existing stores.

All right. Thanks.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions)

Our next question comes from the line of Nima Karamlou from BlackVault. Your question, please?

Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to get some color on the store closings. I noticed that some of them were in some areas where there's a lot of back-fall from the oil crisis that has happened.

How much of that crisis is affecting net charge-offs? Was it a regional thing, or was it store-wide across all of your stores?

We've seen maybe just a little bit of a negative effect in the oil area. That was not the main reason for these closings. We've had some chronic issues with performance, and these were such size being smaller that we really didn't see much long-term potential there.

But we have seen some slight upticks in certain areas. It may be indirectly related to the oil situation, but that was not the main driver of these closings.

All right, thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Samir Patel from Askeladden Capital. Your question, please?

Howdy. So first as a hypothetical, let's say that the current competitive environment in sub-prime credit is the new normal until the end of time. If that were to be the case, what returns on equity do you think you can maintain?

And can you bridge me to how you get there? I know there's a lot of different drivers, lower profitability between credit losses and repair costs and fixed cost leverage and interest rates and so on, and I want to make sure that I'm understanding the relative impact of each.

If this environment doesn't change and this is the new normal, then we certainly feel like we have room for a few points on gross margin and a few points on credit losses, and we wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than a 10% return on equity. And that's with no changes in the industry and us just getting better internally.

We do still feel strongly that we will get some relief. We don't expect credit losses to go back to 2010 levels at 20%, but we're really pushing hard to be heading that direction and maybe we'll get halfway back there.

If we do a better job with the blocking and tackling internally, we think there's a real reason for us to exist in these small towns. Our customers need us and we should certainly be earning a 10% return on equity as a minimum.

Got you. Second, on the interest rate move from 15% to 16.5%, can you remind me why you all charge a fixed rate rather than some kind of variable credit scoring approach?

Also on that, had I know you have a lot of business with repeat customers. Do they get discounts or anything, or is it just 100% fixed, everyone pays the same?

It is 100% fixed across the board. That's how we've always done it. It does get very, very difficult with our market to really begin to get that sophisticated with the store, and we feel like it's a fair offering. And again, the fact that all the deals we do are below market, we feel like it's a fair, reasonable rate.

Okay. Got it. If I could sneak in just one more.

Jeff, I think last time we spoke you were seeing positive initial results with moving for your ad spend from legacy media to digital. Any update on that?

No, it continues in process. I think we're still learning -- it's new to us so that's a good question because we just had that conversation here yesterday. One of the things we do see that we like about it is you get a lot more feedback and information of how our commercials are actually viewed and our ads are seen and the clicks and all that.

I think over time it will help us more efficiently measure the bang for our buck. It's always been a problem with traditional advertising in the past, is really you have a difficult time sometimes quantifying the difference that, that makes. Not really -- can't tell early in the process, but I do think over time we're going to gain a lot of efficiencies with it.

In this business the biggest factor in sales success is how you react to our customer on your dealership. We've got a lot of good things in place to track traffic and repeat customers and getting that inventory mix where it needs to be.

There's a lot of things going into sales execution at the lot level to supplement the advertising, but I think the current quarter results are indicative of there's no shortage in demand for what Car-Mart does out there on the sales side and continues to tweak things as we go forward. A big part of our success on sales is that execution at the point that customers on our dealerships looking for transportation.

Along with it, and hopefully we'll be able to get a little smarter how we use our digital media, I think it does provide a little more opportunity for the type of ads that you can do for a little bit more education of the customers out there. And I think there's a cycle that we'll go through, and this was, again, the sentiment of a lot of our tenured managers, that there's an education going on out there with the customer base. Many that have signed up for these very long-term deals without a local presence to really go to.

I think they are beginning to realize it may not have been quite as attractive a deal as they thought. So I think we're all ready to cycle through some of that and get some work estimates back.

Got you. One final question. Sorry, kind of circling back to the second one, do you actually see any difference in delinquency rates or charge-offs between repeat customers and kind of de novo customers?

Yes, we do. There's certainly a better credit performance from repeat customers. We know them and they have had some experience with us, so there's certainly a nice benefit on the credit loss side from a repeat customer versus a first-time customer.

It shows up certainly, and this is something throughout the years as we're able to roll back in the better customers, we do see some significantly lower losses on some of our older stores with the more tenured managers. And of course they get experience and better customer service and all that.

But there is a big benefit from rolling those back in. We also feel like it's one of the greatest ways we could measure our own performance when people want to come back to us.

That's about a quarter of your business, right? Repeat customers?

A little higher than that, actually. Measured as a percentage of sales, it's closer to the 40% range I'd say.

Okay. All right. Well, thanks for the color, you all. Really appreciate it.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. And this does conclude the question-and-answer session of today's program. I would like to hand the program back to Hank Henderson.

All right. Well, we thank you all for joining us today. We thank you for your questions.

We will get back to work and hopefully we're going to see some better results next time we talk. You all have a great day. Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.