Earnings Labs

America's Car-Mart, Inc. (CRMT)

Q4 2012 Earnings Call· Fri, May 25, 2012

$12.50

+0.20%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+4.38%

1 Week

-0.94%

1 Month

-9.94%

vs S&P

-10.75%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for holding and welcome to America’s Car Mart’s fourth quarter and full year 2012 conference call. The topic of this call will be the earnings and operating results for the company’s fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2012. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and will be available for replay for the next 30 days. The dial-in numbers and access information are included in this morning’s press release, which can be found on America’s Car Mart's website at www.car-mart.com. As you all know, some of management’s comments may include forward-looking statements, which inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management’s present view. These statements are made pursuant of -- to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The company cannot guarantee the accuracy of any forecast or estimates, nor does it undertake any obligation to update such forward-looking statements. For more information regarding forward-looking information, please see item one of part one of the company’s annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2011, and its current and quarterly reports furnished to or filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Forms 8-K and 10-Q. Participating on the call this morning are Hank Henderson, the company’s Chief Executive Officer and President; and Jeff Williams, Chief Financial Officer. And now I would like to turn the call over to the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Hank Henderson.

William Henderson

Management

Good morning, everyone, and we appreciate you joining us today. And we are very pleased with our results for both the year and this most recent quarter. For the year, revenues were $430 million, up from $379 million in our prior year. Net income was $33 million, up from $28 million. A solid increase in net income along with our stock repurchases resulted in a 27.6% increase in earnings per share at $3.24, up from $2.54 last year. The great year we’ve had is entirely attributable to a whole lot of hard work of our amazing associates, and they are all so very passionate about taking great care of our customers. It’s their dedication and the hard work that make us the great company that we are. I’m going to go ahead and turn it over to Jeff to go over some of the numbers in detail, and then I will come back and share a few thoughts with you. So, Jeff?

Jeffrey Williams

Management

Thank you, Hank. Once again, we are pleased with our financial performance for the quarter and for the year. For the quarter, our top line growth was 9.8% with a 5.5% increase in same-store revenues, and for the full year, the top line grew at 13.4% with a 7.5% increase in same-store revenues. Our comps for this quarter were up against a very good fourth quarter 2011 and we saw a 16% revenue increase. As Hank mentioned, we finished fiscal 2012 with over $430 million in revenues. Over the past 14 years, since Car-Mart became a public company, our compounded annual growth rate at the top line has been over 14%. As we’ve discussed for some time now, our plans for the future are to continue to grow the business at levels we’ve experienced in the past. Our down-payment percentage was 9.5% for the quarter, down slightly from 9.7% for the fourth quarter of last year. The weighted average down-payment amount for all contracts at the end of April was $646, up $22 or 3.5% from this time last year. Collections as a percentage of average finance receivables was 19.2% for the quarter compared to 19.6% last year. For the quarter, our average initial contract term was 26.8 months compared to 26.3 months. Our weighted average contract term for the entire portfolio, which includes modifications, was 28.1 months compared to 27.3 months this time last year. The increases in term are primarily related to increased average selling price and our efforts to keep our payments affordable for our customers. We’ve been very aggressive on keeping our term length shorter over the last several years to help our customers get their vehicles paid for sooner. Since 2005, our average term has only increased about 2 months or 8% compared to an…

William Henderson

Management

Thanks, Jeff. We have continued to see solid growth for our existing stores, and we are also very pleased with the contributions we are seeing from our new stores. Overall they are performing very well, and we actually have a couple in particular that are certainly exceeding expectations and are raising the bar for what we can expect from new stores. Throughout the year, we opened 8 new locations in Oklahoma, Kentucky and Missouri. We opened one store in each of those states. 2 new stores were added in Alabama and 3 in Mississippi. We are very pleased to announce that we will be opening our first new store for this current fiscal year within this next week as we will be opening in Madison, Tennessee. And in addition, we have another new location very near completion in St. Joe, Missouri, which we will be opening in June. So with the opening of -- we get St. Joe open, that will put us to 116 stores in 9 states and should keep us on pace for our new store openings. And to help us assure that we are staying on pace, we have added another full-time lot location specialist to our expansion department. He's based out of Alabama, as the majority of our new stores over the next few years will be to the east, as we are planning to add Georgia to the list of states we are in within this next year. In addition to the opening of new stores, our expansion group has done an excellent job keeping up with the growth of existing stores having expanded and remodeled several existing facilities this year, and we've even relocated a few into larger facilities to accommodate their continued growth. The capacity of the growth of all of our…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from John Hecht, Stephens.

John Hecht

Analyst

Just first on credit, the reduction of the allowance that took place this quarter, what factors drove that? How long of a backward period did you look into? And is this just sort of a one-time reset or, depending on other factors, is there further changes down the pipeline here?

Jeffrey Williams

Management

John, we look back at 5-year periods and then 3-year periods and even more recent periods on credit losses. So we are looking at the nature of the actual loss activity, and in addition to that, we’ve developed some really good information over the last few years on our static pools. And so the primary driver of the reserve reduction was just the fact that we’ve had 3 or 4, 5 years in a row of solid credit results, and then also when we look at the static pool analysis, the static pools we have outstanding at the end of April looked to be in good shape and are supportive of that reduction in the reserve amount. Of course, we look at that calculation of those pools every quarter, and we’d love to think that in the future the quality of the pools are going to improve and allow us to revisit that reserve percentage. But it’s been a long time since we’ve reduced the percentage, and that’s not anything that we’re counting on at this point. But certainly if credit metrics and results improve in the future, we’re always looking at that reserve percentage each quarter.

John Hecht

Analyst

And then with respect to the 30 days plus and the charge-offs that occurred during the quarter, is there any commentary since the end-- I know it’s only been a few weeks, but since the end of the quarter in terms of roll rates or the credit performance? It seemed that the slight pickup in charge-offs last quarter might have been related to the tax season. I wonder if you are seeing a normalization at this point.

William Henderson

Management

Yes, I think we are. I think that's an excellent question because we want to see how over a broader period of time, and, yes, I think we can say that we are certainly starting off this month with lower losses coming in as compared to where we were. So I think we did have a bit of the spike [indiscernible] but we’re back to normal.

John Hecht

Analyst

And then with respect to the buy trends, is there -- it seems like things have been pretty consistent at the lot level. But within that, is there any regions or vintage performance that is performing differently than you’d expect or worth commenting on? And then with respect to the expansion into, I think you mentioned Georgia, how many locations do you -- have you identified there, and is that model going to be consistent with in terms of the contracts with the other states you are in?

William Henderson

Management

Well, to start off with the first question with regard to the purchasing, as we go into the tax time, as you know, that’s when the demand is really higher for our range of vehicles. And so certainly prices tend to spike a little before that. I think this is often we see prices spike and they tend to stay there. As Jeff mentioned, we actually saw a slight decrease sequentially as we got into the fourth quarter. So that was really good. And it certainly is always our intention to keep those as flat as possible or even bring them down. And so we are putting forth lot of efforts to do that. As far as our actual performance on vintage, I don’t know if we can -- if you've got anything to speak to on that, Jeff?

Jeffrey Williams

Management

No.

William Henderson

Management

So as far as Georgia goes, we did -- and to accommodate our service contract and PPP, there was some changes within -- there are some legislation in Georgia in this past session, I think just 2 weeks ago it was actually signed into law by the governor. So we do know that we’re going to be able to offer those in that state, and we have, again looking, I would say Georgia is going to be very similar to Alabama and Arkansas in that there's many, many towns that fall within that ideal 20,000, 100,000 range. We haven’t yet scouted them all out. But we do feel like that Georgia will be a state where eventually we will have a very significant number of locations there. And so we have already began scouting out a few towns that are just across the river there from some of our stores in Alabama. So we think that’s going to be a great state for us.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from John Rowan with Sidoti & Co.

John Rowan

Analyst · Sidoti & Co.

Has there been any release, if you will, on the upward pressure of the average age and mileage of the cars now that obviously your purchasing power got a little bit better? I am just more curious if that age and mileage continues to move up.

Jeffrey Williams

Management

Yes, it has. We are doing all we can to limit those movements, but to keep that price in a range that it can make sense for our customers and keep the transactions affordable. They are moving up a little bit.

John Rowan

Analyst · Sidoti & Co.

And what was -- Jeff, I know you mentioned you had some guidance on the provision expense, can you just repeat that for me?

Jeffrey Williams

Management

Well, yes, as we look out we target anything from a 20% to 22% provision for credit losses on an annual basis. There is some seasonality between quarters, but on an annual basis, 20% to 22%. This year was 21.5%, and -- which is well within that range, and we’ve got lot of new stores out there, and we feel like we can do better with the tax time next year and still feel like that 20% to 22% is what we need to target.

John Rowan

Analyst · Sidoti & Co.

And then, Hank, maybe just a broad top down view of the competitive environment. Obviously if some of the more traditional finance providers get back into the market, how does that impact you? I just want to -- maybe I should understand how you are looking at the 10,000-foot view of competition.

William Henderson

Management

Certainly on a -- as we look just market to market, the landscape really hasn’t changed a whole lot. There are still the mom and pops up and down the street from where we are. I have to assume that as the cost of cars over the past years, it’s gotten tougher, it’s certainly gotten tougher on them. They’ve had to push for higher down-payment requirements, and that has had to cut into their sales. As we’ve talked about before, too, credit tightening, we’ve never seen big change in dropdown. We don't feel like we were seeing significant increases in sales, but the reality, it's true, is we don't -- there is more aggressive financing available out there now than there was a couple of years ago. And it made sense to us, there’s got to be a few of the better customers that we are after that we may not be realizing. So we are really working hard to continue to step up our marketing. We made some changes for this upcoming year and really focusing on trying to attract and bring those better customers in to see us, but as far as to actually be able to measure it, it’s very difficult to say. But nonetheless, we know what’s going on, so there has to be some impact. And so we are, again, kind of stepping up our marketing to specifically address that.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Daniel Furtado with Jefferies & Co.

Martin Kemnec

Analyst · Jefferies & Co.

This is actually Martin Kemnec in for Dan Furtado. Most of my questions have been answered. I just had a question on -- with your 10% target on new branch openings, maybe you could just refresh our memory on the dealership-level economics. Like what’s the typical investment for new units? What’s the kind of ramp to maturity there in terms of receivables, sales or even cash flows?

Jeffrey Williams

Management

Yes, a new lot, new dealership, we’re going to have $150,000 to $200,000 in CapEx, and then maybe $150,000 worth of vehicles on the lot to start out. And then most of our investment in the new dealership is going to come over the first 2 years of operations as we put deals out on the street. So we anticipate anywhere between $1.5 million and $2 million of cash invested in a new dealership over a 2 year period, counting fixed assets and inventory. And then at that point, our history has shown us that, that lot can become cash flow self-sufficient and actually grow at a pretty good clip at that point and still be cash flow self-sufficient after that 2-year point. From an earnings standpoint, there is very little cost, very little overhead for a new lot, and with the expectations we have for new lot openings from a GAAP perspective, our new lots are profitable just right out of the gate.

Martin Kemnec

Analyst · Jefferies & Co.

And the with the improvement in the SG&A line, is that kind of a deliberate effort to focus on cost controls or is that just some operating leverage flowing through the model? Just kind of looking at modeling that going forward, is that a level we should expect or how to think about that there?

Jeffrey Williams

Management

Well we are always looking at cost controls. So that’s always a focus here at Car-Mart. We’ve been very hesitant to try to quantify any leveraging in the future because we are growing at such a rate, and we want to make sure we don’t under invest in our infrastructure as we grow. But we do expect some leveraging just based on the fixed cost nature of what we do. But we are not quantifying that, and we want to leave ourselves some room to make sure we don’t under invest in infrastructure as we grow.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Bill Armstrong with C.L. King & Associates.

William Armstrong

Analyst · C.L. King & Associates.

When I look at your credit metrics both for the quarter and the year, your net charge-offs, collections, delinquencies, down-payment percentages, they seem to be heading in the wrong direction. And I am just wondering what are you seeing that at this point prompted you to lower your allowance to 21.5% from 22%.

Jeffrey Williams

Management

Yes, some of the metrics, Bill, as far as the collection numbers, all of that can be explained as far as the percentage through the average term being a little longer, our average term is about 3 weeks longer than it was last year at this point, the average age of the portfolio is a little younger, and then the interest rate is higher. So when you factor all those out, we actually had a little bit of an increase in efficiencies on the collection side. So we felt good about that. We are really focused on affordability for our customers. So stretching that term out a little bit is something we felt like we had to do to keep those customers successful. Down-payment is just slightly down, so we weren’t disappointed with that. And then we did get through our first tax time period this year, where we’ve had a lot of these payments scheduled for a year more. So we wanted to get through this tax time collection period, see how that settled out, and then combine with our analysis of those static pools and the quality of those pools that are outstanding at the end of April, it certainly was supportive of that reduction in that credit loss percentage. Of course, it’s going to take 2.5 years for all those pools to run out, but based on the quality of those pools and the history we have, we certainly have a sufficient support and feel good about reducing that reserve down by that percentage.

William Armstrong

Analyst · C.L. King & Associates.

Just one other question, how much is remaining in your share buyback authorization?

Jeffrey Williams

Management

I believe we have about 650,000 shares still available.

William Armstrong

Analyst · C.L. King & Associates.

Shares or dollars?

Jeffrey Williams

Management

Shares.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] I am not showing any other questions in the queue at this time.

William Henderson

Management

All right. Well, thank you all for joining us today, and we do look forward to updating you throughout the remainder of the year and bring you some more good news. So thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the conference. You may now disconnect. Good day.