Operator
Operator
Good day and welcome to the Asbury Automotive Group Q1 2016 Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Matt Pettoni. Please go ahead, sir. Matt Pettoni - Vice President & Treasurer: Thanks, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Asbury Automotive Group's First Quarter 2016 Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay later today. The press release detailing Asbury's first quarter results was issued earlier this morning and is posted on our website at asburyauto.com. Participating with us today are Craig Monaghan, our President and Chief Executive Officer; David Hult, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Office and Keith Style, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. At the conclusion of our remarks, we will open the call up for questions and I will be available later for any follow-up questions you might have. Before we begin, I must remind you that the discussion during the call today is likely to contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements other than those which are historical in nature. All forward-looking statements are subject to certain – to significant uncertainties and actual results may differ materially from those suggested by the speakers. For information regarding certain of the risks that may cause actual results to differ, please see our filings with the SEC from time to time including our Form 10-K for the year ended December 2015, any subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our earnings release issued earlier today. We expressly disclaim any responsibility to update forward-looking statements. It is my pleasure to hand the call over to our CEO, Craig Monaghan. Craig? Craig T. Monaghan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, everyone. This morning we announced record adjusted earnings per share of $1.36 for the first quarter, a 5% increase over last year. From an industry perspective, the quarter started out relatively robust. However, the SAAR for March fell off substantially to 16.6 million units. We believe that the industry performance in March was negatively impacted by Easter weekend which typically falls in April but occurred in March this year. Despite relatively flat retail sales and continued new vehicle margin pressure in the quarter, we are seeing some positive signs. Our used vehicle margins improved substantially versus the last few quarters as a result of operational improvements we made in the fourth quarter of 2015. Our F&I business continues to deliver excellent results. Our front end yield continued to improve sequentially and is up approximately $100 per vehicle from our low point in Q2 of last year. And finally, our operations team delivered exceptional parts and service customer pay gross profit growth of 11% with overall parts and service gross profit up 8%. As always, we are focused on becoming a stronger and more efficient company. We continue to work closely with our general managers to make sure that we are achieving our operational metrics and maximizing the potential of our stores. We have made great progress in the areas of used vehicles, F&I and parts and service, and we expect to deliver continued growth in these areas. From a capital allocation perspective, we repurchased $102 million of our common stock during the quarter. In April, we repurchased an additional $60 million of our stock bringing our year-to-date repurchases to approximately 10% of outstanding shares. Finally, I want to take a few minutes to discuss our progress with Q auto. As I'm sure you are aware, in February, we closed one of our three Q auto stores. This was our largest format store where we struggled to achieve profitability. We are pleased with the progress of our two remaining stores, which were both profitable for the quarter. Overall, our Q auto initiative broke even, even after giving consideration to the associated overhead. Based on the progress we have made and our continued expectation that we can achieve excellent returns on investment, we have decided to expand our Q auto operations. We will focus on increasing our market presence in the Greater Tampa area and expect to launch two additional small to mid-size format stores by the end of the summer. We look forward to sharing our progress with you in the future as we continue to expand the Q auto brand. In summary, we continue to execute on our two-part strategy, driving operational excellence and deploying capital to its highest returns. Now I'll turn the call over to Keith to bring us through our financial highlights. Keith? Keith R. Style - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Thanks, Craig, and good morning, everyone. This morning we reported record first quarter adjusted EPS of $1.36. This represents a 5% increase from last year. Our results for the quarter were adjusted for a $3.4 million pre-tax real estate related charge, or $0.09 per diluted share. There were no adjustments to income for the first quarter of 2015. For the quarter, same store revenue increased 1% and same store gross profit increased 2%. Turning to SG&A, our ratio as a percentage of gross profit came in at 69.5%. As a company, we had difficulty adjusting our expense structure to the significant decline in March retail sales. And as a result, our SG&A ratio for the quarter increased 100 basis points from last year. There are a couple of expense items worth discussing as it relates to the quarter's performance. First, insurance expense was up $1 million due to the impact of a significant hailstorm in Texas. And second, employee benefits costs rose $500,000 due to increased enrollment in our employee health insurance plans. While we consider the hail damage to be an isolated event for the quarter, we expect that the increase in employee benefits costs will continue to impact our future SG&A expense. It goes without saying that competing against quarters with significantly higher new vehicle margins is difficult from an SG&A perspective. Taking a look at our sequential performance better demonstrates the progress we are making on our cost structure. With first quarter gross profit relatively flat with the fourth quarter of 2015, we reduced our SG&A ratio 100 basis points. We expect to further improve our expense ratio as we head into the summer selling season. In terms of capital deployment, CapEx totaled $10 million for the quarter. For 2016, we are planning for $80 million of CapEx, which includes $45 million associated with our core annual CapEx planned and $35 million of CapEx associated with acquisition renovations and construction which will enable us to move out of facilities that are currently under lease. In addition to executing on our CapEx plan, we also purchased property during the quarter totaling $7 million, the majority of which was previously leased. Going forward, we will continue seek opportunities to purchase real estate currently under lease and acquire properties in connection with future dealership relocations. Turning to share repurchases, during the quarter, we returned $102 million to our shareholders through share repurchase. With the additional $60 million of shares we repurchased in April, we now have 22.2 million shares outstanding and our current board authorization stands at $138 million. From a liquidity perspective, we ended the quarter with $4 million in cash, $93 million available in floor plan offset accounts, $100 million available on our used vehicle line and $165 million available on our revolving credit line. We ended the quarter with $946 million in outstanding debt. And as a result of our $200 million bond add-on in the fourth quarter and additional mortgages in 2015, our interest expense was up $3.1 million in the quarter. Our total leverage ratio stands at three times, which is at the higher end of our targeted range of two-and-a-half to three times. On a net basis, our leverage ratio was 2.4 times. And adjusting on a pro forma basis for our April share repurchase activity, our net leverage is closer to 2.6 times. Going forward, we are committed to remaining in our targeted range while maintaining flexibility to deploy capital on an opportunistic basis. Now I'll hand the call over to David to discuss our operational performance. David? David W. Hult - Chief Operating Officer & Executive Vice President: Thanks, Keith. Despite a challenging market, we increased total revenue 1%, grew total gross profit 2%, increased our total gross profit margin 20 basis points to 16.8% and delivered an adjusted operating margin of 4.7%. For the balance of my remarks, I would like to remind you that all comparisons to the first quarter will pertain to same store retail performance compared to the first quarter of 2015 unless otherwise noted. Our new vehicle unit sales were relatively flat with last year due to a softer than expected March. We continue to operate in a very competitive market with new vehicle margins down 70 basis points from last year. Specifically, a number of our domestic stores chased but failed to achieve very aggressive stair-step programs, resulting in significant declines in our domestic grosses. However, both our luxury and import new vehicle margins have continued to increase on a sequential basis from the fourth quarter of 2015. We ended the first quarter with 808 million of new vehicle inventory or an 81-day supply on a trailing 30-day basis. Our overall inventory levels were negatively impacted by a slower than expected March and having 16 million of stop sale vehicles in inventory. Looking forward, we believe we are well positioned for the spring and summer selling months. Turning to used vehicles, our unit sales were down 2% from last year as the quarter presented a few challenges, including a disrupted sales phase in March and many of our operators working through the stop sale issue which tied up approximately 10% of our inventory. Despite these challenges, with better used vehicle management, we were able to improve our gross per unit by $19 to $1,761, our highest level in over a year. And taking into consideration our improved wholesale performance, total used gross profit was up 2%. Our used vehicle day supply was 33 days, which is in the middle of our targeted range of 30 days to 35 days. This includes $14 million of stop sale inventory. Turning to F&I, our team continues to deliver strong results, delivering F&I per vehicle retail of $1,425, up $43 from last year. The lending environment remains favorable. Before I turn to parts and service, I'd like to summarize our front-end performance. During the quarter, we were able to offset a portion of our new vehicle margin decline with better execution on used vehicle grosses and improved performance in F&I. Despite new margins being down, our total front-end yield, which includes new, used and F&I gross profit, was down only $67. And more importantly on a sequential basis, our total front-end yield was up $20 from the fourth quarter of 2015. Our goal is to build on this momentum as we head into the summer selling season. Turning to parts and service, in the first quarter, we delivered parts and service revenue growth of 9% and gross profit growth of 8%. Our overall gross profit performance was driven by an 11% increase in customer pay, a 4% increase in reconditioning cost and a 7% increase in warranty. For the full year 2016, we believe we can continue to grow our parts and service gross profit in the mid-single digit range. Finally, we would like to express our appreciation to all of our teammates in the field and in our support center who continue to produce best-in-class performance in many areas; again, thank you. We'll now turn the call over to the operator and take your questions. Operator?