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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Group 1 Automotive’s 2019 Third Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. Please be advised that today’s conference call is being recorded.
At this time, I’d like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Pete DeLongchamps, Group 1’s Senior Vice President of Manufacturer Relations, Financial Services and Public Affairs. Please go ahead, Mr. DeLongchamps.
Thank you, Jamie, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to today’s call. The earnings release we issued this morning and a related slide presentation that includes reconciliations related to the adjusted results that we will refer to on this call for comparison purposes have been posted to Group 1’s website.
Before we begin, I’d like to make some brief remarks about forward-looking statements and the use of non-GAAP financial measures. Except for historical information mentioned during the call, statements made by management of Group 1 are forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Forward-looking statements involve both known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause the company’s actual results in future periods to differ materially from forecasted results. Those risks include, but are not limited to, risks associated with pricing, volume and the conditions of markets. Those and other risks are described in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the last 12 months. Copies of these filings are available on both the SEC and the company.
In addition, certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC rules may be discussed on this call. As required by applicable SEC rules, the company provides reconciliations of any such non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures on its website.
Participating with me today on the call, Earl Hesterberg, our President and Chief Executive Officer; John Rickel, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Daryl Kenningham, our President of U.S. Operations; and Michael Welch, our Vice President and Corporate Controller. Please note that all the comparisons in the prepared remarks are of the same prior period, unless otherwise stated.
I’d now hand the call over to Earl.
Thank you, Pete. Good morning, everyone. I’m pleased to report that for the quarter Group 1 generated all time record revenue of $3.1 billion and earned $56.3 million of adjusted net income. This equates to all time record quarterly adjusted earnings per share of $3.02 per diluted share, an increase of 22% over the prior year. Our record setting quarter was achieved despite continued market headwinds in the UK, due to Brexit.
We were able to achieve meaningful increases in all three of our markets in aftersales led by almost 10% growth in the U.S., an extremely strong performances in used vehicles in both of the U.S. and Brazil. Our adjusted results did reflect an approximate $9 million after tax cost associated with Tropical Storm Imelda, but more important than this is the impact that storm had on our 300 employees in that market. Many of our employees had their lives devastated by the severe flooding, yet they work together to ensure our businesses were open within days of the storm’s conclusion. We did our best to financially support the storm victims within our Group 1 family through our Group 1 Foundation. We truly have an amazing group of employees at our Beaumont stores and we sincerely appreciate them.
Turning to our business segments. During the quarter, we retailed over 44,000 new vehicles. Total consolidated new vehicle revenues increased 8% on a constant currency basis, driven by increases in the UK and UK average selling price. Additionally, our U.S. new vehicle same-store unit sales increased 2.9%, which kept pace with the overall retail market. Our new unit sales geographic mix was 74% U.S., 21% UK and 5% Brazil. Our new vehicle brand mix was led by Toyota/Lexus sales, which accounted for 26% of our new units. VW/Audi represented 13%, BMW and Mini represented 12% and Ford and Honda/Acura both represented 11% of our new unit sales.
During the quarter we also retailed over 41,000 used units driven by continued strong performance in the U.S., a 12% same store unit volume increase, while expanding our per unit retail margins by 5% is another very impressive performance by our U.S. operating team. And as I previously mentioned, this growth did not come at the expense of our new vehicle sales. I should also note that our same-store retail used unit volume in Brazil also grew 15% for the quarter. Total consolidated used vehicle revenues group 10% and gross profit increased 11% on a constant currency basis.
Total consolidated aftersales revenue increased 9% on a constant currency basis driven by increases in customer pay of 13%, warranty of 8%, collision of 6% and wholesale part sales of 4%. As previously mentioned, our U.S. same-store aftersales gross profit growth of 10% was an all time record for the company. I should also mention that our quarterly same-store aftersales revenue in the UK grew 7.3% in local currency, which was a good accomplishment in a week overall market. Finance and insurance gross profit increased 11% on a consolidated constant currency basis. This growth was driven by strong increases in U.S. and UK retail penetration as well as U.S. retail unit growth of 7%.
Regarding our geographic segment results, I’d like to turn the call over to Daryl Kenningham, President of U.S. Operations to discuss our U.S. quarterly results before I cover the UK and Brazil. Daryl?
Thank you, Earl. We were very pleased with our third quarter performance in the U.S., due to strong growth in used vehicles, F&I and aftersales we were able to generate a 9% increase in total same-store gross profit for the second straight quarter. Same-store used unit retail sales grew 12%, as Val-U-Line unit sales grew 10% and represented 11% of our quarterly used unit volume.
In addition to our substantial volume growth, we were able to expand our margins with an increase in total used car gross profit of $57. The shift of more business to the retail channel along with our recently implemented big data pricing strategies, have been critical in driving used car vehicle gross profit growth, which was up 17% over the prior year on a same-store basis.
Our quarterly aftersales revenue grew by 9.6% on a same-store basis and gross profit increased by 9.9%, which again was a all time records for the company. Same-store customer pay revenues increased to 11.1% and warranty increased 10.6%. We’ve implemented our four day work week in 72 stores and are very happy with the results. It’s driving better employee retention and has enabled us to increase our same-store headcount by over 300 technicians in the last 12 months, a 13% increase.
We plan to implement the four day work week initiative in another handful of stores in the fourth quarter, which will substantially complete this initiative and cover approximately 85% of our parts and service revenues. Looking forward to the fourth quarter, we would expect after sales growth to maintain a mid to high single digit growth rate. F&I income per retail unit for the quarter increased $58 to $1,746, driven by strong product penetration and income per contract increases. We feel confident we can keep F&I PRU around $1,750 for the full year of 2019.
Turning to an update on our digital efforts. The AcceleRide platform our online retailing initiative is now and nearly all of our U.S. dealerships and we remain pleased with the traffic, gross margins and customer feedback. During the quarter, nearly 1,800 customers use AcceleRide as a tool in their vehicle purchase. In addition, our omnichannel efforts and aftersales continue. Customers scheduling service appointments online grew 24% versus the third quarter of 2018 and are now nearly 27% of our service appointments.
Our trends in digital traffic also continued on a positive track. Total leads and website visits increased 34% and organic traffic increased 30%.
I’ll now turn the call back over to Earl.
Thanks, Daryl. As we discussed last quarter, market conditions in the UK remain very challenging, primarily caused by continuing uncertainty surrounding Brexit. The total new vehicle industry was down roughly 1% for the quarter.
The true customer demand is likely down even more than that as some OEMs are aggressively pushing self-registrations to support higher new vehicle sales numbers. And dealerships were also pushing sales before the new emissions legislation called RDE went into effect September 1.
This new vehicle market pressure also resulted in increasing downward pressure on used vehicle values as we saw same-store gross profit per retail unit declines of 18% for new vehicles and 20% for used vehicles on a constant currency basis.
On a positive note, the local team did a good job of implementing our cost reduction plans and we were able to lower SG&A by over a 400 basis points versus the second quarter. And as I previously mentioned, we continue to grow our aftersales in F&I business even in this challenging environment.
Our focus will continue to be on inventory management, growing our aftersales business and cost control as we weather what we expect to be a temporary slowdown in the UK auto retail sector.
In Brazil, we generated positive year-over-year bottom line profit growth behind very strong used vehicle and SG&A performance. While the new vehicle industry increased 5%, our brand mix was about flat due to a low in certain OEM product cycles.
And as I previously mentioned, we grew used vehicle sales 15%, while our aftersales grew over 5%. It is encouraging given the relative weakness in new vehicles that the team was able to execute on cost reduction plans and used vehicle initiatives to drive meaningful bottom line profits growth.
I’ll now turn the call over to our CFO, John Rickel to go over some of our third quarter financial results in more detail. John?
Thanks, Earl and good morning everyone. For the third quarter of 2019, our adjusted net income increased $7.2 million or 14.6% over our comparable 2018 results to an all-time record of $56.4 million. These 2019 adjusted quarterly results exclude $18.4 million of net after-tax charges, explained primarily by $9 million of previously announced flood damage from Tropical Storm Imelda and $8.3 million of non-cash intangible asset impairment driven by the negative Brexit impact on our UK dealerships.
On a fully diluted per share basis, adjusted earnings increased 22.3% to $3.02 in all-time quarterly record. For the quarter, we generated $3.1 billion in total revenues, which was an increase of 9.1% from the prior year on a constant currency basis and an all-time quarterly record.
Our gross profit increased 7.9% as total gross margin decreased 20 basis points to 14.9%. As percent of gross profit, adjusted SG&A decreased 50 basis points to 73.2% as U.S. and Brazil costs leverage more than offset weak UK market conditions.
Floorplan interest expense increased $700,000 or 5% from prior year to $15.4 million, explained by higher inventory balances. Other interest expense decreased by $200,000 or 1% from the prior year to $18.9 million primarily reflecting lower acquisition line borrowing rates.
Our consolidated adjusted effective tax rate for the third quarter was 22.2% bringing our year-to-date rate to 22.9%.
Turning to our consolidated liquidity and capital structure. As of September 30, we had $41 million of cash on hand and another $25.2 million that was invested in our floorplan offset accounts, bringing immediately available funds to a total of $66.2 million.
In addition, there was $280 million of additional borrowing capacity on our U.S. syndicated acquisition line. During the third quarter, we used $5.2 million to pay dividends of $0.28 per share, which is currently an annualized yield of approximately 1.2%. We do not repurchase any of our common stock during the quarter.
For additional detail regarding our financial condition, please refer to the schedules of additional information attached to the news release as well as the investor presentation posted on our website.
I will now turn the call back over to Earl.
Thanks, John. Related to our corporate development efforts, in early October, we opened a four-story state-of-the-art Jaguar-Land Rover dealership in densely populated northwest London, which increases our Jaguar-Land Rover dealership count to four in the UK and nine worldwide. This open point is expected to generate approximately $85 million in annual revenues, bringing total year-to-date acquired revenues to $340 million from 13 franchises.
In addition, in September, we opened the greenfield collision center in Atlanta, Georgia. We now operate 30 collision centers in the U.S. that are exploring opportunities for further expansion. Since our last earnings call, we also disposed of a Volkswagen franchise in Texas, to-date in 2019 we have disposed of 12 franchises that generate $240 million in trailing 12-month revenues.
That concludes our prepared remarks. I’ll now turn the call over to the operator to begin the question-and-answer session. Operator?
[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from John Murphy from Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, good morning guys. Thanks for all the information. A first question on the used vehicle business, which really shined in the quarter, it seems like Val-U-Line is helping out quite a bit. I’m just curious now as you look at that how much more room is there for that to grow as a percent of total? And if we think about GPU on Val-U-Line seems like they’re probably similar, but the margins are much higher? So just wonder if you comment on that. But then also it seems like there’s a lot of other good news going on in the used vehicle business outside of Val-U-Line. So I’m just curious if you can talk about what the – what was driving that strength and if that is an area of focus for you as well.
Thank you, John. This is Daryl. Val-U-Line, to start with the margins, yes, they are higher on a percentage basis and on a raw dollar basis, they’re quite good and we’re very pleased with them. We think there’s a little bit of room to grow Val-U-Line. One of our competitors, who announced this week, they do a little more than we do. We don’t think it’s unlimited upside, but we think there’s a little bit more. Also on the rest of our used vehicle business in the U.S., there’s better discipline across the board. And there’s more – whoever drove getting out of our scale with our inventories, putting them in the right place, being able to add velocity to our inventory and we’re seeing signs of all of that with much healthier metrics across the board. Those are things we continue to focus on.
But Daryl, that’s not an identified effort like Val-U-Line. It’s just an increase focused on operating efficiency in used vehicle business. Is that a fair way to characterize it?
It’s a lot of operating efficiency. A lot of it has to do with our digital efforts as well. A lot of the organic traffic that we’re generating is generating additional used car.
Okay. And then as a second question on the other big effort here on the four-day work week for service writers and techs. It sound like you added 300 techs, you said in an LTM basis. Just want to make sure I heard that right for a 13% increase, but then also the stories of folks that you don’t want to work more than just four-day work week, so they’re putting in extra hours. So if you think about your human capital capacity expansion, there is it above and beyond what you’re adding in heads and is that going to support this same-store sales growth you’re talking about?
If I understand your question, yes, 300 is the right number, you’ve heard that correctly. And our teams are able to work more than that if they’d like to, but we were happy with the productivity we’re getting out of that group and we feel like there’s still more to go.
Yes, John. This is John Rickel. I just to add, I mean, that 303 heads that we’ve added is a 13% increase. So mathematically that certainly supports the target that Darryl shared with you.
Okay, great. And then on the UK, it was pretty good cost saves. They got executed sequentially there. How much more room is there to cut absolute costs in the UK and what is really driving that? Is that a headcount – function of headcount? I mean, what’s driving that cost reduction?
Yes, John. This is Earl. Yes, there is more opportunity. We probably got started a little bit later than I would’ve liked. But yes, you can’t achieve substantial cost reductions like we have without making some headcount adjustments. And it varies by brand because there’s a big variation in how strong those businesses are. But yes, we have – we actually have more cost cuts underway.
Okay. But there – it’s not sticky. It’s more of a headcount issue in identifying where that cost or those heads need to come out. So it’s something that’s really interesting to enroll. Is that a fair statement?
Yes, that’s fair statement. It’s every single area of cost we can find down to the most minute detail, but the nature of this business is, that the majority of your costs are in people. So by definition, there has to be a lot of action in that area.
Got you. Okay. And then just lastly on the Floorplan going forward, I mean it sounds like your inventory was up a bit. It sounds like you might want to work that down on an absolute basis. Just curious what you think that Floorplan interest expense opportunity is going forward with rates coming down and maybe getting a little bit leaner on inventory. Is that something you guys are focused on? And do you think there’s real sort of a real meaty number that might – you might be able to achieve there?
Yes, John. This is John Rickel. I mean, there’s definitely opportunity there. The inventory is probably a little heavy. The teams done a good job of managing it, but you’re right, there’s probably a little bit in the balances. Certainly the spreads have come in on the Floorplan renewal that we negotiated. So there’ll be a little bit there and if LIBOR rates continue to come in that will also offer some opportunities. Balanced by the fact that, obviously, we have swaps that temper some of the LIBOR downside, but in general, I think you’re right, there’s probably some opportunity going forward in Floorplan interest expense.
Okay, great. Thank you very much guys.
Our next question comes from Rajat Gupta from JPMorgan. Please go ahead with your question.
Hey, thanks for taking my question. Could you talk a little bit about the impact of Imelda in the quarter in terms of like how it impacted the revenue and gross profit? And were you able to recover a lot of that within the quarter as well, because it doesn’t look like your new vehicle profits where didn’t do pretty decent. So I’m just trying to understand, how that played through the actual numbers.
Yes, Rajat. This is John Rickel. It really the main impact was in Beaumont. And as Earl indicated, it was pretty devastating for our team that was there. But at the – kind of the end of the day, one, it hits kind of late in the quarter, and two, the six stores there, the annualized revenues out of those are about $250 million. So it’s not a massive market for us. So I don’t think it had a very meaningful impact in the way of revenue or lost sales in the quarter. We’ll get some of that back in the fourth quarter, but once again, it was not nearly as many units impacted as like Harvey two years ago. The estimates are there only 10,000 to 15,000 units in total lost in that market.
Got it. That’s clear. And then on the new vehicle side, I mean, you do have a decent exposure to Nissan roughly 8% of your mix in 3Q. I mean, one of your peers talked about, how they’re impacted by the changes in incentives in the quarter. Are you surprised by that at all or did that have any impact to your results?
Hi, Rajat. This is Daryl Kenningham. Just to clarify, you said Nissan, is that correct?
Yes. Yes.
Okay. Yes. Well, we heard some of that commentary this week. We try – we have to play in our Nissan business very carefully because of the way they structure their programs and everything that one of the other consolidators mentioned is absolutely true. We have to watch that very carefully and we do – we don’t feel like it impacted us nearly as much. We felt like we were ahead of some of those issues.
Got it. And just lastly on F&I, you’ve continued to do better than expectations there on the GPUs, I mean, is that just a function of better penetration? Is it just more product mix within that? I mean, is it interest rates to have any benefits? Just trying to understand like how to size that going forward? And then I will pass on.
Thank you, Rajat. This is Pete DeLongchamps. I would say that the product penetrations have been consistent and we continue to outperform in product sales and the teams done a good job of implementing all of our procedures and plans. So we continue, as Daryl mentioned in his comments, mid $1,700 is a good place to model for the F&I business.
Got it. Okay. Thanks, I’ll pass on.
Our next question comes from Rick Nelson from Stephens. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you. Good morning. Good to follow-up on that F&I question. Pete, if you could talk about the availability of prime, near prime and subprime. What’s your saying?
Sure. Rick, we still have terrific relationships with all of our lenders. And at this time and we’ve got access to all the capital that we need to assist our customers in getting loans.
Great. And then in the UK, relative WLTP challenges, those are behind you. Now we’ve got RDE, if you could talk about supply availability.
Well, yes. Sure, Rick. It is still a major issue for the second in a row, which is somewhat surprising, but it’s quite different by brand. And for us, by far the most drastic impact is on the Volkswagen Group, which unfortunately is probably our biggest group. Because we have 10 Audi stores, eight Volkswagen stores, et cetera, a couple SEAT and a couple Skoda. So it is – we still do not have the proper new vehicles in many of our stores. And it’s been a problem now, since September 1. And that also resulted in us having to self-register some cars before September 1, which we’re now retailing as used cars. So that’s a big challenge on top of a challenging market.
And the other factor that gets lost in applies to many brands is most OEMs, or at least many still do not have the proper production mix of diesel and petrol engines. There’s been a material shift in the UK in the demand for diesel engines, as you might imagine. And it takes time for some OEMs to adjust their production ability. And so all of these factors together frequently and relate in us having to a retail vehicles that are not precisely what the market is demanding. And that’s part of what is putting this huge pressure on our margins to move those cars.
Again, that’s also the case in used business in the UK. And would you expect that is going to get sequentially better on they used because they find a clearing price there? Or is that can be a lingering challenge?
Well, I think it’s lingering into the fourth quarter, Rick. But yes, the market will eventually sort itself out. And the OEMs are trying hard to address these problems from their viewpoint. So it should get progressively better. But it’s not going to go away for several months yet.
And finally, if I could ask about the acquisition environment and how you view acquisitions versus stock buybacks versus debt retirement at this point?
Well, at this point, we’re still most interested in growing the company via acquisitions. And there are no shortages of potential acquisitions in either the U.S. or the UK market. But we have to value these things based on future profits, not past. And so we’re being very careful in how we invest money in that external growth. But that is still our preference would be to deploy our capital in that way.
Got you. All right, thanks and good luck.
Our next question comes from Armintas Sinkevicius from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead with your question.
Great. Thank you for taking the question. With regards to the UK, maybe you could talk about the used car environment. When I take a look at the Pendragon release from about a month ago, it still seems like there’s some challenges in the used car market. How do you expect that to trend and when do we get to the end of that?
Well, the true used car market in the UK is still surprisingly good. The problem for all of us, I think, all of the auto retailers in the UK is a very high percentage of our used vehicle sales are not true used cars. They’re very nearly new cars. And that’s where the challenges are. And one of the metrics we use is what percent of our inventory are truly used cars meaning more than a year old and with some mileage on it and so forth. And we continue to do quite well with those cars.
We just need to continue to adjust our operation to have those cars represent a higher percentage of our inventory. That’s the way we’re approaching it. But, we also need to support our OEMs and help them keep moving their new vehicles. So it’s a pretty difficult balance right now.
I think last year with sort of outcome from WLTP, used car prices went higher in the UK because of the shortage on the new side. And then as we got out of that, then there was a challenge where the inventory was priced higher than where you were able to sell the cars or the industry for that matter was able to sell those cars. Are we expecting or are you seeing early signs of that on the basis of RDE this year?
I don’t know what the impact is on the values of this new regulation 30 or 45 days ago. But you make a very good point that few people recognize and that is, we got lulled to sleep a bit by the fact that used vehicle values were artificially high at this time last year. And so, based on where we’ve come from at the beginning of this year to now, the residual value drops are massive on a historical basis. And so we literally can’t turn those vehicles fast enough to make any good money on them. Basically, our new and used vehicle margins are both down about £300 – $300 or $400. And that’s a substantial amount on big volume.
And last question here on the digital initiatives, with AcceleRide largely in most of your stores. What are some of the next things that you have planned ahead, product rollouts or upgrades? What are you looking for on the horizon here?
Well, we’re looking at a number of things that we’re not ready to talk about today. But, our focus is always on doing business, how and when our customers want to. And we know there’s also opportunities in sourcing used vehicles. So those are areas we’re looking at very hard right now.
Great. Appreciate taking the questions.
Our next question comes from Michael Ward from Seaport Global. Please go ahead with your question.
Thanks very much. Good morning. Just a follow-up on Rick’s question about share repurchase. Did you buyback any stock in the third quarter?
No, Mike, we did not.
Okay. Was there a reason for that or just timing?
No, it’s timing. I mean, we tend to be opportunistic. We look for best places to deploy the capital. As Earl indicated, there’s probably some more acquisition opportunities floating around out there. So we’re always balancing those levers.
Okay. On the online retailing, and instead, I think you mentioned that most of your stores have that availability now in the U.S. Does that include – I think the service side of it, the online servicing by year end it’s going to cover 80% of your revenue, but 77 out of the 117 stores. Will you expand it to all the stores or are there some limitations with the stores where it doesn’t make sense? Or is that the flex work week that is limited to those 77 stores?
Daryl Kenningham, I believe you’re talking about our AcceleRide initiative on new and used vehicles. We’re in all the three stores in the U.S., we expect those to be done in the next few days.
Okay. And does that include the service scheduling too or no?
Service scheduling – online service scheduling is in every dealership in the U.S.
It is.
Our four day work week, we expect to be at 85% of our revenue by the end of the year. We will be substantially finished by then because stores, you can’t put that in very small dealerships, so you need to…
It just doesn’t work.
Right.
Okay. And you’ve seen the steady increase in the online service scheduling from like 25%, 26%, 27% in the three quarters this year. Is there a goal in mind?
There’s not a hard goal, but it continue to go as far as our customers want to go and make it as easy as we possibly can for them to do that. We make improvements every day on that to try to facilitate more and more online scheduling.
Okay. And on both those fronts, the online retailing and the online service appointments, is that something that you can expand into the UK or Brazilian markets?
Yes, I think it is. This is Earl. However, in the UK and Brazil, the OEMs have a lot more influence on the dealer websites. And the ability to interact with the OEM systems, I would say is not quite as advanced as it is in the U.S. because to do online retailing, the customer has to be able to search a particular brand’s inventory in detail with correct vehicle specifications and such. So, we’re not quite at the point where we can do that in these other markets, but I’m sure it will come.
Beautiful. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from David Whiston from Morningstar. Please go ahead with your question.
Thanks. Good morning. On the UK just two questions there and then one on Brazil. Is it fair to say with self-registration that you guys do that less than your competition there and that you really only do it as a measure of last resort when the discounting from competitors gets really bad?
I like to say that’s true. It’s been true in recent months for some of our major brands we’ve had to back off. But, I think it’s kind of a competitive market situation in the UK where every major retail dealer group does more self-registrations or additional demo changes. There’s a variety of different classifications of these types of sales. I can assure you, we do more than we want. And I think if you talked to my colleagues in the UK, they’d give you that same answer. We try to balance it because of their new vehicle targets we have to hit. And there was a lot of bonus money usually attached to that. But, I can’t tell you that we are the legal leaders in fewest self-registrations.
Okay. And the UK SG&A to gross, it’s a fairly large gap with the U.S. Can you just remind me, are there some maybe structural reasons there that that gap will always be large or do you think there is a lot of improvement you can do there? Obviously the cyclical wise, it’s not a great time in the UK, but outside of that.
Yes. Dave, this is John Rickel. As Earl indicated, we’re working on cost reduction. So we do think that there’s opportunities to continue to bring that down. But I don’t think we will ever fully close the gap with the U.S. There’s a couple of really kind of key structural differences. One F&I is not as large of a part of the gross profit stream over there. There’s a number of reasons for that. You don’t sell as many extended service contracts because people don’t keep the cars as long. There’s a higher proportion of the car park that is basically company cars that turn more frequently. So that’s a big piece of it. Rent tends to be more expensive. Land is pretty expensive in the UK. So for things like that, we’re probably never going to get down to the U.S. level. But certainly into the mid to high 70’s, I’d say a very attainable sort of target.
Okay. Thanks. And in Brazil the GPUs there – there’s a really big contrast between new and used vehicles, one down a lot, one up a lot. Can you just talk about what’s going on in the market to cause that?
Yes. This is John Rickel again. On the new vehicle front, some of it is around brand mix. One of our partners down there, one of the larger exposures is kind of at a wall in their product cycle. So, they’re – basically you have to do some discounting to kind of move those older units. That will turn when the next product cycle comes through. On the used front, the team has done a fabulous job. They’ve basically instituted a centralized process down there for both procurement and helping to price the inventory. And so we’re seeing major, major improvements in both volume and in the gross profit we’re generating off used down there.
So how was the team learned to price better on used? Is that more big data or just…
Yes. This is Earl. I think in Brazil, I may not be as big data as it is in the U.S. It’s just not as sophisticated a market. So we have taken that into that central operation where we have four or five people that do it every day and they have every possible bit of data that’s available in Brazil. But Brazil is a massive country, so you have a lot of regionalization of these values. So the sophistication of pricing these cars as beyond the generally available skill level in the dealerships.
Okay. Thanks.
And ladies and gentlemen at this time, I’m showing no additional questions. I’d like to turn the conference call back over to management for any closing remarks.
Thanks to everyone for joining us today. We look forward to updating you on our fourth quarter earnings call in February.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today’s conference call. We do thank you for joining today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.