車美仕 (KMX) 2016 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning.

My name is Brent, and I will be your conference operator today.

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the CarMax fourth-quarter earnings release conference call.

(Operator Instructions)

I would now like to turn the call over to Katharine Kenny, Vice President, Investor Relations.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning.

Thanks for joining our fourth-quarter and year-end earnings conference call.

On the call with me today are Tom Folliard, our CEO; Bill Nash, our President; and Tom Reedy, our Executive Vice President and CFO.

Before we begin, let me remind you that our statements today regarding the Company's future business plans, prospects and financial performance are forward-looking statements that we make pursuant to the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

These statements are based on management's current knowledge and assumptions about future events, that involve risks and uncertainties, that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations.

In providing projections and other forward-looking statements, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update them.

For additional information on important factors that could affect these expectations, please see the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended February 28, 2015, with the SEC, and we will be filing our most recent 10-K shortly.

As always, I hope you will all remember to ask only one question and a follow-up before getting back in the queue, give everyone a chance to ask a question.

Thank you.

Tom?

Thank you, Katherine.

Good morning, everyone, thanks for joining us.

We had a very solid year in FY16, where total revenues grew to more than $15 billion and we sold over 1 million vehicles total, both in retail and wholesale, for the first time ever.

About 620,000 used cars, and about 395,000 wholesale cars, while also delivering double-digit EPS growth for the year.

Some key drivers for the year.

Used unit comps increased by 2.4%.

Total used units grew a little over 6.5%.

Wholesale units grew by 4.9%.

CAF income up 6.7% to more than $392 million.

Net income for FY16, up 4.4% to $623 million, and EPS, up 11% to $3.03.

Proceeds from our legal settlement benefited our FY15 net income by $12.9 million, or $0.06 a share.

Our data for the year indicates that for calendar year 2015, we increased our share of the zero to 10-year-old used vehicles by approximately 1%.

And we continue to focus on returning value to our shareholders through our stock repurchase program.

During the year, we bought back 16.3 million shares, at a cost of $971 million.

For the fourth quarter, used unit comps increased by 0.7%, driven by an improvement in conversion, and total used units grew by 4%.

Our total web traffic increased by 11%.

Total wholesale units, up 2.3%.

CAF quarterly income grew by 2.2%, to $92 million.

Net income for the fourth quarter declined by 1.5% to $141 million, and EPS rose 6% to $0.71 a share.

Remember that the impairment-related charge in this quarter reduced our net income by $5.2 million, or $0.03 a share, while in the previous year's fourth quarter, net income was increased by the adjustment to capitalized interest expense of $4.2 million, or $0.02 a share.

I'll now turn it over to Tom Reedy to give you some details around CAF.

Tom?

Thanks, Tom.

Good morning, everybody.

As Tom mentioned CAF income grew by 2% compared to the fourth quarter of FY15.

And average managed receivables grew by 14% to $9.5 billion.

For loans originated during the quarter, the weighted average contract rate charged to customers was 7.5%, up from 7.2% in last year's fourth quarter.

Total interest margin declined to 5.9% of average managed receivables, compared to 6.3% in the fourth quarter last year, and 6% last quarter.

For the quarter, charge-offs and the loss provision were in line with our expectations.

The year-over-year increase in loss provision reflects both the favorability we commented on in last year's fourth quarter, and the growth in receivables.

Our ending allowance for loan losses at $95 million was 0.99% of managed receivables, compared to 0.97% in last year's fourth quarter.

CAF net penetration was 41.7%, compared to 40.9% in last year's fourth quarter.

This increase reflects the mix of applications in the stores, where we continued to see growth at the higher end of the credit spectrum, and less volume at the lower end.

Net loan dollars originated in the quarter rose 7% year-over-year to $1.3 billion.

That's due to a combination of growth in CarMax sales, and our higher penetration at CAF.

Percent of CAF penetration attributable to our subprime test was similar to last year, 0.7% versus 0.6% of the sales in the prior year.

As mentioned in the press release, we are comfortable and plan to continue to originate these loans at the same pace, a targeted volume of 5% at CarMax's overall Tier 3 sales.

Tier 3 financing as a percent of sales was 15.1%, compared to 17% in the fourth quarter of FY15, largely due to the reduced volume of lower credit applications I mentioned earlier.

In Q4, we continue to experience a year-over-year decline in the number of credit applications across the lower end of the credit spectrum, and moderate growth at the high end.

During the fourth quarter, we repurchased 3 million shares for about $156 million.

For the fiscal year, as Tom said, we repurchased 16.3 million shares, and since inception of the program, we've repurchased 46.4 million shares.

At the end of FY16, we had $1.4 billion remaining under the current authorization.

Now, I'll turn the call over to Bill.

Thanks, Tom.

Good morning, everyone.

As a percentage of our sales mix this quarter, zero to 4-year-old vehicles increased to approximately 77%, compared to 75% in the fourth quarter of last year.

Midsize, large SUVs and trucks as a percentage of sales were flat, approximately 24% in both this year and last year's fourth quarter, which is up slightly from 23% in the third quarter.

SG&A for the fourth quarter increased about 1% to $334 million.

This growth reflects the 10%, or 15-store increase in our store base since the beginning of the fourth quarter of last year, largely offset by a decrease of $14 million, or $97 per unit in share-based compensation expense.

During the fourth quarter, we opened five stores.

Three were in new markets.

Two in Boston, and one in Peoria, Illinois.

We also opened our sixth store in Atlanta, and a third store in St.

Louis.

In the first quarter, we expect to open two new stores in new markets, Springfield, Illinois, and our first store in San Francisco.

Before I turn it back over to Tom, I want to take a minute to talk about how it's an exciting time for CarMax.

Looking back over the past 23 years, we couldn't be more proud of the progress that we've made.

Our store base has grown to 158 stores, and as Tom mentioned earlier, we sold over 1 million vehicles this fiscal year for the first time ever.

Our customers continue to give us high marks for excellent customer service, and we have a world-class culture.

We continue to execute our growth plan, and currently plan to open 15 stores in FY17, while also focusing on returning value to our shareholders through our share repurchase plan.

But we are never satisfied.

For those of that you have followed us for a long time, you know that this is the case.

For our customers, we have to be able to meet them where and how they want to do business.

Nearly 90% of our customers have visited one of our digital properties prior to their purchase, and by the end of FY16, over half of our total visits came from our mobile site or mobile applications.

We need to ensure that these customers receive the same superior customer experience online that they have always received in our store.

We are currently in the process of rolling out a new adaptive and more personalized website redesign, and we expect it will be fully rolled out by the end of this month.

We will also continue to test different components of the selling process online, to better understand our customers' needs.

We're also never satisfied with our execution.

We will continue to focus on becoming more efficient and reducing waste throughout the Company.

We will continue to equip our associates with the tools that they need to make their job easier.

Let me give you two quick examples of enhancements that we're developing.

One is a mobile appraisal platform.

Remember, we appraise more than 2 million vehicles a year, and this will help our buyers reduce our appraisal time, and increase accuracy.

Another example is an improved transportation system, that will help us realize efficiencies when moving the millions of vehicles that we ship annually.

It is this kind of continuous improvement that has driven our success in the past, and that will support our innovations in the future.

Tom?

Thanks very much, Bill and Tom.

And with that, we'll open it up for questions.

Operator?

(Operator Instructions)

Your first question comes from the line of Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer.

Please go ahead.

First off, Tom, congratulations on your retirement which is coming, and Bill, congratulations on the new appointment.

Thank you, Brian.

The question I have, I wanted to just talk about gross profit for a minute.

Clearly, that's been a big focus of investors, in light of what some of your competitors have been talking about, declining gross profits.

We look at the numbers, the results you report today, gross profit was down slightly.

I know, Tom, you're probably going to say it's noise with the $39 year on year.

I am.

Which you're right.

I answered that question first myself.

Yes.

What's your next question?

The bigger question is, if you look at the drivers of that, the puts and takes behind gross profit, have those changed at all?

And are you seeing any type of pressures out there, that maybe within your gross profit in the used vehicle space, that maybe reflective of some of the pressures that others are seeing, and you're handling those better?

I mean, I think it's, it's an overall inventory management process for us.

And I think it starts by having the right car in the right place at the right time.

And that allows us to be able to deliver an exceptional value to the customer.

And some of what I talked about last quarter of, we thought some big SUVs were a little expensive, so we didn't buy them.

We didn't buy as many.

That allows us to manage our margin very efficiently.

We transfer cars at customers' request.

It's about a third of our sales, so that allows us to turn our inventory quickly.

I think our turns help us manage our margins pretty well.

And it also allows us to continue to test the margin variability.

We're big enough now that we can test pockets and markets and different types of product all across the country, and learn a lot about price elasticity.

And then that's reflected in the ultimate margins that we achieve, and the sales that we get.

So I'm very pleased with the quarter and with the results, and a positive comp facing one of our tougher comparisons last year.

And I think we're going to get better at this as time goes along.

I think we're better at managing our inventory and our margins now than we were a few years ago.

And with continued use of external and internal data and training and development of the process, I think we'll just continue to get better at it.

I'm pretty pleased with the progress that we've made and the results we've been able to deliver.

Well, thank you.

I'll play by the rules and finish with one question.

Thank you very much.

Your next question comes from the line of Sharon Zackfia with William Blair.

Please go ahead.

I guess a question that we get asked a lot, so I'll throw it at you.

There seems to be some thought process that perhaps the new car dealers have figured out a way to be more aggressive on their gross profit per car targets, and make it up in some other part of their business, and therefore become more of a competitive threat to you by undercutting prices.

I'm just -- it's a pervasive thought on Wall Street at this point.

I'm just wondering if you have any commentary, any context you could give us on that?

Well, I think the biggest, the biggest thing to look at is just our results and our volumes.

During the quarter, our average store sold around 340 cars a month per store.

That's across the entire chain, including new stores.

If you look at used car sales, our used car sales compared to the -- I'm only going to use the public new car dealers as an example.

There are many more franchise dealers, as you know.

But we sold more used cars during the year than the next four competitors combined.

So I feel like our consumer offer is clearly resonating with consumers, and we're able to grow our business year after year.

We once again comped our stores by 2.5% for the full year, a very good number for a company of our size.

And I think given the choice, consumers still, after they shop around, pick us more often than not.

So I think the results speak for themselves.

If you look at franchise dealers total for the year, used car sales are up by 2% across all of franchise dealers.

And I think you have to look at it on a broader scale, and not just focused on the publicly-traded auto retailers, because they are a very small sliver of used car sales in the US.

That's perfect.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Scot Ciccarelli with RBC Capital Markets.

Please go ahead.

Looking for an opinion.

So why do you think you are seeing a dip in credit apps at the low end of the spectrum?

Scot, I'm not sure that we really know, but I'm not sure that's not good for us.

If you look at our mix of sales in Tier 3 in this quarter, we were down 2 points.

So we're 17% of our sales last year's fourth quarter, 15% this year's fourth quarter.

As you know, that's a less profitable slice of business for us.

It's one that we are very comfortable being in, one that I have said in the past I think we provide the best possible deal for customers in that credit segment, and we are very happy to be able to deliver a great consumer experience and a high quality car to those customers.

But if you looked at a base from which to grow your business, if you had a little higher credit profile, it's not the worst thing.

You've been around long enough to know that percent of sales for us was at one point nonexistent.

And it's gone from 2% to I think as high in one year as --19% might have been our highest full year.

So we're down a couple points for the year.

You could argue that loss of credit apps, volume of apps hurts comps by a little bit, which it does, but it doesn't hurt profits by as much as it hurts the comp.

So we continue to build our brand.

We continue to advertise to get any consumer to want to come to CarMax.

But it's not that bad if it shifts a couple of points in the other direction.

But in terms of explaining the volume of applications, it's very difficult to do.

Just for context, is the Tier 2 guys still dipping down?

That was something that you had suggested previously, the Tier 2 guys were scooping up some of the stuff that would historically have fallen into the Tier 3 bucket.

Scot, I think that's -- I would say that we continue to see some pretty aggressive behavior from our Tier 2 lenders, and that combined with the lower number of low credit applications, both of those impact Tier 3's ability to get customers, right?

The by-product of that is what they are seeing might be a little bit less than what they are seeing before.

Tier 2, by the way, is down slightly this quarter year-over-year, as well.

And as you saw, CAF was up and other, meaning people were bringing their own financing to the table, was up a couple of points also.

That just goes, falls right in line with the fact that we're seeing a higher credit quality through the door, that other is up even more than CAF.

I think, Scot, some of the shifting you're referring to is a reflection of our partners who are fantastic partners, getting more and more experience with the CarMax origination channel, and being more comfortable with how they originate.

So that's nothing but good for us.

All right.

Thanks a lot.

Your next question comes from the line of Craig Kennison with Baird.

Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question as well.

It's on the wholesale business.

Wholesale volume growth decelerated to about 3%, 2% or 3%.

Are you seeing any impact at all from some of these emerging peer-to-peer remarketing channels, or is there another dynamic at play?

I don't know.

I have said and it has been true over time that I think wholesale will grow approximately with sales over time, but it would never be exactly attached.

If you look at it over a multi-year window, that has been true.

It's very difficult to evaluate where -- we had a buy rate of around 30% for the quarter.

So that's about, that's as high as it gets for us, and we're very pleased with that.

Some of the peer-to-peer stuff you're referring to are still very, very small, particularly compared to our size, and then vary only in a few markets.

So we haven't seen any impact of any statistical significance that we could attribute directly.

And as a follow-up to Bill, you mentioned the mobile appraisal platform you're piloting, or starting soon.

Do you think that will drive volume at wholesale, as well?

The intention of the website isn't necessarily to drive wholesale volume, other than highlight the appraisal process.

If we highlight the appraisal process, inherently that will end up driving some wholesale, some wholesale traffic.

Great.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Fassler with Goldman Sachs.

Please go ahead.

Thanks a lot, and good morning.

I want to ask you about the performance of your new stores.

I know that our ability to measure them is not perfect.

But it seems like the volume productivity per unit for the vintage that's open over the past year is down.

Is there something about timing that would make a difference?

Is there something about the markets that they are entering that would make a difference?

It just seems like any way you slice that, the used vehicle units per average new opening are a bit lower than they have been in years past.

Remember, we have small format stores mixed in there too, which are a fraction of what some of our biggest stores are.

And also as a percent of our opening -- as a percent of our stores that we're opening each year, the last few years, that number is actually going down, because we've been consistent at that 14, 15 number.

This year, the amount of stores we opened as a percentage of the base has gone down.

So you would expect the percentage of units delivered from the new stores to go down, unless we increase the number of stores that we build, and we change the profile of the size.

What I would tell you is that we're continuing to open stores, because they are delivering a great return.

And remember that we have very long models for sales.

30-plus years.

And we have some stores -- we have a whole batch of stores now that are less than five years old, and are still on their growth curve.

So we're pleased with the performance of the new stores.

That's why we keep opening them, and we think they are delivering a great return.

But mathematically, it's not going to deliver as much to the total because it's less of the base.

Some of our big old stores are very big.

I guess I would follow up by saying that even if you adjust for store size, which we do, and you adjust for the role that newer stores have in the mix as a percent of the base, you do all the math, it looks like this last vintage from a unit perspective was a little off.

So if you think about some of the new markets like Boston, and you just tell us what you see, is the unit count in like-sized stores different from it had been?

And if you think the trajectory in some of those markets is going to be different, why would that be the case?

Well, I haven't looked at -- we look at it -- when we build a store, do we think it's on pace to deliver a great return, and we're comfortable with the stores we've been building.

Boston has been open for four or five months.

We would never make any determination on any market after four or five months, having done this for 23 years.

I can tell you we're pleased with the openings, and that's why we keep building them.

Got it.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of James Albertine with Stifel.

Please go ahead.

Great.

Thanks for taking the question, as well.

I wanted to understand -- I don't think I heard a comment about it, apologies if I missed it.

A comment around traffic for the quarter, and what I'm trying to get at here, as your online traffic grows, how do you think that impacts consumers' decision to visit stores or multiple stores?

And do you think -- in effect, there could be some cannibalization going on as it relates to that?

Thanks.

Well, there's -- I didn't mention traffic specifically.

I did mention that our comps for the quarter were driven by conversion.

So our traffic through the door was down slightly.

And our traffic -- and our conversion was up slightly, delivering a 0.7 comp for the quarter.

In terms of the goal of the website, and the goal of driving traffic, it's two-fold.

One is to drive just raw traffic.

And the other one is to improve the likelihood of the traffic that shows up to buy a car.

So if a customer, as Bill mentioned, if a customer wants to do more of the process from home, they have those tools available on our website.

They can be more prepared when they show up.

To be honest to you, it doesn't matter to us whether we get a few less customers who are a lot more likely to buy, or more customers that are just as equally likely to buy.

So it's very difficult to measure that.

But it's a multi-faceted goal with the website.

People are doing a lot of research online.

There's a lot of data out there that's telling you people are visiting less stores than they used to, before they buy a car.

So it's really, really important that our website provides a great education for the customer, and when they show up, they are more likely to buy.

So that's the goal of the website, is to educate and then to deliver customers to the store.

And hopefully they are more likely to buy.

I appreciate that color.

If I may, just a follow-up on that topic, do you envision a point at which the entire transaction will be possible online?

And as it relates to that, is there anything that you're seeing either among competitors or among your own consumers, and what they are telling you they desire, that would accelerate spending around online versus your anticipated spending, maybe a quarter or a few quarters ago?

Thanks.

Well, Bill mentioned, Bill mentioned enhancements to the website, and continuing to improve our mobile experience for our customer.

So if you look at where we're spending our dollars, there's no doubt, it's shifting towards mobile.

It's shifting towards the website, because that's where our customers are.

That's where we need to make sure that we meet them, however they want to be met.

And we want to make sure that they have the capabilities to do parts of the transaction, or all of the transaction online.

I will tell you that the average customer at CarMax has a trade-in.

The average customer at CarMax needs a loan, has to go through a finance process.

Sometimes has negative equity.

And it's not, it's not as easy to do a $20,000 transaction that is multi-faceted, which often times includes appraising the car that they are driving, and do the entire transaction online.

I'm not saying that we won't do that, and we won't have those capabilities.

But that's a sliver of the customers that we actually deal with.

And what we're really, really good at in our stores is helping people find the right car that they need, in the budget that they can afford, matching them up with the right credit offer, making sure we give them a fair offer for their trade-in, which almost always requires looking at the car, and making a fair offer after you've assessed its condition.

So we are going to continue to drive towards giving the consumer more and more capability to do whatever they want to do online.

And it may someday include consummating the whole transaction.

But there's a large segment of customers who really can't do the whole transaction online, due to those other pieces that I mentioned.

That's great color, as always.

Thanks so much.

I'll get back in queue.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Montani with Evercore ISI.

Just wanted to ask about the comp size things and what it is maybe that you're seeing out there that can help the comps to continue to sequentially accelerate.

When you think about the 0.7, it's definitely better than what we were looking for.

It's encouraging, but do we need more used car price declines from Manheim, or how should we think about the leverage that is in place to get to 4%-plus?

Again, that's a -- there are multiple things that go into stores comping and the comp base.

Remember, we continue to build stores back into existing markets, which hurts comps.

We continue to, as Bill mentioned, we continue to invest in our website, to drive more customers to our store.

We continue to advertise to build our brand.

I feel like everything that we do as a Company, working on efficiencies, trying to lower our costs, trying to keep our prices competitive, will deliver comps over a long period of time.

I think we've shown the ability to grow a very big base of business over a very long period of time.

And I expect to be able to do that in the future.

But there isn't really one button that you push to drive comps.

I talked earlier about margin management and inventory management, having the right car in the right place at the right time.

All of those things contribute to comps.

Those are things that we're all -- that we're focused on as a Company to continue to improve.

Okay.

And just in terms of the quarter where we saw the GPUs come down a little bit, but the comps accelerate a bit, how should we think about that trade-off then going forward?

How would you describe the fourth quarter on those two metrics, and the balance thereof?

As I -- with the first question, we've managed our margins pretty consistently over a period of time.

I think the margins were down $39-ish for the quarter, year over year.

That's within our level of ability to manage.

So I've always said we would, that we would try to do as much price testing as we can, and we try to balance margin and sales, and we're pretty pleased with the result for the quarter.

But that's how we'll continue to look at it going forward.

All right.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Brett Hoselton with KeyBanc.

Please go ahead.

Good morning, Tom and Bill, Katharine.

And thank you very much -- congratulations on your retirement and Bill, your promotion.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brett.

I want to ask you about gross profit per unit.

So at my family's dealerships, we're going to do over 5,000 used cars this year.

I can tell you if you picked up the phone and you called anybody at our dealerships today, they would look forward to, or be very pleased if the Manheim index went down.

They would be very pleased, because that means their costs of goods sold would go down.

Therefore, the gross profit would likely go up, because the spread between new car prices and used car prices would increase.

And their volume would go up, because of simple price elasticity of demand.

And so higher gross profit, higher volume equals better total gross profit.

That is a simple idea, simple argument, that for some reason I'm not --

Anyway, my question to you is the only thing that argues against that is that if I look back at your results historically, it appears as though during periods of time when gross -- or when the Manheim index inflected somewhat, your gross profit per unit actually went down a little bit, which is counter to what happens at our dealerships.

And I'm wondering, do you have any idea -- first of all, what's your sense of what's going to happen to your gross profit per unit and your volume when or if the Manheim index goes down?

Secondly, can you explain what appears at least in my mind to be a bit of an anomaly that took place in that -- before the last downturn?

I'm not really sure where you ended up there, but our margin--

Let me, let me simplify it.

Our margin dollars have been very consistent.

When the Manheim index goes down and we can buy cars cheaper, we want to give our customers a better deal.

So we have chosen, whether it's right or wrong, to not increase our margins when our prices go down, because we want to give our customers a better deal, and we're building our business over a very, very long period of time, and we want them to leave and say, wow, I got a really fantastic deal.

The next time I buy a car, I'm going to buy from CarMax.

You could argue with our motives, but when our ability to buy cars cheaper, we have chosen to pass those savings on to our customers, as opposed to taking it into margin.

That's just what we've done.

The biggest example I can give you is during the recession, our average retail price dropped by over $2000 in three months and we kept our margins and we bought cars cheaper over that period of time by that same amount, and we chose to keep our margins flat.

That's just the decision that we made.

I think we gave a whole bunch of customers a great deal, and hopefully made customers for life.

That's how we've chosen to run our business.

It doesn't mean that we'll do it exactly that way going forward, but when we have the ability to buy cars cheaper, we pass those savings on to our customers.

Okay.

So maybe the simple question would be if the Manheim index were to go down by 1%, 2%, 3%, 5% or something along those lines, you do not anticipate that your gross profit per unit is going to go down.

You probably would maintain that, and just simply increase your volumes, is that conceptually how I should think about that?

Every market condition has different variables, and we evaluate all of them and we try to make what's in the decisions that are in the best interest of our customers and our shareholders.

I can't tell you exactly what it's going to look like going forward.

You can look at our history.

We have watched depreciation go up, down.

Manheim index go all over the place, and we've managed our business very consistently through that time.

Each time we see a downturn or uptick or appreciation or depreciation, we evaluate all the variables, and we try to make the best decision we can.

So I guess maybe asking it a different way, you do not anticipate making less gross profit when the Manheim index goes down?

I just answered that question.

That's what I thought.

Okay.

Thank you so much, gentlemen.

Your next question comes from the line of Rod Lache with Deutsche Bank.

Please go ahead.

It's actually Mike Levin on for Rod.

Congratulations again, Tom on your retirement and Bill on your promotion.

Thank you.

I think over time, your sales have correlated much better with new car sales versus used cars, and we're looking at expectations for new car SAAR in the US moving forward.

Most people are expecting a plateauing demand environment.

Just wanted to get your thoughts around how you think about CarMax's growth within that plateauing SAAR?

Well, I've always -- I've said this before, that I think that largely we move directionally with SAAR, but it's not an exact science.

And making a forward-looking prediction on SAAR is something that's not something that we really do.

And what we focus on is trying to deliver the best deal, and the best consumer offer that we can, each and every day.

And I can't really comment on what's going to happen over the next 12 or 24 months, dependent on movement in SAAR.

I think, it's nice to see new car sales back up to where they were pre-recession.

If you actually track new car sales, and correlate it with population growth, I think the SAAR is still pretty low.

So there's lots of different estimates about what's going to happen over the next year.

We're just going to try and do the best job we can, based on the conditions that we see.

Great.

And then just within some of the pool data, we've seen losses and delinquencies tick up slightly.

Just wanted to get your thoughts on where we are in terms of credit availability.

Are things beginning to tighten?

And how -- when rates are moving up, how do you see that impacting both the CAF business and your ability to finance your customers moving forward?

Okay.

I guess I can only speak specifically to what we've seen through year end.

And if you're asking about CAF portfolio, there's nothing going on there that we see that causes us any concern and pretty much business as usual.

With regard to the partners, there's a reason we have a number of them, because we want to keep a broad spectrum of credit available to our customers.

We continue to see greater than 96% of customers who submit an application get some approval in our stores.

So the way I would characterize -- greater than 90% -- the way I would characterize our availability through the fourth quarter is as good as ever.

And as Tom mentioned, we take a long-term perspective with our partners.

We try to be a good partner.

We believe we've developed an origination channel that is superior to others, as far as originating loans for new cars, for used cars and new cars through the transparency and the integrity of the channel.

It's proven out in the past that our partners have seen better performance on their pools originating out of CarMax than elsewhere.

We've seen in the past that they preferred to allocate capital to us when times have gotten tough.

As we look forward, we would hope that our work and our long-term relationships and the integrity of the channel would make it such that we continue to see that kind of preference for CarMax.

I think -- does that answer your question about availability?

Yes, I think so.

I'll get back in queue.

Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of John Murphy with Bank of America.

Please go ahead.

This is Liz Suzuki on for John.

Just looking at the different buckets of SG&A, what portion is generally associated with existing stores versus new stores?

And what is typically comprised by advertising and stock-based comp?

Just trying to think going forward about how we should think about operating leverage, backing out the impact of stock-based comp and new store openings?

Liz, I don't know that we've divided it.

We've talked about it that way before, so I'm not sure I can answer that.

But what -- can you ask the question again?

Sure.

I was just thinking about what percentage of SG&A is generally associated with new stores, if you're opening 15 or so per year, versus your existing stores, and just trying to think about leverage going forward.

I can't give you the exact percentage, but -- because I don't have it handy.

But there's no doubt that new stores on a per-unit basis are significantly SG&A inefficient compared to existing stores, because they are new, because they have higher advertising expense to start, because they are not mature.

So if you think about the newer stores, there's no question that they are much more inefficient from an SG&A standpoint on a per-unit basis than the older stores.

And when you want -- you talk about leverage, we've always talked about, while we're growing the business, while we're spending the CapEx that we're spending to build 15 stores a year, we need a few points of comps to leverage SG&A at that growth rate.

I don't know if that provides the color you're looking for.

Liz, another way to look at it is if you look back over time, and you see the growth in SG&A, around half of it's coming from new stores and the rest is coming from--

Of the growth.

Of the growth itself, yes.

Okay.

Yes, that's really helpful.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Bill Armstrong with CL King & Associates.

Please go ahead.

Just a question about SUV inventory availability.

The expectations are that we're going to see more vehicles coming into the market from off lease, and other sources, as we move through the year and maybe prices start to come down.

As you're going through the auctions, are you seeing any indication of that yet?

And to what extent can you maybe source maybe a little bit more of this through consumers?

Any leverage you may be able to pull there?

I can only comment through February.

And SUVs have always been a big percentage of our mix.

During the quarter, as Bill mentioned, midsize and large SUVs were around 24% of, roughly a fourth of our sales.

I think as I've said before, with the high volume of off-lease product, that means there's going to be a high volume of off-lease product coming back into the market at some point.

And I think there is an opportunity or a chance that will create some great deals, and some great opportunities to buy, which will allow us to then turn around and give great deals to our customers.

But that's no different than any other segment of inventory.

We're very opportunistic.

We turn our inventory very quickly.

And we try to pass on the best deal we possibly can to our customers.

So it's still -- it was a fourth of our sales during the quarter.

If we see lease volumes, lease turn-ins start to pick up, which I would expect that they will, like they always do, when you see such a high percentage of new cars that are leased.

We'll be the ones that are standing there able to take advantage of that and provide great deals to our customers.

Are you seeing any significant change in the mix that you're sourcing from consumers versus wholesale?

No.

I mean, you know that a lot of -- a big percentage of what we buy comes directly from consumers, and the rest comes from auctions and other.

So when you see a 24% mix of SUVs, that's probably about the same from both.

Ish.

Okay.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Seth Basham with Wedbush.

Please go ahead.

My question first relates to the balance between market share and profitability.

If you could benchmark your results against the industry, according to NADA, while I appreciate that you've gained market share overall for the year, for the last couple of quarters, it appears that you've lost market share, particularly when you benchmark against comparable stores.

As you think about balancing that, relative to profitability going forward, what do you favor?

Do you favor maintaining market share, or taking a little bit of hit on profitability?

That's a good question.

And it's a tough question.

I think to use the word optimal, is the way I would go.

I'm not really sure what that is.

I will tell you, I don't know where you get your data, but we've never been able to get market share data that was accurate on any short-term window of time.

I'm not even sure how accurate it is over a longer period of time.

It is so fragmented nationally.

There's 40 million cars sold annually.

Roughly a third are sold from customer to customer, and it is very challenging to figure out share.

I think just the fragmentation alone makes it very, very difficult.

As big as we are, and I noted some of those numbers earlier, we are a tiny share of zero to 10-year-old cars nationally, somewhere in the 2% range.

I don't know that focusing on share is the right place to spend your energy, because it's so difficult to ascertain what share actually is.

And again, the business is so fragmented, you could be as big as we are, and have just a fractional share.

Even in the markets that we're in, of zero to 10-year-old cars, we think it's around 5%.

But remember too that for us, we self-select out a bunch of inventory that's included in the denominator.

We don't retail anything over 120,000 miles, so there's a lot of cars that are zero to 10-year-old, over 120,000 miles, we still make an offer on those cars.

We buy them and we sell them through our auction.

That doesn't count as share.

But we sold 400,000 cars last year that don't count in share.

They just happen to go through our auctions.

So we're evaluating how to think about this going forward, Seth.

So it's a very good question.

There's such fragmentation, I don't really know how to think about it.

Okay.

I guess--

We're just trying to optimize our sales, we're trying to grow our business.

We're trying to comp our stores, and deliver a great return for our shareholders.

Okay.

Fair enough.

Just as a follow-up, if you look at your profit per unit, obviously it declined pretty substantially, relative to the last few years, on a year-over-year basis.

You may see that as noise, but do you see that as a driver potentially to boost your sales going forward?

And would you be more willing to see further declines in order to boost your sales?

I'm sorry, Seth.

Did you say gross margin?

Gross profit per vehicle.

Yes, I mean -- like I said, it was down less than $40 and that's within our ability to manage.

And as I've always said, we'll do what we think is in the best interest of our customers, and our shareholders.

And I can't really tell what you we're going to do with margins going forward, other than we've been pretty consistent with it over the last several years.

Thank you.

And been able to deliver comps at the same time.

Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Paresh Jain with Morgan Stanley.

Please go ahead.

Had a question about GPU, as it relates to the source of inventory.

When we think about the retail inventory channel, it looks like you probably source as much from auctions as you do through in-store appraisal.

But the auction channel being a lot, relatively a lot less profitable.

With a lot of this increase in off-lease supply expected to show up at auctions or franchise dealers, is there a way for you to offset any GPU pressure resulting from it?

Well, a lot of those cars also show up in the auction too, remember.

So a lot of customers who are coming off of lease will show up at our store.

And if we make them an offer that gets them out of their car and makes them a little bit of money, a lot of times -- because we see a lot of lease trade-ins come to our store in the form of appraisals.

So I can't give you an exact answer, but what I can tell you is, our percent of cars that we sell, that we retail, which we call self sufficiency, has been in the low 30s, and it's been as high as I think, the low 50s.

And it moves around over time, depending on a whole bunch of different variables.

And what we've gotten, I think, pretty good at is being able to manage our margins, despite the fact that we expect some movement there.

So I can't predict exactly what's going to happen when leases, when lease volumes at the auction pick up, but that's not just lease volumes at the auction.

Remember, it's all these cars coming back into the marketplace, in a number of different ways.

Understood.

I'll get back in the queue.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Rick Nelson with Stephens.

Please go ahead.

This is Nick Zangler in for Rick.

Building off that question, earlier, you mentioned that some trucks/crossovers/SUVs, were too expensive to buy last quarter.

Are you still finding that to be the case?

I mean, obviously, this product category continues to be in high demand.

And just given that, are you able to get the truck/crossover/SUV inventory that you want?

As I said, it's a fourth of our sales.

It's a huge chunk of sales, and I would say the answer is largely yes.

I talked about it last quarter.

I thought it would have had a fractional impact on us.

It was mostly focused on larger SUVs that were just very, very expensive.

But if you look the Manheim index from then to now, prices have come down a little bit.

But we're always going to try to do what we think is the best value for our customers.

Sure.

It's a huge chunk of our sales.

Yes, and given that.

But do you attribute any of the traffic decline to having, to a lack of truck/SUV inventory, I guess?

It's almost impossible to do that, but I would say no.

Okay.

All right, great.

Thank you very much.

Your next question comes from the line of David Whiston with Morningstar.

Please go ahead.

Going back to the off-lease topic for a moment, what about on the dealer side?

I know they have made a lot more emphasis on trying to retail rather than auction themselves, and I know they can't corner the market, but are you concerned that it could cause you guys to not get quite as much desirable inventory over the next few years as you normally would in this part of the cycle?

I can only go by what's happened in the past, and it has never inhibited us before.

Okay.

It's usually -- the cars are more organized at the auction.

Okay.

And going back to an earlier question on online versus brick and mortar, I wanted to look at that more from the perspective of the start-ups like Shift.

They compete more in a non-store front, bring the vehicle to the consumer's home with a sales associate.

I'm sure you want to stay more on the brick and mortar side with an online experience to drive store traffic.

But is this format something that you're just dismissing for now because they are so small relative to you?

Or do you think that's a type of experience you would want to offer your customers down the road, with a much larger selection?

No, we actually -- we recently tested home delivery.

We've done some home delivery in a very small test market.

We'll continue to evaluate it going forward.

Anything that we see anybody doing that we think would benefit our customers, we're going to evaluate whether or not it makes sense for us.

As I mentioned earlier the one thing to remember is many, many, many transactions involve the acquisition of a customer's existing car, something we're very, very good at.

I think it gives us a competitive advantage.

Some of these smaller online players are connecting consumer to consumer, without actually taking any of the inventory, without actually taking any ownership of the inventory.

We actually think having 50,000 cars online is a huge advantage for us, in providing a great selection for customers, and a multifaceted selection, when they get into their finance options, and find out maybe that they can't quite afford the car that they thought.

So I don't think anybody is in a better position than we are, to deliver more and more of the transaction online, and/or even delivering to someone's home than CarMax can, because we have the infrastructure in place.

As I said earlier, I'm not sure how big a piece of our total sales it will be, but we're going to be in a position to do whatever the customer wants us to do.

Very helpful.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Irina Hodakovsky with KeyBanc.

Please go ahead.

Congratulations on your retirement, Tom.

And welcome aboard, Bill.

Thank you.

I wanted to ask you a little bit of a small detailed question.

As G&A expense, you mentioned you were rolling out a new website through [FY15].

It should be fully rolled out by the end of this month.

One would imagine it was probably a bit of a headwind to the SG&A cost.

Can we expect an improvement as this initiative is finished?

And can we expect it to maybe even drive a tail wind?

Really, that's just -- Bill talked about the website we designed.

That's one initiative within our spend.

We think we can continue to deliver a great value to our customers, and continue to deliver our return to our shareholders, and invest at the level that we need, to make the improvements that we think are necessary to grow the business.

So if there's significant investment in IT, yes, but there was the last 10 years, also.

And we expect it to be a big investment for us going forward, as we said, we want to make sure we can meet the customer where they want to be met.

But we think within our big bucket of SG&A spend, we can both invest, and deliver a good return for our shareholders.

Got it.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Fassler with Goldman Sachs.

Please go ahead.

I'm back, thank you for taking my follow-ups.

Two very quick questions for you.

It looks like your compensation expense per used vehicle unit, even excluding stock-based comp, was down a bit.

Was there any change in comp practices, or was incentive compensation a piece of what's moving the needle there?

There's a number of different things, Matt.

I think we had -- if you can look at this year, is a little weaker than last year.

So there's some less incentive compensation.

(multiple speakers)

And any reversals as part of that, or just lower accruals over the course of the quarter?

It's just been a weaker year relative to plan.

Fair enough.

And then my second and last question, any change in the stance of your subprime providers and the standards that they are bringing to the market change?

And I know your traffic is down in some of the lower quality credit regions, but in terms of their willingness, the standards they are upholding as they extend credit, anything you've seen there?

Matt, as I've said earlier, I can only speak to what we've seen through year end.

We've been happy with the performance of our Tier 3 partners.

They have done a great job for us.

I would say that their conversion on applications is a little bit down, but if we look at a like type of credit, that they are seeing come through the door, that their behavior has been very consistent over the course of the year.

So while we may not see them converting as many people, because their offers might be weaker, that's more of a by-product of the fact that what they are seeing is weaker than how their behavior has been.

As far as how they go forward, we want them to run a business that's profitable and sustainable so that they can support our customers, and we keep -- we'll keep an eye on it for the long-term.

Got it.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Rod Lache with Deutsche Bank.

Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking the follow-up.

Just wanted to ask on CapEx, you say that the $450 million, which is pretty meaningful year-over-year increase, has a lot to do with timing of land acquisitions and construction activity.

How much of the year-over-year increase can we kind of think of as growth in kind of core CapEx versus timing and then subsequently, should we think about CapEx being down into FY18?

Almost all of the increase is timing.

And we would expect to not be this high the following year.

Got it.

So maybe that same magnitude, come back down to where we've been running (multiple speakers).

We couldn't give you an exact number, but we don't expect it to be that number the following year.

And remember, Rod, these deals take a long time to put together.

We had a few of them slip from this year into next year, that we would have expected to cough the money up on this year.

And if things take longer than expected, you might get concentrated in one year versus the other.

If things accelerate, you find opportunities that you need to close on faster, the same could be true.

And I think that because, we're at this 15-ish store a year pace, you need to really be working on 60-ish pieces of property to deliver that.

So when you get a CapEx number from us, it's our best estimate of the next 12 months.

But as Tom said, there's some timing, there's some shifting back and forth.

But this differential between the year that we're telling you about, which is the upcoming year, compared to last year, is almost all timing.

Great.

Really appreciate the clarity.

Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Bill Armstrong with CL King & Associates.

Please go ahead.

My question also was on CapEx.

And you've been able to over time reduce your overall cost of new stores, reducing the footprint through more efficiency.

I was wondering if you could maybe update us on what the trends are there?

Are you still able to get maybe a little bit less costs on an average per store basis?

How should we think about that, when looking at your CapEx?

The big piece you left out there is the land part of it.

That's not something we really have a lot of control over.

In terms of value engineering our stores, so that they are both as efficient to build as possible and as efficient to run as possible, those are the things we're hyper focused on.

But when you look at our openings for the last couple years, and the next couple of years, we're going into some pretty expensive big Metro markets.

We've opened Philadelphia, St.

Louis and Boston and Denver in the last couple of years.

And in the next, in the next couple, we have San Francisco and Seattle coming.

So often times in a place like that, the land acquisition price is going to overwhelm the store build, in some cases.

So we're really focused on building it as efficiently as we can.

The answer is, I think we're building a more efficient box than we used, but it's hard to really discern when you look at the total CapEx.

That makes sense.

Thanks very much.

Your next question comes from the line of Brett Hoselton with KeyBanc.

Please go ahead.

Two quick follow-up questions.

One, can you provide us an update with your subprime pilot?

Where you're at, do have a particular direction that you think you're heading at this point?

Secondly, can you provide us with very rough examples of where your market share is at in maybe in some of your mature markets?

I'll take the subprime one.

As I said in my comments and in the release, we continue to be comfortable with where we're at, and we're going to continue at the same pace with Tier 3 volume, which is about 5% of the Tier 3 volume that we sell throughout the stores.

The subprime test, we haven't learned anything that scares us about it.

In fact, we believe it's profitable business.

But there's more to the equation around risk and what we want to do with the Company going forward.

So I think the way to characterize it is, it's going to be -- it's about 1% or less of our total portfolio.

But all the reasons that we decided to go into this test are still holding true, and we need to continue to get knowledge about the space and these customers, and we want to make sure that we're in a position that we can mitigate risk to the extent that we need to.

And from that perspective, I think we're comfortable with steady as she goes.

And I'm sorry.

Your second question was?

So your overall market share across the United States is 1% to 2%.

Can you provide us examples of where your market share might be in mature markets?

Sure.

Again, I talked about the challenges around market share, but it's about 2%, if you look at it nationally, which includes the places that we're not.

It's about 5% on average.

Remember, on zero to 10-year-old cars.

And I talked some about the challenges of the denominator.

It's about 5% in the markets that we're in.

And it's between 10% and 15% in our most mature markets.

So there's no doubt that there's a ramping and a growing over time.

That's a combination of comp sales and adding stores into new markets.

So we've seen in our older markets, that we can be in the double digits on share of zero to 10-year-old cars.

Let me ask you maybe just maybe a broader conceptual question.

Let's say in your mature markets you're in the 10% to 15% range.

Your next competitor, I'm going to guess is maybe less than 1% of that market.

Right.

So it seems as though you, to be blunt, have you an impenetrable near-monopoly in your mature markets.

Would you disagree with that, or would you say that, look, we really feel very strongly that we've got a very, very strong model?

I think we have a very, very strong model.

I think monopoly would be a word I wouldn't use.

That's fair.

But our average numbers speak for themselves.

As I said earlier, our average stores, this is our average, including all of our new stores in the quarter, sold about 340 cars a month.

The average new car dealer, who generally are the next biggest -- there's variability by market.

There's some places where there is independents that have some significant sales.

But generally, new car dealers that sell used cars, we would consider the next biggest.

And the average nationally is around 40 or 50 cars a month.

So the size differential is true for us in most places.

Okay.

Well, again, Tom, congratulations on your retirement.

Bill, congratulations.

I'll tell you, Tom, you have built a tremendous franchise here, so congratulations.

Thank you.

And, really, I really didn't do anything.

I was along for the ride with a bunch of really great people.

And I'm still going to be here for a little while longer.

Listen, that's all we have today.

Thank you very much for joining the call.

And thanks to all of our associates at CarMax for delivering such a great customer experience, and we'll talk to you next quarter.

Thanks.

Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call.

You may now disconnect.