Earnings Labs

O'Reilly Automotive, Inc. (ORLY)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 25, 2018

$91.57

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hello, and welcome to the O'Reilly Automotive Inc. Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Zenaira, and I'll be the operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we'll conduct a 30-minute question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Tom McFall. Mr. McFall you may begin.

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Thank you, Zenaira. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. During today's conference call, we'll discuss our third quarter 2018 results and our outlook for the fourth quarter and full year of 2018. After our prepared comments, we'll host a question-and-answer period. Before we begin this morning, I'd like to remind everyone that our comments today contain forward-looking statements and we intend to be covered by and we claim the protection under the Safe Harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by forward-looking words such as estimates, may, could, will, believe, expect, would, consider, should, anticipate, project, plan, intend, or similar words. The company's actual results could differ materially from any forward-looking statements due to several important factors described in the company's latest Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017, and other recent SEC filings. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during this call. At this time, I'd like to introduce Greg Johnson.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Tom. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to O'Reilly Auto Parts third quarter conference call. Participating on the call with me this morning are Jeff Shaw, our Chief Operating Officer and Co-President; and Tom McFall, our Chief Financial Officer. David O'Reilly, our Executive Chairman; and Greg Henslee, our Executive Vice Chairman are also present. It's my pleasure to begin our call today by congratulating team O'Reilly on a strong third quarter and a solid first nine months of 2018. The sales momentum we experienced in the first half of 2018 continued through the third quarter, and drove our comparable store sales increase of 3.9%, which was at the top-end of our guidance range. As a reminder, we faced a headwind in the third quarter from an additional Sunday as compared to 2017, which had a negative impact of approximately 50 basis points since Sunday is our lowest volume day of the week. We're also pleased with our team's ability to generate year-to-date comparable store sales growth of 4% through their unwavering commitment to providing excellent customer service. Our sales growth combined with our team's relentless focus on profitable sales and expense management generated a 5% increase in operating profit dollars as compared to the third quarter of 2017, and an operating margin of 19.5%. In addition to our solid growth in sales and operating profit, we were also the beneficiaries of a substantially lower tax rate than expected, which Tom will cover in his prepared comments. This combination of operating performance along with our ongoing share buyback program drove an increase in the third quarter earnings per share of 40% to $4.50 per share, which exceeded the top end of our guidance range of $4.30 and is a testament to our team's efforts to provide unsurpassed customer service. Now, I'd…

Jeff M. Shaw - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Greg, and good morning everyone. I'd like to add my congratulations to team O'Reilly on a solid third quarter and thank our team for their continued commitment to providing top-notch customer service. As Greg previously discussed, our sales trends in 2018 have been solid and very consistent, which reflects the unrelenting focus on customer service demonstrated by our teams every day in each one of our markets. I'd like to begin today by talking about some exciting distribution center expansion news. When you truly focus on what excellent service really means for our customers, it's impossible to underestimate the importance of parts availability. Our ability to provide top-notch customer service in our stores is dependent on the work our distribution center teams do to get those hard-to-find parts in our stores faster than our competitors. Our long-term investment in our robust regional DC network is a key competitive advantage for us. And we're pleased to announce two new DC projects, which will further strengthen our industry-leading position. First, we're pleased to announce we've acquired property in Twinsburg, Ohio, where we have begun to build our 28th distribution center. Twinsburg is located in the Greater Cleveland area in Northern Ohio, approximately halfway between Cleveland and Akron. As we've discussed often in the past, our greenfield expansion strategy has been to enter new markets contiguous to our existing footprint, as we build toward a critical mass of stores to leverage a new DC in an expansion region. We followed that familiar game plan over the last several years, as we've opened stores further East into Ohio, West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania, supported by our DCs in Indianapolis and Detroit. We've now reached the point where additional DC capacity is necessary to support continued store growth in this region of the country,…

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Jeff. I'd also like to thank all of team O'Reilly for their continued commitment to the outstanding customer service, which drove our solid performance in the third quarter. Now, I will take a closer look at our quarterly results and update our guidance for the last quarter of 2018. For the quarter, sales increased $143 million comprised of a $90 million increase in comp store sales, a $57 million increase in non-comp store sales, a $3 million decrease in non-comp non-store sales, and a $1 million decrease from closed stores. For 2018, we continue to expect our total revenues to be $9.4 billion to $9.6 billion. Our gross margin was up 42 basis points for the quarter as we continue to experience stable merchandise margins and benefited from the LIFO comparison to the prior year. We did not see a LIFO charge during the quarter versus a $3 million charge last year, and for the remainder of the year, we do not expect to have a LIFO charge as a result of our expectation of the impact of tariff-driven cost increases. Tariffs have had a minimal impact to our comps and gross margin thus far in 2018, but the list of parts subject to the 10% tariff is more extensive. However, we continue to expect to pass along cost increases from tariffs to our customers. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 had a dramatic impact on our third quarter earnings, and will continue to have a significant positive impact on our tax rate on a go-forward basis. Our effective tax rate for the third quarter was 19.6% of pre-tax income, including the benefit from tax deductions per share based composition which reduced our tax rate by 3%. Excluding the tax benefit from share-based compensation, our effective tax…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. And our first question comes from Matt Fassler from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Matthew J. Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Thank you so much, and good morning. My first question relates to gas prices. So you cited gas prices and miles driven as a risk last quarter. You nonetheless came in towards the high-end of your same-store sales guided range. Any thoughts as to how this is playing out in terms of consumers' mindset, and anything you can see in the traffic in stores or the kinds of categories that are ebbing and flowing that would suggest that the increases in gas prices over the past several months have had any impact on the business?

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Sure, Matt. I'd be happy to answer that. We really have the same concern going into the fourth quarter that we had going into the third quarter, and that is that – with fuel prices rising, the impact is most likely on the lower-income DIY customers. And this quarter and third quarter and even earlier in the year, the professional side of our business has outperformed the cash side of our business. And I don't know if there's any specific evidence in the third quarter to substantiate that, but it is an ongoing concern. As fuel prices continue to increase or stay at a high level for a longer period of time, there's a better chance that it will impact the spending habits of our cash-strapped DIY customers specifically within deferring regular maintenance, and maybe postponing repairs where they can. Matthew J. Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Great. And then, as a quick follow up, I know that the car park evolution really plays out over period of years, but presumably you have insights based on what you're selling as to whether we've seen a bottoming in the supply of vehicles best suited to your mix. Any sign – if you think not necessarily Q3 versus Q2, but this past quarter, in the past couple of quarters versus the few that preceded it as to whether the drag that the whole industry has experienced from car park, vintage might be bottoming, if not turning?

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Sure. If you look back at 2017, as we've said, there were several things that impacted sales in 2017, one of which we felt was the impact of the SAAR bubble and the car park. We have seen evidence this year as we've reported that the professional side of our business is improving. And that's where we expected to see the first improvements was on that side of our business, as those cars that are coming out of the warranty cycle are more likely to go back to the shops to be repaired at that time. So the improvement in the professional side of our business is evidence that we are trending out of that bubble. Matthew J. Fassler - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Thank you so much for that, appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mike Baker from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Mike Baker - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Hi, thanks. Two margin questions. One, when you adjust for the LIFO numbers that you give, it looks like your gross margins excluding LIFO were up this quarter. And that looks like an inflection point versus the last four or five quarters. So is that all just mix? Or are you taking prices? Or is there something else to explain that inflection point?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Well, when we see inflationary prices, our industry has historically been able to pass those on. So we remain competitive on our pricing. What we would tell you is that the improvement year-over-year is primarily mix driven for the third quarter.

Mike Baker - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. And then as a follow up to the margin question, as we look ahead to next year, can you provide any early insight into how we might think about gross margin and operating margin for 2019? After I think this year will be – 2018 will be the second year in a row of declines. Any insight into whether this year will be the trough? Or how we should think about next year?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Well, there's a lot of activity that's going to occur between now and the end of the year. And there's another round of tariffs that potentially could go into effect in January. So before giving guidance – we'll give our guidance on the fourth quarter call – there's some things that have to transpire for us to better be able to put numbers around that.

Mike Baker - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

So the tariff outlook will have an impact you think to that outlook?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

I think it will have an impact on what we see our average ticket doing, our comps doing and also our expenses.

Mike Baker - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Thanks. I'll turn it over to someone else.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Scot Ciccarelli from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Scot Ciccarelli - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Good morning, guys.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Scot.

Scot Ciccarelli - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Hi. So we know that SG&A growth is exaggerated this year because of a bunch of the labor investments. Obviously, you highlighted that almost a year ago at this point. But if we kind of think about past 2018, what are your expectations for SG&A per store growth? Is it something similar to what we've seen this year, just given the incredibly tight labor environment? Or do we get something back to a similar cadence as we saw in, let's call it, 2017, 2016, et cetera?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Again, we'll give our 2019 outlook on our next call. As we talked about within this year, and in relation to SG&A, we saw a step function increase in our SG&A, as we proactively looked at primarily our IT spend and our store payroll and raised those without the expectation of significant inflation in our selling price. On a go-forward basis, we would expect SG&A pressure to be reflected also in the goods that we sell as is typical in retail.

Scot Ciccarelli - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Understood. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Matt McClintock from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Matthew McClintock - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Hi, yes. Good morning, everyone. I understand the conservatism that you're putting in your guidance from rising gas prices, and that makes sense. But how should I think about that lower income consumer and the impact of rising gas prices at the same time that the unemployment rate's at an all-time low and wage pressure that you're experiencing and the rest of the retail industry is experiencing and everyone's experiencing should actually increase their purchasing power?

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Tom, do you want to take that one?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Okay. Gas price is one of the factors that will impact their discretionary income and their ability to fund their life. And when those costs go up, gas prices and expected impact of tariffs in average pricing of auto parts, they have historically attempted to defer maintenance. And we would expect that there's a potential that they will take a look at those inflationary price increases and stretch out their intervals of repair or delay repairs as long as they can. So that's what we've seen in the past. We will see how they react to these inflationary pressures as – because it'll be also a computation of what happens to their wages.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

And, Matt, to add to that, there were other components too that impacted our guide other than just the inflation component and gas prices. As we discussed, December is a volatile month from us, and it's really dependent a lot on weather patterns. And the past two Decembers have come with very cold weather, which has driven strong sales, and we're very hopeful for a cold wet winter, a cold wet December, early winter again this year. Also we talked about the impact of the holidays. We talked about New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve following on a Monday this year as opposed to a weekend last year, and that will result in some of our professional customers likely either being open shorter hours on a weekday, which are typically higher volume days or being closed altogether on those holidays. So there are several factors that impacted our fourth quarter guidance over and above just the rising fuel prices and inflation.

Matthew McClintock - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Perfect, thanks for the color. Appreciate it.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

You bet.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Seth Basham from Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks a lot, and good morning. My question is also around inflation, specifically thinking about the potential for tariff rates going to 25% in 2019. And you're saying your confidence in your ability to pass along cost increases related to inflation whether it'd be tariff related or otherwise, but there's also potential as you called out for demand disruption? In this instance, with such a large potential inflation ahead of us, would you consider not fully passing along some of those cost increases you face to keep the impact on demand to a minimum?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Seth, we have had very good success as you pointed out passing along what we've seen thus far. And thus far this last round in September hit a lot more of our product categories than the first two rounds. The first two rounds were more or so related to components and the third round in September was more related to finished goods. What I would tell you is that, we pushed back on our suppliers both from a – the amount of tariff they're passing along to us and the timing of what they're passing through. And we didn't experience a full 10% and we don't expect to experience a full 25% should that go into effect after the first of the year. But our plan is to try to push all that through.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, fair enough. And my follow up question is thinking about some of the strategic implications of one of your large competitors, Advance Auto forming a strategic partnership with Walmart. Would you guys ever consider forming a strategic partnership with any online marketplace and what are your thoughts as it relates to that idea?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Yeah, the concept of us partnering with an e-commerce company or a larger retailer is not something that we've considered. The Advance-Walmart deal is still relatively new and frankly we probably know as much or less about that than you guys do. All we know is what we've read. But today we have really not even considered partnering with anyone outside of our own company and our own channels to sell auto parts. We are very focused on our omnichannel initiatives and e-commerce initiatives to make inventory more readily available to consumers over whichever channels that they decide to buy auto parts. But we've had no discussions about going outside of our company to sell parts on the Internet.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Fair enough. Thanks a lot guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Nagel from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Brian Nagel - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc.: Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Nice quarter.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Brian. Brian Nagel - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc.: Bigger picture question, as you'd commented in your prepared remarks, sales so far in this year have been much better and they're much steadier. So clearly a nice rebound from what was occurring several quarters ago. But as you look at the data, and you've mentioned too that, I think, the overall environment is getting better with the car park or other factors. But as you look at these larger more macro external factors are sales now tracking with where they should be given those factors?

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Brian, yes. The short answer is, yes. We always want those numbers to be higher. We're never, never pleased with our sales and we also always want to deliver higher sales than what we did the previous quarter. It's what we strive to do every year. But this – we're tracking on plan this year. We're performing where we felt like we will perform throughout both the third quarter and the year-to-date, so we're relatively pleased. Brian Nagel - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc.: Okay. And then my second question is somewhat of a follow up to Seth's question from a second ago. But with regard to tariffs, and clearly you and your industry have had a very good history of passing along higher costs. But is there the potential now with increased price transparency out there, that that could limit to some extent your ability to pass along these costs? And have you looked at that and considered that factor as we think about these potential tariffs?

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Tom, do you want to take that one?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

When you look at the base cost of the products we sell, no matter what outlet that are going through, those tariffs are going to hit those products the same amount. So, there's disparity between what you can buy a part online or you can buy a part in the store for. And there's also a tremendous amount of service that comes with the immediacy of need, our professional parts people, ability to test parts. Some parts will change out for you. Ability to return something that didn't work ability to pick up the same day something you didn't have. And there's a tremendous value in that. So the fact that tariffs raise the price of all the goods sold, to us we look at what's that price differentiation, and what's the value. But we also have to remember that, most of the pricing comparisons that we see out there are in branded parts which are really not the DIY parts. Those are primarily professional parts. And there is an entry-level private label product in virtually every category that's a much more economical fix, it meets all these specs but much more economical fix for our DIY customers. Brian Nagel - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc.: Got it. Appreciate all the color, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Bottiglieri from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Chris Bottiglieri - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Very good quarter, but I had just one metric I wanted to focus on a little bit. Your new store productivity metric as measured by the difference between revenue and comps divided by square footage seemed to fall off a little bit. I know, the non-store decline was probably a piece of that, and perhaps maybe slower DIY growth, was there any timing in store count or anything else you can kind of call out that would have impacted the ramp up from new stores?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

I would tell you that you should look at the numbers from my script, and they'll be in the Q on what non-store, non-comp where that was the big driver, it had to do with just the timing of year end, and how we do our new sales return reserves. But we are pleased with our new store performance. They continue to achieve and surpass our expectations. So, we're going to continue to move forward as Jeff talked about, we're going to go to a range of 200 to 210 new stores next year, and again it's that accounting noise that's creating issues in your calculation.

Chris Bottiglieri - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst

Got you. And then, 6,000 – I think you've historically said 6,000 was the right store potential and 6,500 if there's consolidation. Is that still the way you're thinking about kind of the long-term store potential when you think about your business?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

It is at this point, yes.

Chris Bottiglieri - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst

Got you. Okay. Thank you for the time, appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Lasser from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Michael Lasser - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Michael.

Michael Lasser - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Based on what you know now, and all else being equal if you pass through the tariff, slight increases you're getting into next year what do you think the inflation contribution to your business based on a like number of units would be?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Again, we have another round of tariffs that may or may not come into effect. We also – most of our suppliers have onshore inventory, so we haven't seen all the pricing effects of the tariffs that we're going to see. We're also actively working to mitigate those. So making comments on next year's inflationary pressures at this point would be premature. So, we will update everyone within our guidance which – detailed guidance – probably the most detailed guidance in the industry and give quarterly number. So, we will provide all of that information on our fourth quarter call.

Michael Lasser - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

And Tom, could you give us the contribution from inflation in the third quarter and was there any impact from the tariffs as of yet?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

I've touched on that in my prepared comments; the inflation this year has been around 1% pretty consistent per quarter. The tariff impact has been very minimal year-to-date, minimal in the third quarter. They've been primarily commodity-based, and we will see how it plays out in the fourth quarter, but expectation is that we will see more inflation.

Michael Lasser - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

And my follow-up question is, if we look at the spread between O'Reilly's comp, GPC's comp, the retail sales data from the Census Bureau, spread narrowed a bit this quarter now. So it's the timing of when the Sunday fell, but can you give us a sense for why your share gains might be decelerating a little bit?

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Jeff, you want to take that one?

Jeff M. Shaw - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Yeah. Well, I mean we're pretty pleased with our quarter. I mean, we guided 2% to 4%, and we came in at a 3.9%. So as Greg said earlier, we can always do better and we're always focused on doing better, but we're pretty happy with the results of the quarter. As far as what's going on in the field, I mean, we don't really see or hear anything on the Street that would indicate that we're losing any share. The business is – as we spoke to in the past is a highly-fragmented business, especially on the DIFM side with 37,000 part stores out there, and there's really no underserved market. We have a tremendous amount of respect for all our competitors. And really we focus on our business model and that's really doing the best we can on the retail and the professional side of our business in each one of our stores all across the country every day.

Michael Lasser - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Thank you very much, and good luck with the fourth quarter.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Michael.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Christopher Horvers from JPMorgan. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Christopher Horvers - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Good morning.

Christopher Horvers - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Following up on the gross margin, how do you expect the mix to play out in the fourth quarter? Do you expect that mix benefit to continue? And then on the current price increases, is there any near-term potential benefit to capture some merchandise margin benefit on your existing inventory cost as you pass along price increases, perhaps ahead of that next order?

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Tom, you want to take?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Yeah. On the gross margin, we always plan for normal. So we would expect to have normal fourth quarter gross margins. On the price increases and capturing additional margin, it will depend on the cadence of prices that go out. What I would tell you is, because there's so many price increases, we are working very hard with our suppliers to try to defer these price increases. So we're actually paying them either through the inventory that we have or through the inventory that our suppliers have onshore. So I don't think there's a huge opportunity to raise prices in advance, and don't think that, that's our best approach.

Christopher Horvers - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Understood. And then just thinking longer-term about passing through price increases, is a price increase such that you expect to be able to maintain the merchandise margin rate? Or is the expectation that you get the inflation in the top line and that drives better leverage on the fixed costs and gross margin, and that allows you to maintain or potentially expand gross margin?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

When we look at the straight math, our goal is always to maintain our gross margin percentage, because we also have expenses that have the same inflationary impact on them.

Christopher Horvers - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Understood. Thanks very much.

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Bret Jordan from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Bret Jordan - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Hey. Good morning, guys.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Morning, Bret.

Bret Jordan - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Could you talk about regional performance dispersion, strong markets versus weaker markets?

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Sure. Jeff, do you want to take that?

Jeff M. Shaw - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Well, I mean, really it was about what you'd expect coming off a more normalized winter and a better summer across most markets. It was fairly consistent across the country. A couple of markets I would call out is the North and the Northeast had a very solid quarter. And the only other comment I would make would be that our Western markets maybe weren't quite as strong as the rest of the company. But that really is due to tougher compares from last year, and they really had a milder summer than normal out West. That didn't help either.

Bret Jordan - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Okay, great. And then a follow-up, when you think about the environment with tariffs and the big players making more omni-channel push, does the M&A environment potentially get more active? I mean, as some of those smaller players might have a harder time just competing in this environment, do you see either more interested sellers? How you'll think about the next 12 months?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

The players that are still out there that we would be interested in are good operations that have weathered a lot of storms and have good management teams and are well-capitalized. When we look at those opportunities, what we've seen over the last two or three years is, as everyone knows, an opportunistic acquirer and consolidator have had success in that realm. But we need a motivated seller. And these companies that are out there, we're still looking at are good companies. And it's more a timing thing for them than the economic environment.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Yeah. Bret, I would add to that, every year we'll buy a few one-, two-store operations. And this year has really been – the cadence of this year's acquisition is really no different than we've seen the past few years. So I wouldn't attribute any change to tariffs or inflation.

Bret Jordan - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kate McShane from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Kate McShane - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Hi, thank you for taking my question. I wanted to ask a question around the new DCs. Could you remind us what happens to the surrounding stores when you open up a new DC? Do they get a comp lift of any kind? And what happens with the DC capacity currently used for the nearby stores?

Jeff M. Shaw - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Well, historically, I mean the stores that are serviced out of a hub store that do have a new DC open in their market, they've got a much greater SKU offering. They move from somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 to 70,000 SKUs up to 150,000, 160,000 SKUs. So they just have much more availability readily in the market. And historically, we have seen a little bit of a comp lift in those markets.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Yeah, you're going to – Kate, to add to that, what you're going to see as we move into an expansion market is the stores within a reasonable distance from the DCs will have same-day, multiple times a day access to that DC inventory. And to really add to what Jeff said from a hub store perspective, not much difference on the outside stores. They're receiving – that are outside that perimeter, they're receiving inventory from a different DC. That doesn't really impact them. The real benefit is to the stores that are within a city counter service area of the DC.

Kate McShane - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, great. And if I could ask just another comp lift market share question. In the press release and in your commentary you mentioned, you're opening another 200 to 210 stores based on your confidence, (50:07) increased market share. Is there something different that you're seeing in the market for these new stores that you're opening versus what you've done in the past with store openings?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

As Jeff said in his prepared comment, we don't go into any underserved market. So every market is competitive. We continue to have a lot of confidence in our business model and how we execute and our ability to take share in any market we go into. But we would tell you that it's been pretty consistent for a number of years, the competitiveness of each market. The one thing I would tell you is that, when we look at the Northeast as we saw on the West Coast is that development time to get stores open take longer.

Kate McShane - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Zach Fadem from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Zachary Fadem - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Hey, good morning. Could you speak to the impact of weather and Hurricane Florence in the quarter compared to Harvey last year, particularly on the DIY side? And do you foresee any notable impacts of Hurricane Michael and the flooding in Texas to play out in your business in Q4 and ahead?

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

As far as Florence, we had roughly 100 stores that were closed during the event mainly due to mandatory evacuations. So there's no doubt that it cost us some business. Our goal in any natural disaster is to get back in the store as quick as we possibly can, ensure our team member's safety and they get back in the stores. Even though, it might be a skeleton crew at least get the doors open to be there for our customers. So we try to open back in the markets as quick as anybody to provide the post-hurricane supplies that the customers desperately need. I mean, there's a tremendous amount of goodwill created when your doors are open and you've got a family that's without power – potentially without power for days or weeks, and we can supply a generator where they can keep their food from spoiling or have some lights on. So anything that we would lose in the pre-hurricane, there's always some tailwind after the event, but it normally – as we've seen in the ones last year was somewhat of a push.

Zachary Fadem - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Got it. And on the SG&A line in the quarter, I just want to confirm that the step change is primarily wages, and some IT investments. And for Q4 is it fair to expect that the SG&A per store will come back to that 3% to 3.5% range that you've spoken about for the year?

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

That would be a fair estimate. And the components will be the same. We have some additional pressure on some other lines that put us above 3.5% in the third quarter.

Zachary Fadem - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Got it. Appreciate the time, guys. Thanks so much.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Simeon Gutman from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Simeon Ari Gutman - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hey, everyone. Simeon, good quarter. Follow up on the Do It for Me business. You mentioned, ticket positive, I missed it, if you talked about traffic, how traffic is trending or I guess transaction counts in Do It for Me?

Jeff M. Shaw - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Yes. So on the DIFM side of the business both were positive. Simeon Ari Gutman - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. And is that rate – has that rate changed a bit during the year? Is it accelerating as you said – to sort of support the comments that we're getting past that bubble?

Jeff M. Shaw - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

It's remained pretty solid. Simeon Ari Gutman - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. And then just thinking about demand for next year, looking at those sweet spot, I don't know if there's a nuance, but how do you look at it between 6 to 11-year-old vehicles, 6 to 12 do you look at vehicles-only or do you include light trucks? And I'm asking because if you kind of run the waterfall it does produce all healthy, but different magnitudes of outcomes, so if there's one version that you align more than another?

Thomas G. McFall - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Well, we talked about last year that the bubble was a pressure to us especially on the professional side of the business, because it was the weight of the tailwind of more vehicles was being offset in the professional side by that bubble. And that bubble worked through over time. But we felt like 2018 would – that headwind, we faced had abated. We would expect as those years to go through that we'll see some pressure, it will end up more in the DIY side. We see relief on the professional side this year. But we'd expect it on a go-forward basis to start to not have that headwind, have a little bit of a tailwind. As far as the years as you said there's many ways to look at it. We tend to look at 5 to 15-year-old cars and light trucks. Simeon Ari Gutman - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thanks. Appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have now reached our allotted time for questions. I'll now turn the call back over to Mr. Greg Johnson for closing remarks.

Gregory D. Johnson - O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Management

Thank you, Zenaira. We'd like to conclude our call today by thanking the entire O'Reilly team for continued hard work and delivering another solid quarter. I'd like to thank everyone for joining our call today, and we look forward to reporting our 2018 full year results in February. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.