Lev Peker
Analyst · D. A. Davidson. Please go ahead
Thank you, operator. On behalf of the entire CarParts.com management team, we would like to start by thanking our 1,900-plus team members for their hard work, dedication and commitment to our mission of getting drivers back on the road. As you can see in today’s release, in 2020, CarParts.com achieved record sales, gross profit and adjusted EBITDA in almost a decade. Before we turn to our quarterly results, I would like to take a moment to recap our journey over the last two years as well as introduce the vision and long-term goals for our company. As many of know, almost the entire management team joined during 2019. Our company was facing numerous challenges, but what we had were amazing frontline team members, valuable trademarks, an extensive catalog, global vendor relationships and lots of historical customer data. We laid out our strategy of right parts, right time, right place and a mission of getting drivers back on the road. Right part means ensuring our customers can find a complete solution that fit their vehicle on our website. Our efforts to accomplish this included curating our proprietary catalog, creating a fast mobile-friendly user experience, building world-class data science and inventory forecasting teams and investing in our logistics and merchandising capabilities. These efforts resulted in the highest sales the company ever recorded in Q1 2020, before the COVID lockdown started. More recently, our flagship website, CarParts.com, was named the fastest-growing website in the industry by SimilarWeb. We also rolled out a dedicated electrical vehicle landing page to help customers find the parts they need for their EV or hybrid vehicle and highlight news and information about the EV market. As EVs and hybrid become a larger part of the market, we plan to be there for our customers every step of the way. However, we still have more to do in helping our customers get the right parts. At the end of 2020, we began expanding our mechanical parts offering. While global supply chain disruptions have slowed our rollout of these products, we are still excited by the initial customer reception and look forward to having these SKUs fully in stock in the second-half of the year. The total addressable market for mechanical parts are significantly larger than collision replacement parts. However, it currently only represents about one quarter of our revenues. This is a huge opportunity for us. By leveraging our existing core competencies and two-step distribution model, we believe we can build a competitive offering of premium mechanical items across a wide spectrum of the value chain. Like other industries, we can offer our customers premium products at value prices as well as the major brands they might be familiar with. Over time, we see CarParts.com becoming the number one trusted destination for customer thinking about repair and maintenance with the parts, tools and solutions they need to get back on the road. Right time means getting the customers back on the road quickly. Obviously, quickly is a moving target and our goal is to shorten the click to delivery time, so that we can meet our customers' evolving expectations. Over the last two years, we have doubled our warehouse footprint to close to 1 million square feet of space and our distribution and logistics operations are now led by a world-class team with experience from Walmart, Home Depot and Amazon. Our average click-to-ship times have gone from around 36 hours to now under 12 hours and we will continue to push relentlessly for continuous improvement. In order to better customer experience, we are heavily invested in optimizing last-mile delivery, vending logic and package selection by utilizing advanced data analytics and machine learning algorithms. Our inventory turns have also improved by over 40% while increasing inventory availability. As we navigate the current global supply chain disruption, we are feeling the impact on both inbound and outbound freight. Constraints on containers on ocean vessels have increased the cost of importing and slowed down the flow of inventory. As of today, our new Texas distribution center is up and running and staffed, but only about 50% full. On the outbound side, all carriers are running about full capacity, slowing down order fulfillment and adding costs. We expect this to get better over time as carriers add more capacity and our company adds regional partners. Our goal is to continue getting closer to our customers to get them the parts they need to get back on the road as quickly as possible. Right place means empowering our customers to choose how they want to repair and maintain their vehicle. Whether they are a do-it-yourself or do-it-for-me customer, we are committed to offering them the resources, tools and turnkey solutions and services to get them back on the road. The total automotive aftermarket is approximately $300 billion, however, still very under penetrated online compared to other verticals and industries. As consumers become more comfortable buying online, we anticipate continued growth acceleration. With the right tools and solutions and by leveraging our core competencies, we see a great opportunity to disrupt an industry that hasn't really evolved in decades. We understand that customers may or may not have a local mechanic they trust, but want a cost competitive solution in an industry with limited pricing transparency. We also know some customers would prefer a Netflix type experience where they can order their repairs or maintain their vehicle and never leave their house. Whether we send a mobile mechanic to you or refer you to a trusted shop, CarParts.com will be there to solve the customers’ needs and we are working hard behind the scenes to bring this vision to reality. Today, CarParts.com is the fastest-growing website in the industry. And tomorrow, as we empower drivers with more tools around diagnostics, maintenance and repair options, we believe we will continue to enhance our competitive moat and disrupt the industry. I’d now like to turn it over to David.