ACV Auctions Inc
NASDAQ:ACVA
Earnings Call Analysis
Q4-2023 Analysis
ACV Auctions Inc
Last quarter was remarkable with an admirable 21% year-over-year revenue growth, managing to hit $118 million, precisely aligned with expectations. Even better, adjusted EBITDA not only followed the same positive trajectory but also surpassed the anticipated figures.
Throughout the year, the company expanded its realm, growing its dealer partner pool to over 28,000, fueling a 14% revenue increase to $481 million. It emphasized its competitive edge by introducing cutting-edge innovations, consequently seeing around a 70% year-over-year ascension in adjusted EBITDA.
The Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) tightened up by 6% despite the per-unit GMV taking a 9% hit, indicating stabilizing wholesale prices. This dip was counteracted by a vigorous 15% rise in vehicles sold via the marketplace, reaching 144,000 units within the period.
Signaling recovery, the new retail sales soared by 8% year-over-year, a rebound from a decade's low. Contrarily, the used retail sector slightly retreated with a 1% decline in transactions, attributing to consumer affordability struggles. Overall, the dealer wholesale market shrank by 7% over the year. Amid these fluctuations, the company managed to grab a significant 17% growth in the market share which keeps it in line with its mid-term ambitions.
ACV's transport services and new technology introductions like ClearCar are asserting their presence in the market. Their AI-enhanced operational instruments have led to a 10% dip in customer assurance costs. Additionally, the company's transport sector achieved a remarkable 900 basis point growth in revenue margin, hitting the high teens.
Capitalizing on the burgeoning foothold of ACV transfer within the marketplace, they are broadening their services to include off-platform transactions as well. This is part of a larger commercial strategy that weaves their marketing centers with the digital marketplace to promote lucrative cross and upsell opportunities.
Coming into Q4, the company's financial reservoirs were abundant with $411 million in cash and equivalents. Looking ahead, they expect a revenue range of $141 million to $146 million in Q1 of 2024 and project an impressive 27% to 30% revenue growth for the entire year, with adjusted EBITDA possibly reaching between $20 million and $25 million.
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Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the ACV Fourth Quarter and Full Year Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are on listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your speaker for today, Timothy Fox. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining ACV's conference call to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results. With me on the call today are George Chamoun, Chief Executive Officer; and Bill Zerella, Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, please note that today's comments include forward-looking statements, including statements regarding future financial guidance. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and involve factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. A discussion of the risks and uncertainties related to our business can be found in our SEC filings and in today's press release, both of which can be found on our Investor Relations website. During this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is provided in today's earnings materials, which can also be found on our Investor Relations website. And with that, let me turn the call over to George.
Thanks, Tim. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are pleased with our fourth quarter performance, which capped off another strong year of execution by the ACV team. We delivered 21% revenue growth in Q4 and adjusted EBITDA that once again exceeded our guidance. For the full year, revenue grew 14%. We gained market share and exited the year with over 28,000 dealer partners buying and selling on our marketplace. We launched new innovations that expanded our competitive moat and drove operating efficiencies, resulting in approximately 70% year-over-year improvement in adjusted EBITDA. Along with our continued momentum in dealer wholesale, we expanded our TAM with the launch of ACV's consumer sourcing solution, ClearCar and by building the foundation for our commercial wholesale strategy. We are pleased to announce that our expansion into commercial wholesale will benefit from securing access to the auto IMS software platform and also by growing our remarketing center footprint, more on our commercial offers later in the call. As we turn to 2024, ACV is focused on accelerating top line growth continued margin expansion and achieving an important milestone with adjusted EBITDA profitability in 2024. We're confident that executing on this profitable growth strategy will result in creating long-term shareholder value. With that, let's turn to a brief recap of fourth quarter and full year 2023 results on Slide 4. Fourth quarter revenue of $118 million was in line with guidance and grew 21% year-over-year. GMV increased 6% year-over-year despite a 9% decrease in GMV per unit as wholesale prices continued to normalize. We sold 144,000 vehicles in our marketplace, growth of 15% year-over-year, reflecting solid listings growth and improved conversion rates. For the full year, revenue of $481 million increased 14% as unit growth rebounded year-over-year, along with strong attach rates for ACV transport and ACV Capital. GMV for the year declined modestly to $8.8 billion due to a 10% decrease in GMV per unit, largely offset by a 10% increase in unit growth to just under 600,000 units. On Slide 5, I will again frame the rest of today's discussion around the 3 pillars of our strategy to maximize long-term shareholder value. growth, innovation and scale. I'll begin with growth. Turning to Slide 7. I'll share our observations about automotive market trends as context for dealer wholesale volumes in 2023. New retail sales increased 8% year-over-year, recovering from a 10-year low in 2022. While volumes continue to lag 2019 levels, inventories improved and OEM incentives increased. These are key factors in supporting a recovery in retail sales, trade and therefore, dealer wholesale supply. The used retail environment was a different story. Units declined 1% year-over-year in 2023, down from what was also a 10-year low in 2022 as affordability issues continue to pressure consumer demand. In terms of vehicle sourcing, dealers continued to retain a higher-than-normal percentage of trades for retail inventory, creating a headwind for dealer wholesale supply. The trade to wholesale mix is expected to normalize over time as new and used inventory recovers from the press levels, which are currently about 30% below normal. While the supply picture remains muted on a positive note, price depreciation and conversion rates across the industry recovered in 2023, following very challenging operating conditions in 2022. On balance, we believe that end markets are showing early signs of improvement. And while the shape of the dealer wholesale recovery is difficult to predict at this stage in the cycle, we do believe the market will post modest growth in 2024. Moving to Slide 8. After declining 20% in 2022, we estimate that the dealer wholesale market declined 7% in 2023. As new retail sales recovered from depressed levels year-over-year, given our 10%unit growth, this implies 17% market share growth for ACV, which is in line with our midterm target model. As I mentioned earlier, while there are cross currents still impacting the broader automotive market, we continue to believe that 2023 will be the trough for the dealer wholesale market. Next, I would like to provide highlights on our value-added services. First, on Slide 9. The ACV transportation team delivered very strong results in 2023. Attach rates for the year were in the mid-50% range, in line with our midterm target model and our carrier network delivered over 325,000 vehicles. Our tech investments yielded a greater than 20% improvement in cycle times, which is a key element of ACV's value proposition for our dealer partners. AI optimized pricing, which we introduced in early 2023, expanded significantly during the year, and we achieved 90% lane coverage in Q4. By leveraging AI, our transport team drove growth and operating efficiency, resulting in a 900 basis point year-over-year increase in revenue margin, reaching the high teens. As a reminder, our midterm target model assumes transport revenue margins in the high teens. While margins may fluctuate modestly over time, the fact that we already achieved our target speaks to the value we're delivering to our dealer partners and our strong execution. Turning to Slide 10. Our ACV Capital team also delivered very strong results in 2023. Attach rates in the low double digits resulted in 50% loan volume growth year-over-year. And combined with strong ARPU expansion, resulted in over 80% revenue growth year-over-year. We are continuing to invest in new ACV capital capabilities, including bundled offerings with ClearCar, and we remain confident that ACV Capital will be an important long-term growth and profit driver. Next, I would like to wrap or the growth section by updating our progress on penetrating adjacent markets that drives ACV with additional growth levers. On Slide 11, I'll begin with ClearCar. ACV's consumer sourcing solution that leverages AI and real-time market data to deliver highly accurate condition-based pricing. As a reminder, the consumer peer-to-peer market is large with about 10 million vehicles transacting each year outside the dealership ecosystem. Given ongoing inventory challenges facing our dealer partners, the peer-to-peer market is an attractive vehicle sourcing opportunity. AC is addressing this challenge with ClearCar . Adoption has been impressive, with about 600 dealer rooftops live today, and we have a robust pipeline of new prospects. Based on dealer feedback, lead generation and conversion rates are significantly higher than competitive sourcing tools. This speaks to the power of ClearCar in driving qualified leads and ultimately increasing overall dealer supply. We are excited about the momentum with this value-added solution, which adds another growth lever to our business. Next, on Slide 12. I am pleased to highlight some exciting news related to our commercial wholesale strategy. At our Analyst Day last June, we shared our rationale for expanding into commercial wholesale. While we believe ACV is well positioned to capture commercial market share and the investments required to service commercial consignors. And it turns out our timing could not have been better. Commercial volumes in the rental, repo and fleet categories are recovering at a strong pace. Off-lease will take a few years to normalize, the overall commercial opportunity is very attractive. We believe that ACV is uniquely positioned to address this market with our deep data moat and vibrant marketplaces, along with a growing nationwide buyer base looking to secure commercial inventory. And we've expanded our remarketing center footprint with the recent acquisition of a Texas-based auction group that provides additional locations for vehicle storage and light reconditioning to service commercial vehicle. Lastly, we are thrilled to announce that ACV has secured licensing to auto IMS. This technology platform connects wholesale auctions to nearly all 1,300 commercial consignors in the U.S. Our agreement enables ACV to deploy auto IMS in a way that supports our remarketing centers and our digital focused business model, which will be an industry's first capability. To wrap up on growth, we continue to execute on our playbook to capture dealer wholesale market share. Our transport and capital offerings are gaining significant traction, and we are well positioned to expand our TAM by executing on our consumer sourcing and commercial market expansion. Turning to the second element of our strategy to drive long-term shareholder value innovation. On Slide 14, I will first recap some of our growth-oriented product innovation. Let me begin with the dealer buying experience. We lean in with tech to increase conversion rates by launching new auction format and improved user interface, better inventory notification and enhanced pricing data. Our private marketplace solutions experienced strong traction with some of the largest dealer groups in the country, enabling dealers to both easily auction inventory within their network and leverage ACV's open marketplace. We launched new capabilities in our advanced buyer solution, SAM, which enhances the buying experience through intelligent notification and auto bidding capabilities. And as I discussed earlier, our ClearCar solution is gaining significant market traction and our transport team is leveraging AI to drive growth and operating efficiency. On Slide 15, we highlight examples of tech investments that extend into our operations, delivering customer success while reducing costs. One of the key drivers is inspection accuracy. Just as a reminder, each vehicle is unique with its own imperfection. We believe AI and our structured data is a massive competitive advantage. Our field team is equipped with technology such as CoPilot, ArbGuard, Apex and our AI-powered imaging apps to deliver high-quality inspections. CoPilot and ArbGuard leverage machine learning, predictive analytics and sensor data to inform our VCI on vehicle-specific issues before and after conducting an inspection. This is an industry first. Apex delivers significant transparency into vehicle operating conditions while also increasing the inspection productivity of our VCI team. Dealers often observe that you can't smell a car over the Internet. This is no longer true, thanks to Apex, with Smile being one of the many sensors it enables, and we continue to expand our AI imaging capabilities to identify specific important conditions like the presence of damage and rust. Together, these innovations contributed to a 10% reduction in customer assurance costs in 2023, incredible performance in the current market. Next, I'd like to share some of the key focus areas of our tech road map for 2024 on Slide 16. First, we plan to continue driving increased conversion rates by further tailoring the dealer experience on our marketplace. What was MAX Digital is now ACV MAX. This is more than a name change. We integrated ACV's proprietary data mode from our 1 million annual inspections to enable dealers to make smarter sourcing decisions. We introduced cutting edge recon alerts by leveraging ArbGuard and built a seamless integration with ClearCar to help dealers source more vehicles from consumers. Dealers now have a way to elevate their brand by becoming more consistent at all their stores, ultimately, enabling them to source more inventory and drive gross profits. Given the strong adoption of ACV transfer in our marketplace, we are extending these services to vehicles transacted off platform, enabling our dealer partners to further leverage our best-in-class transport services. We recently implemented a loan management system to support our growing ACV capital business, which enables us to offer a broader set of finance offerings and drive scale across the platform. For example, expanding our finance to dealers looking to source consumer vehicles. To accelerate our commercial strategy. We'll be focused on integrating our marketing centers with ACV's digital marketplace to create a range of cross-sell and upsell opportunities. We are well underway selling vehicles from our marketing centers and ACV's marketplace.Lastly, we are planning to leverage our industry-leading inspection technology to create dealer self-inspection solutions for 2 use cases: private marketplaces and live appraisal. These are examples of dealers directly using ACV's inspection and auction capabilities. To wrap up on innovation, ACE remains committed to delivering industry-leading technology to our dealer partners and to our own operations, driving both growth and scale, and we look forward to sharing more details with you next quarter. With that, let me hand it over to Bill and take you through our financial results and how we're driving growth at scale.
Thanks, George, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We are very pleased with our Q4 and 2023 financial performance. Along with delivering accelerating revenue growth in the back half of the year, we had meaningful revenue margin and adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, which demonstrated the strength of our business model. Turning to Slide 18, I'll begin with a recap of our fourth quarter results. Revenue of $118 million was at the midpoint of our guidance range and grew 21% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA loss of $5 million beat our guidance range and adjusted EBITDA margin improved approximately 800 basis points versus Q4 '22. This demonstrates both the operating leverage in our model and continued strong ApEx management. Next, on Slide 19, I will cover additional revenue details. Auction and assurance revenue, which was 56% of total revenue, increased 19% year-over-year. This performance reflects 15% year-over-year unit growth and auction and insurance ARPU of $456, which grew 3% year-over-year. Note that ARPU increased year-over-year despite a 9% decline in GMV per unit, reflecting our Q3 price increase, and we believe we will still have pricing headroom going forward. Marketplace Services revenue, which was 38% of total revenue, grew 29% year-over-year. Results were driven by strong ACV transport performance and another record revenue quarter for ACV Capital. Our SaaS and data services products comprised 7% of total revenue and revenue was flat year-over-year. While ACV MAX revenue grew modestly year-over-year, recall that we have been taking a measured approach to customer acquisition, while making significant improvements to the ACV MAX platform. As George discussed earlier, we recently launched the upgraded ACV MAX suite, and we're confident these improvements will drive long-term growth. Turning now to Slide 20. I will cover costs in the quarter. Q4 cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue decreased approximately 300 basis points year-over-year. The improvement was driven by strong auction insurance results and by ACV transport. As George mentioned, we delivered high-teens transport revenue margins, which is in line with our midterm target model. We continue to focus on expense discipline as we optimize and scale our business. Non-GAAP operating expense, excluding cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue decreased 4% year-over-year in Q4. This reflects a more metered approach to growing ApEx relative to our revenue as we march towards profitability. Moving to Slide 21. Let me frame our investment strategy and path to profitability. Our focus on spending discipline and operating efficiency resulted in a material decrease in ApEx growth in 2023, resulting in adjusted EBITDA losses declining by approximately 70% year-over-year. And as you've seen reflected in our Q4 results, we delivered margin expansion while preserving our go-to-market and technology investments to ensure ACV is in a strong position as market conditions improve. On Slide 22, I would like to provide an update to regional profitability that we shared at our Analyst Day last June, demonstrating why we're confident in our midterm target of achieving 25% adjusted EBITDA margins. In 2023, 35% of our regions comprising about 50 territories achieved adjusted breakeven or better. Of those regions, 3 were in the 15% to 25% adjusted EBITDA range. Additionally, we had 3 territories exceeding 25% adjusted EBITDA margins. We believe that this performance demonstrates the inherent leverage and scale of our business model as we continue to drive top line growth. Next, I will highlight our strong capital structure on Slide 23. We ended Q4 with $411 million in cash and equivalents and marketable securities and $115 million of debt on our revolver. Note that our cash balance includes $134 million of flow in our auction business. The amount of float on our balance sheet will continue to fluctuate meaningfully based on business trends in the final 2 weeks of each quarter, which has a corresponding impact on operating cash flow. Cash flow from operations in 2023, improved significantly year-over-year, a 75% reduction in burn, reflecting the strong margin improvement and ApEx management we delivered and the leverage in our business model. Now I'll turn to guidance on Slide 24. For the first quarter of 2024, we are expecting revenue in the range of $141 million to $146 million. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $2 million to $4 million, consistent with our commitment to achieve a full quarter of profitability in Q1. For the full year 2024, we are expecting revenue in the range of $610 million to $625 million, representing growth of 27% to 30% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $20 million to $25 million, reflecting operating improvements in our core business and integration investments in our remarketing centers. As it relates to our guidance, we are assuming that the dealer wholesale market grows modestly in 2024 and conversion rates and wholesale price depreciation follow normal seasonal patterns. We're expecting the Texas-based auction group acquisition to contribute approximately 5% of annual revenue in 2024 and be accretive to full year adjusted EBITDA. Revenue growth is expected to outpace non-GAAP, ApEx growth, excluding cost of revenue and depreciation and amortization by approximately 10 percentage points. And finally, moving to Slide 25. We remain committed to achieving our midterm target model, which is underpinned by sustaining market share gain, penetrating adjacent markets and expanding margins through revenue mix at scale, all of which we've clearly demonstrated in our performance. Our midterm targets are primarily predicated on the dealer wholesale market recovering to historical volumes over time. But in addition, we are expanding our TAM and consistently taking share, which will drive long-term growth. And with that, let me turn it back to George.
Thanks, Bill. Before we take your questions, I will summarize. We are very pleased with our strong execution in 2023. We are especially proud of our ACV teammate that delivered these results. We continue to gain market share by attracting new dealer and commercial partners to our marketplace. We are expanding our addressable market, which positions ACV for attractive growth as market conditions improve. We are delivering an exciting product road map to further differentiate ACV and drive operating efficiencies. We are on track to achieve our near-term adjusted EBITDA targets and deliver on our midterm targets that we believe will drive significant shareholder value. We are committed to achieving these results while building a world-class team to deliver on our goals. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator to begin the Q&A.
Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question today will be coming from Michael Graham of Canaccord.
I wanted to ask, on the 2024 guide, we understand that it includes about $30 million from the acquisition. And I know you mentioned expecting some recovery in the wholesale market underpinning that guidance. But just wonder if you'd go into a little more depth about what you're seeing on the macro and how you handicap whether the market might perform better or worse than what's embedded in your guidance?
Michael, it's George. I'll start first and then Bill can always add in. So yes, thank you. Thanks for your comments on the quarter. Yes, it was another strong quarter. It's been great execution by the team. I appreciate you saying that. that we've had some comments earlier that we discussed that we believe 23% would be the trough on overall dealer wholesale supply. When you look at the broad trends, we obviously saw even in Q4, another year-over-year decline in overall wholesale supply. We do think things will marginally be better this year. Obviously, we didn't get much more details than that. But it's not like we're expecting this year, the market to improve significantly. So when we said marginally earlier on the call, we're speaking to new car supply is coming back nicely, used car year-over-year. Our retail is still a little lower. Obviously, with interest rates and everything, we're still seeing an environment to the top line used retail. Overall, car on dealers' lots are about 30% lower than 2019. So when you look at overall supply in a dealer's lots, we're still seeing it's going to take some time for the market to kind of get back to normal. But we're thinking this year is being marginally improved. Bill, I'm not sure if there's any more to communicate it.
Yes. I'd just say the only other thing I would add, Michael, is that if you subtract out this Texas-based acquisition, right at the midpoint results in about 22% revenue growth versus 14% for last year. So think of that as a combination of both an improvement in ARPU and then some modest improvement in the market along with share gains. So just to frame out the math for you.
Our next question will be coming from Christopher Pierce of Needham & Company.
Talk about the sequential downtick in ASP on the platform. Is that a concerted effort to attack a different part of the market? Or is that just the market itself and wholesale prices moving lower consistently? And then should that inform lower retail prices or you're still not baking that in?
Yes. Chris, as we predicted, ASPs declined somewhat consistently with used car values declining. We've been seeing just like 2 years in a row of overall used cars going down in value, and you've been seeing a pretty consistent decline. But I think you also noted RTO our revenue per unit has gone up. So we've done a great job of mitigating over the last year facing ASP overall GMV going down, but ARPU staying very strong. So we're in a really good spot. But yes, that was as we predicted and look back to last year, we had predicted used car values would continue to decline. And we also predicted we should be fine from a revenue per unit perspective, and I think both of those are a matrix.
Okay. And then on the call, you framed 1 million options per year, and you did 600,000 units. I mean, is it right to think about that conversion rate at 60% because that's roughly 1,000 basis points ahead of industry sources. So is that part of the go-to-market? Or do I have the macro?
Conversion is a little lower than that. There's a few auctions in there, Chris, that are done for dealers, retail cars and also that's a few thousand units a month. And then in addition, there's a few other like commercial cars were expecting. The conversion is a little bit lower than that 60% range, but it's in the ballpark. Chris, we're basically in the mid-50s, which is pretty consistent with historical trends.
With your historical trends or industry historical trends, if you could go a little bit more detail?
Both our historical and industry.
Our next question will be coming from Bob Labick of CJS Securities.
It's Pete Lukas for Bob. You guys covered a lot in the prepared remarks. I guess just one for me in terms of innovation. You guys have introduced a lot of cool tech over the years, and you discussed innovation. What has you the most excited from that? And where do you see the biggest impact coming from in 2024 in terms of the new stuff?
Yes, it's a great question. We have ACV like many companies out there, are faced with artificial intelligence, changing really how we all operate changing our intelligence, changing how we think about everything from how much time it should take us to inspect a car. So that won't all hit us this year, but we're investing in capabilities to help us inspect cars faster, but yes, it was more accuracy. That wasn't possible last year or the year before. with our focus on our official intelligence, we are focused on the acquisitions we've made, like Monk with our R&D team and being things like our guard and other areas where we can approach a vehicle and know the common issues we've had on that vehicle. Going into next year, our investments this year will help us, we believe, both take the time down on inspections, but you to improve accuracy and ultimately make us more efficient. So we're really excited about that. So I pick one. Now I can go on and take the whole call. But if I had to take 1, that would hit by the one where generally our inspection capabilities are just improving dramatically and artificial intelligence is going to help.
[Operator Instructions]. Our next question will be coming from Eric Sheridan of Goldman Sachs.
Can you reflect a little bit on the key investments you see necessary to make that are putting some pressure on margins in 2024 and how to bridge that to what you've talked about at prior Analyst Days in terms of the exit velocity of 24' against your more medium-term EBITDA margin guidance. That would be so helpful.
You start and then I'll add in.
Sure. Yes, thanks. So, if I list a few, and I think we're on track with really each of these. I just spoke a few minutes ago, that our ability to inspect the car, both deliver on buyer satisfaction but also hit our medium-term arbitration objectives. We're really doing a great job. So that's one area where we're doing a fantastic job. On conversion rates and what we're doing in our platform to keep improving conversion rates. If you look at what we're doing with selling vehicles on our platform, again, it's really a tough market. You could see with our peers, everyone else, it's been a tough market, and our conversion rates have held up really well. That's when all the improvements we've done on our marketplace to keep including enhancing conversion rates. When you look at where we're at to transport, we're already at our attach rates, and we're already at our margin profile for Transport. Capital take rate is really coming along nicely. We're pacing basically as planned with ACV capital, and that will also improve overall margin. And then really this growth. Growth will help because in many of these areas across the country, continuing to take market share allows for that one territory of our region and then Bill shared some data on the call regarding our regional profile. Bill, I don't know, you want to expand on that?
Yes. I think maybe first, I'll just take a step back, Eric, at a high level. So based on the modeling we've done for this year, if we look at revenue margin dollar growth year-on-year, we're going to take about 45% of that down to adjusted EBITDA. So we will be growing ApEx this year, but we feel pretty good about the amount of margin that we're going to take down to the bottom line. So first, just again, just taking a step back. I would just add to everything that George said, we're also going to be making platform investments to further our commercial strategy, and that's baked into our guidance and our ApEx on the world as well. So it's all of everything that George described specifically driving the commercial strategy. And then outside of that, it's just really scaling the business as we continue to grow. So hopefully, that gives you a little more context.
[Operator Instructions]. Our next question will be coming from Ronald Josey of Citigroup.
I wanted to ask about ClearCar and then maybe another crack at the EBITDA long-term guidance, Bill. On ClearCar, George, you talked about 600 dealer rooftops and higher conversion rates relative to the market. Talk to us about just the tie between Clear Car and the core auction marketplace and how that's helping to improve, call it, dealer integration, if you will. And then just on EBITDA, and I know to Eric's question, we talked about maybe how we get there. But Bill, really helpful to see the regional breakout, again, an update on that post Analyst Day today. So talk just about the expected ramp in regional profitability at 35% now of ACVs, call it, 20 regions. And just want to understand how we ramp to that number over time given we're at mid-single EBITDA margins at a company today.
Yes. Thanks, Ron. I'll tackle the [ ClearCar] . So if you take a step back, and we mentioned, even though we had a fantastic quarter 2023, we had a great growth year. Dealers are still struggling to get the right inventory. And with ClearCar, we are helping dealers with that core problem,10 million cars sell a year peer-to-peer. Those many of cars, if you just assume over 50%, of those a dealer credit purchase that whether it's 50% or 60%, that would be massive TAM expansion for dealers buying cars from consumers. And a lot of these cars meet the profile of car dealers would like to retail. And going after that core problem is part, and I mentioned earlier that there's still 30% less inventory on dealers' websites, but don't look at all inventories equal. Dealers should be retailing the right inventory and wholesaling cars that don't match their inventory. And the only reason why they're retailing some of these cars right now. And now I'm seeking to franchise dealers is because they don't have the right mix. And so franchise dealers are status with the fact that we're not here complaining. We're going to help them fix that problem. And we offer them 2 business spots. They can pay us a monthly subscription or even preferably, they can give us a fair share of their wholesale, so we offer them more of a partnership model or a fee model. The majority of our partners have 2 things of wholesale model, meaning that by taking ClearCar and leveraging it on their website, on their other channels, creating separate landing pages, using billboards, their service drives, I think the consumer comes in to change their oil and they said, "Hey, we want to buy your car, now dealers have an effective tool to do that. It focuses on their brands, their cars like a co-brand. And we're helping them with this really key problem. So that's why we're ecstatic really about just using our technology, using our machine learning, using our massive data mode we have. And over the next few years, we're going to help dealers buy more cars from consumers, trademark more effectively online and ultimately help them have the right supply on their lots, what they will mean to us is they'll go back over the next few years to go back to wholesaling the percentage they were wholesaling in 2019 and prior.
Yes. Let me handle the second question, Ron. So again, just to review the territory data that we just put out in our prepared remarks. So we had approximately 50 territories, which is about a little more in roughly 1/3 of the country are already at breakeven or better. And we've got a number of territories that have double-digit adjusted EBITDA margins and several they're already north of 25%. So the way we get from here to our midterm targets is really twofold. It's number one, growing our margins to around 50%, which is where they are now to 60%. And you expect to see some progress that's baked into our 2024 guidance as part of that path. So that's one component. And the other component really is the ApEx leverage we will get on the engineering, sales and marketing and G&A side. So if you go back to our materials from our Analyst Day last June, roughly 75% to 80% of those costs are very fixed in nature versus variable. So it's all about continuing to gain scale, gain market share, increase our unit volume and then getting that leverage in the model. So that's ultimately how we'll get there. But again, we've got some territories that are already in today's cost structure already hitting double digits, which gives us comfort in knowing that we can get there over time as the rest of our territories scale.
Our next question will be coming from Rajat Gupta of JPMorgan Chase.
Great. Onto quarter here. Just a couple of questions on the 2024 guidance methodology. Firstly, are there any meaningful assumptions baked in from the commercial business? Or any assumptions in the revenue from the off-platform transportation product? Just a clarification, and I have just a quick follow-up.
Yes. Thank you for saying it was a great quarter. We appreciate it. The commercial, I'll start and then Bill can chime in on commercial for this year, we're not assuming like a significant ramp. We will start winning some business. But just to be level set, we just got auto IMS done like in the last 24 hours. So we still need to interact with them at that might take a few quarters. And then on where we're having planned to help us in commercial, it's great that we're up to 8 locations. But as we mentioned, it would take 4 locations to get to 80% of the population. So we will have some wins this year. We don't have a huge ramp expectation for this year, just so we don't get over our skis from like how fast that will be. But when we think out over the next couple of years that we're investing now really for the next few years. And we're really excited about that TAM. It's obviously a very significant TAM expansion for us, both for the commercial accounts. Some accounts don't need land, some counts do either way, we're here to help support them and getting auto IMS in the way was huge.
Yes. And then on the transport side, so look, we're really pleased with the progress the team is making. That's ramping really nicely, but the numbers are still relatively small. So it's not going to materially change our expected results in terms of transport revenue. We're still assuming that attach rates are in the mid-50s. So there'll be some incremental revenue there, but it's really not going to move the needle yet potentially as we go into next year, it might be more meaningful, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Got it. And a quick follow-up. You mentioned in your prepared remarks and even in the slide deck ground, how like 2023 in prior years were backed by like a very low trade to wholesale ratio. Curious in your expectation of the modest recovery you're expecting in dealer wholesale this year. Is it, I mean, what's like embedded in terms of like trade to wholesale mix in that guidance? Are you expecting like meaningful change their behavior? Or are there other factors that's giving you comfort around that low single, that modest growth outlook?
Yes, we're seeing modest improvement over coming into this quarter. And we are starting to see dealers, obviously, the overall supply hasn't improved materially yet, but we are seeing some signs that dealers are a little bit more willing to wholesale. So very small. And I would say our assumptions of this year is just continued small improvements. We're not assuming a significant improvement. But just I would say, consistent with the trends we've already been observing. So I think we're being very reasonable. But obviously, the majority of the growth comes from taking market share. So that's where the majority is coming from and which we've been doing very consistently. And then that's a very small additional gains in commercial, but I would say the overall market improvement, we're assuming very modest improvements.
The next question will be coming from Gary Prestopino of Barrington Research.
I have a couple of questions surrounding AutoIMS. First of all, as you prepare to utilize this license, what do you have to do? Do you have to sell the consignors on your services or the fact that the dealers already have your product, they can just, once you hook into you cook in whatever integrate, they can just use it to buy these cars that are offered by AutoIMS?
Yes. Gary, thank you for the question. I'll take a step back and just explain auto IMS is a middleware in the industry between commercial consignors. So these are folks like banks who have reposts fleet accounts, fleet accounts like company owned cars, government vehicles and other fleet lease type accounts. So there's about 1,300 of these commercial consignors who use auto IMS to go into automat and they sign a vehicle today to a physical auction. And that it's been in that role for many years. It really doesn't touch the dealer at all. And that ecosystem and there's many commercial accounts that exclusively use auto IMS, meaning that the only way to then the provision of vehicle is to go through to IMS. And so the way they are provisioned and they would say, "Okay, I'm going to send this specific vehicle to this specific auction." And then the auction company then would be responsible to auction a vehicle off to dealers. So this is a middleware, it doesn't really touch the end dealer. It's just these commercial accounts who send their vehicles to auctions. We had access to auto IMS only in a few locations up until recently. I think like literally 3 or 4 locations across the whole country, and only where we had land. And now with this lawsuit behind us in the center opinions, we will in collaboration with auto IMS, do an integration that is to allow for 2 different ways for a commercial consignors. Again, I want to say that the bank take a fleet company. When they have cars, they either sign it to one of our locations or to other locations wherever the vehicle may be. The first, meaning sending it to like an axe that they've already been doing, this other, which is more a pseudopod digital model, they've never done this before. And it will take us, I'm not exactly sure yet, is going to take us 3 months or 6 months or 9 months. Again, we just got the lots we've done. But we will work in good pace on the digital side, where they cannot have a commercial consignor sends the vehicle wherever that vehicle may be. So again, to summarize, this middleware provide a methodology for a consignor to send us the car today to where we have land and hopefully, in the very near future, things will end of this year to support our digital model.
Okay. But it does open up a market of a couple of million vehicles a year to you eventually, right?
Yes, at least a few million to your point. It's a pretty significant TAM expansion.
And our next question will be coming from Naved Khan of Riley Securities. I'm waiting for line to open up. Is he still there? One moment, please. I would like to just turn the call back over to Tim Fox for closing remarks. Thank you.
Great. Thank you. And thanks, Lisa, and thanks to everybody for joining us on the call today. We look forward to see you on the conference circuit this quarter. And again, thank you for your interest in ACV, and have a great evening.
This concludes today's conference call. You may all disconnect.