He has sold over $5.25 billion worth of car dealerships and he's ready to share all his secrets.
他已经卖掉了价值超过52.5亿美元的汽车经销商,并且他愿意分享自己的所有秘密。
Today I'm speaking with Alan Hay, the founder and president of Hay Partners, a dealership by-sell advisory that helps dealers maximize their value in selling their business. We discuss Alan's perspective on the current state of the auto market, the most and least desirable dealership franchises, Toyota's strategic retail moves, what's next for dealership profits, and much more.
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What's up everyone, this is Car Dealer Ship Guy, you're listening to the Car Dealership Guy podcast which is my effort to give you access to the most unbiased and transparent insights into the car market.
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We're probably going to have the third best year in the history of our industry in terms of the number of rooftops that are selling. The value is still quite high for these dealerships. The values are coming down. We're going to have our best year as a firm, which is wonderful.
We saw a little fewer stores this year than last year. The value per store has been very high. We've had some transactions get pushed from the fourth quarter to the first quarter. The first quarter for us, if everything we have that's under definitive agreement and L.O.I. closes, we'll sell more stores in the first quarter than we sold all last year. That's just our firm. Sometimes you get these fluctuations, a group of stores closes one month later, it's always cheap economics. But it's still a very active buy-sell market.
One of our clients signed a letter of intent on Friday for a group of three stores that priced above the top of the range of estimated to him. Now those stores included a lot of Toyota, which is maybe the hottest franchise today. We're in the market with over 60 other dealerships where they were engaged to sell. The response we're getting so far is still a lot of interest, but also a lot of questions. People are wondering, how do you value these stores now? Because the earnings are dropping. The supplies come back, which means that dealers are now having to compete to sell the products. They can't just sit back and take orders. They have to go become retailers again. Some cases that means not charging over sticker. In some cases with some products like the EVs, we just talked about, they're significant discounting.
When I'm high, my teammates send me a text today for a Porsche Taycon lease. The lease is $483 a month for a Taycon. Two-year lease, low mileage lease, I think it's 10,000 miles over two years. But no, excuse me, $4.2353. This was a $95,000 car. How do you reconcile that? What's driving that?
All the factories, the OEMs have committed to produce a certain amount of vehicles, certain percentage of their vehicles in the vehicles. They're going to have to prime the pump and somehow get the existing EVs sold and maybe begin to lobby behind the scenes just like all the dealers have. There was $3,000, all the dealers sent. President Biden's administration a letter was two weeks ago saying we need to slow down this ship from ICE to EVs because the demand's not there. It's creating all types of distortions and inefficiencies. They're going to cost jobs and they're going to cost consumers a lot of money and they're going to make people unhappy. I think the politicians are going to listen because politicians are voted into office by consumers and if the consumers believe they're being forced to buy products they'll like at expensive prices, the deltzer of all their needs, they're going to react by putting different people in power.
I think this is a technology that I think many of us want to have more of in our lives to use the carbon footprint that we're putting out there. But dealers are on the front lines. They're kind of the grease between the consumer and the factory and they're saying loud and clear, the dealers that this push towards EVs coming too soon, too hard and many of them point towards Toyota as a rational proponent of hybrids where you can have the benefits of a plug-in hybrid can go 40 miles on only EV power which satisfies maybe 90% of the daily trips or 40 miles or less but still have the range to drive 400 miles if you need to go to grandma's house or in South Florida, escape or hurricane. You can just get in the car and go.
I want to ask you two questions there. First of all, you put out a quarterly report called the Hagerport, right? We're linking in the show notes below. Super, super in-depth, comprehensive report on the state of the car market and then with an even more in depth, I'll do just the car market M&A dealership M&A. So highly recommend checking it out. You mentioned in the Hagerport, dealership profits are down 17% year over year, still up 2.5x from pre-pandemic levels, yet valuations remain more or less the same. How does this make sense? What are investors? What are people seeing in the car market? What are they gravitating towards?
Well, profits drive value and when the pandemic hit, initially there was a deterioration in dealership values because buyers weren't sure how long this pandemic was going to last or what the impact was going to be and sellers were also a little bit scared with how long it's going to be and what would the values be after the pandemic ended, if it ever ended. So the dealership values dropped maybe 15% in 2020 and then we saw them just take off and they really grew. When I talk about dealership values, I'm going to focus on the goodwill component, the intangible value. Real estate hasn't changed that much the last couple of years. Other asset values are kind of set by the market, but the goodwill value is what varies a lot based upon the profitability of the business. And so as the profits took off and profits tripled, more than tripled at the average dealership, blue sky values went up about 2.5x. They didn't triple like profits did because buyers knew that eventually these profits would begin to decline and go back somewhere towards where they were before the pandemic hit. So profits tripled, dealership values went up about 2.5x. Now they're trending back down. We estimate that dealership values have fallen 17% since the end of 22. So that's a material change. So it's down 17% from the, I call it almost the peak in 22. And our expectation is that they're going to continue to decline on average as the supply increases, supply gives less leverage to the dealer, more leverage to the consumer, interest rates are still pretty high. Next year, they're going to come down. We hope the floor plan rates are high. There's been inflation, et cetera. So the new vehicle grosses have dropped, gosh, 25% according to our math on average. Since the end of 2022, used vehicle grosses have dropped 13%. F&I is flat. Fixed is up. That's been a wonderful source of incremental profit for dealers and it demonstrates the strength of the auto retail model where you might sell from one department, but you can make up for a different department.
Correct. And friend, anyone listening, like, so just want to couple terms here to define, right? You mentioned goodwill. Goodwill, you're referring to blue sky, blue sky goodwill, same thing, same term and car business fixed. Of course, you're referring to service department, parts department at a dealership, pretty much anything that's not sales or the finance income that dealers have. That's right. Would you're referring to goodwill has risen for dealerships? Is it that the actual absolute value has risen because profits are higher? Or is it that the actual multiple has risen? Meaning, I may have paid four times on earnings of a dealership and now I'm paying five times earnings of the dealership or a combination of both. What is it?
It's two factors that go into calculating goodwill. And for traditional dealership buyer, they're looking at a multiple of pre-tax earnings that they expect to make in the future. And sometimes the best predictor of the future is the past, right?
So if before the pandemic hit, dealership profits were very flat for five years before the pandemic hit. So you can take a look at last risk profits and estimate that would be the same as next year's profits. And different franchises trade for different multiples.
So Portia's are super desirable. Franchise is very rare. They almost never come. When they do, people pay a lot. They might pay nine or 10 times the prior year's earnings for a Porsche store.
Four dealership, General Motors dealership, Solanus dealership, they're way more numerous. And so there, frankly, there's less competition to buy that was there more options for buyers, so they don't pay the same multiple.
So I think when the pandemic hit, it kind of scramble the math for buyers because the earnings were going up significantly. So as a dealership buyer, you kind of had to project, well, how far will they go and how long will they stay up there?
So we started to see some different formulas being used, rather than just last year's earnings, this combination of maybe last year's earnings and the last 12 months, aren't it? Average those two together say, well, it's going to go up.
It's not going to stay up somewhere between pre pandemic and pandemic loans. And that formula has evolved. Partially, the ship guy over the last couple of years, and it's evolving again now.
Where for certain franchises, the grossest have come down significantly like it's Solanus. You know, I think the average Solanus store today may be making the same for the last than it was in 2019.
So any buyer that's buying a Solanus store is just going to throw out what happened in 2020 and 2021 and 2022, because those profits are history. Now they're going to wonder how long is the current state going to continue where they have too much supply and therefore their gross profits on the front end or too low.
So for Solanus, it's a totally different math than for instance, at Toyota or Honda, where they're still in a situation of very short supply that excellent product coming out. We have one Toyota representing, it's very profitable.
So we're $29 a year. Their profits are higher over the last 12 months than they were in 2022 or 2021. They're still going up. So Josh, that business is how do you explain that? Like, how is Toyota doing so well when their market share keeps declining?
I don't know why they've had a harder time producing units compared to Korean brands. The Korean brands did an excellent job keeping their dealer supplied during the pandemic. They didn't seem to have the same chip shortages as some of the Japanese brands did.
So you know, there's the Korean manufacturers maybe been very well, because it was selling a lot of cars without having to discount them. Some of the Japanese brands and I would say Honda and Toyota both suffered from Malacca supply the last two, three years.
They may not be making as much money as they could have. They had more products to sell. But for the dealers, they're still in the situation of under supply when it comes to consumer demand.
And Toyota Financial Services is an excellent captive finance company for Toyota dealers. They get a lot of deals placed that other lenders might not place. So they're a great source of success for Toyota dealers. And now they've got this new wave of products coming out. They haven't really hit the showroom floor.
So I'm not sure that Toyota has peaked yet in terms of dealership profits. You have the new Tacoma coming, the new Forerunner, the new Landcraiser is out. There's a lot of really good truck products coming that are going to bring full price. If not over, full sticker for those when they are beginning to show up in dealers' lots.
What is the right multiple to use? What is the right formula for an auto dealership today? I'm going to give it all depends response. It really depends on the franchise.
For Solanus dealers, they could probably project the next 12 months or give back the last 12 months. But we've totally lost the COVID bump for Solanus dealers.
For Toyota dealers, we're still on the COVID bump. And I think we're going to be in it for at least another 6, 8, 10, 12 months, especially if these new products hit and are as successful as they seem like they will be.
So you think Toyota's is it that inventory won't rebound to equilibrium and should consumers still expect just high demand markups and whatnot for Toyota product?
你认为丰田的库存能否恢复到平衡,并且消费者是否仍然应该对丰田产品预期高需求的价格上涨等情况?
I think so. I mean, they have products that are very affordable. You could go get a Camry today. I think they're available on many dealership lots for maybe $30,000, $20,000, $30,000.
Camry is as a, to me, that is all you need in the vehicle. It's large, it's comfortable, it's fast, got a lot of technology, excellent reliability, excellent resale value for $30,000. That's a great value. And it supports the Toyota dealers. They may not make a lot of money on that Camry, but that car is going to come back for service for next 50,000 miles. That dealer is going to be able to service it.
The new ever is buying the Camry may come and trade in a four or five year old Corolla, perhaps, and that's going to make a great use vehicle for that dealer. So it's just a, I mean, the Toyota business model is one that I'm sure many other OEMs look at and I would hope they try to simulate it because the consumer is happy, right? They get a great product at a great price with great visual value. So that overall is a positive experience, very good financing available. The dealers are really happy. They feel like Toyota really is their business partner and supporting them and success their business. And I think Toyota had record profits last year. So it's just a win, win, win right now in the Toyota. And I say, Toyota, I shouldn't flex this and that as well.
Look, when you say brands are doing well, the first thing that comes to my mind is profits are high, right? And dealers are chasing that brand and likely dealers assume that that brand will continue doing well because the product is desirable. That's kind of the full circle in my head. And so knowing that what other brands are dealers kind of flocking towards and what does that tell you about the product? I think Honda has also been in a situation of under supply. So the products that they are making available to the dealers are selling very quickly for strong margins. BMW, we're representing a number of BMW dealers now and they're margins have stayed very high. The fixed operations are excellent. I've been trying to buy a BMW. They're not in stock, you know, at least the ones that I'm looking for.
I'm smiling because you said the fixed operations are excellent for BMW. So I'll leave it at that. The parts and service, this is for dealers. And that can mean two things. It can mean the vehicles break or it could just mean that people drive them a lot and want them to be well maintained. I would say in terms of vehicles that break, you could put maybe Land Rover in that net bucket. Land Rover is another franchise that we're representing right now and we're seeing X-LUT profits in that brand. And that from a consumer standpoint, you know, is a little bit, maybe they don't love it because this client we have, their average front end gross is $15,000. They're making an average of $15,000. That doesn't include finance and insurance profits. That's just the spread between what they cost by the vehicle, what they're selling for. That's about as high as McLean. On a Land Rover? Yeah, that's about as high as we've seen with anything except for maybe Bentley, Rolls, Ferrari type brands. And you're saying that that is the average per unit profit that you're seeing right now? At that dealership. Yep.
Because there's just so much demand for that product. I mean, the design of the new full size Land Rover and the Sport and Defender, those three products are at hot. So much really want to buy those products. But they do have a reputation for breaking. So not only is a dealer making good money selling those vehicles, but they come back to the service arm and for various items.
Did you see the news from out of the UK about Land Rover, the thefts? Do you see that? No. So yeah, I mean, there's apparently a big, big issue in the UK with just thefts of Land Rovers. And what's happening is insurance costs are like rising astronomically. And the values are taking a massive hit because of it. And so I first heard about this like three months ago, I got one of a follower DM'd me from the UK say, Hey, listen, I just want you to know, I have a Land Rover here. And like, I can't get this thing in the shirt. It's absolutely crazy. And then this morning, I see Bloomberg put out an entire article about it. And I'm like, Oh my God, wow, this is like coming full circle. Wow, I heard that about Andre Kia that it's easy to somehow replicate the key. You can somehow, these can listen when someone's using their key and copy the code somehow. But I've not heard that about Land Rover. So that's that's too bad. I hope we don't fix that.
Yeah, I think hunting, you have mostly put remedies for that in the US mostly, but for yeah, for Land Rover in the UK, just something, something to benchmark because, you know, I'd be curious to know if that could, you know, spill into the US or if that's very much, you know, confined to the UK for whatever reason, it might be some technological differences. I don't know. I mean, it's it's a measure of demand, I guess, that there's still a lot of Land Rovers. It means there's a market for Law Ram. Maybe they see the parts.
Yeah, definitely in the UK. So tell us about like the least interesting brands right now. I think, you know, what are dealers sort of flocking away from or where you see the biggest declines in value? I think that there's some increased concern about some of the domestic brands, you know, the strike, effectively raised the labor costs. I think it was for maybe estimated, it was another 800, 900 hours in cost per vehicle.
General Motors seem to have a different outlook that they share. They thought they could reduce that additional labor by value engineering or something. I'm not sure how they're going to just get away from it. So I think that there is some a little bit concern that the domestic three will be at a greater cost as advantage compared to the other brands that are now making cars in America, Kia, Hyundai, Toyota, Subaru, Honda, I mean, all those, they're all competitors, right?
So I've heard some people concerned about the domestic. I think Stellanus, I mentioned, you know, it's very unfortunate what's happened there. They had such a great run going. Yours were making a lot of good money. And I have a good friend, who happened to advise him on the sale of his business last earlier this year, January. He owned the Chrysler store, the Solanus store in Charlotte, Lake Norma.
And he just said that Stellanus increased its wholesale prices, the prices they charge for the products and the dealers more than any other OEM raised it. And that then raises the price to the consumer. And now Stellanus is dropping the two lowest price vehicles out of the Jeep lineup. So Stellanus dealers are saying, like, I don't have cheap cars to sell anymore. And you need that kind of starter vehicle, someone buys a Jeep Compass Patriot or something. And they get that Jeep experience, and they want to come back and get a Wrangler or a Rancherky or a Grand Wagon year. But like I mentioned, and if you go to a Toyota dealership, you can get a camera, you can get a Corolla, I mean, those vehicles are excellent value for $30,000 for less.
You go to a Solanus store, I'm not sure how many vehicles are sitting on a lot for $30,000 for us. Especially now where interest rates are high, it's putting pressure on those dealers to compensate by trying to sell more used cars. They have a hard time selling new, so they try to spend towards selling more used. And that, Mike Jackson, the former CEO from Modern Nation, had a phrase that's, I think, is powerful, which is, there's a battle for talent and capital at R retail. What do you mean by that?
So if I am a general manager or a salesperson or a technician, and I'm working at a Solanus store, and I see my business coming down, I see fewer customers able to afford my product, I get concerned. And so if I'm a technician or a salesperson or a manager, and I'm looking across the street at the Toyota store, or the Honda store, or the Hyundai or the Kia store, and I see their customer parking spaces are full and mine are empty, I say to myself, maybe I should walk across the street and see if there's an opportunity for me. So that's the battle for talent, right? Because they can get out of their chair and go right across the street and maybe make more money that same week.
The battle for capital is, if I'm a dealership group owner, I have four, six, eight, ten stores, I'm going to invest in the dealerships that are making me the most money. I'm going to invest in facilities, I'm going to invest in technologies, I'm going to invest in training, I'm going to invest in marketing, I'm going to invest in inventory, because that's giving me a good return on my investment. So my dollars start to shift towards the brands that are performing well for me, and away from the brands that aren't.
So for Stellanus dealership network, if the talent moves out of that building, out of those buildings somewhere else, if dealers are no longer investing in advertising in inventory or anything else, it's hard to get that capital to float back. So that's the unfortunate phrase or the effect of that phrase that Mike Jackson has, and something that I really hope that the OEMs pay attention to, because if you don't treat your dealer as well, they react, and they move to where they're treated better, just like a consumer would. I'm going to just take up my attention, my time, my money, and I'm going to go to different address and a bus is there.
Yeah, it makes sense. It's like a downward spiral, can only. And I've definitely had some messages from people in the industry, just they've asked, they work at Stellanus store specifically, and you can see they're poking their nose, asking some questions. So what you're saying, it's pretty close to home, but it's also not surprising.
Yeah, and it's a little bit tough there too, Carl, you know, Carl, you know, because some of the products they're making design-wise are great. When they're really nice, you know, and they're trying to, I guess, evolve their brand and take enough of market. But I feel like maybe they've gone up market faster than their traditional customers are ready. And I'm not sure they're requesting a lot of customers or Alexa's buyers or Mercedes buyers at this point.
Yeah, I posted a chart that showed different car manufacturers and how much they've raised MSRP on average since 2019, and Stellanus topped that chart at about 50%. So is that the highest of the brands that you call? Yeah. Yeah, so the brands. That's Jack Saltzman, my former client who talked about that.
So that's hard. Meanwhile, you've had other brands like Hyundai and Kia that have brought out fantastic products that tell you ride, Palisade, they were bringing $10,000 over sticker. Now, Hyundai and Kia could have just raised the sticker by that, or the wholesale price of the dealer by $10,000 to capture all that for themselves, but they didn't. They wanted to keep their products affordable for consumers, and they've got a whole new type of customer base in those stores now that the viewers tell me compared to pre-pandemic. With the credit quality has gone up, they're also bringing the vehicles back to the service department for me. That's pairs. Those are the same people who buy vehicles from Honda. So they couldn't get the vehicles they wanted. Kia Hyundai provided a really desirable or attractive alternatives, and now there's another Hyundai Kia drivers. Which is pretty ingenious if you think about it. It was the ultimate opportunity for car manufacturer over the last three years, when brand loyalty has been at all-time lows because of the supply issue to just capitalize on that market.
And look, Hyundai and Kia have raised their prices also pretty substantial amount, but, and this is a big but, their day supply has remained low. Which just means that the demand is still there. They're at equilibrium unlike the jeeps of the world or Christ-star or whatnot where their day supply keeps climbing at these higher prices.
Well, I would also say that the vehicle quality and size at Hyundai Kia has evolved because of the policy and the tell-your-ride. They didn't have those products before the pandemic hit really. And so that's one reason why the transaction values have gone up. I mean, back to those brands.
I remember hearing a story from a friend of mine who owns exotic dealerships, and he was attending the concourse Dela Gont, that at Pebble Beach, which is the world's pre-eminent, classic car show auction extravaganza weekend, out in Carmel, California. And he was walking through the logic Pebble Beach, you know, the famous golf club there where they have the Pebble Beach and somebody called out his name, he turned around, he went over to this table and there were four or five guys sitting on this table. And he says, gosh, I haven't seen you guys forever. And these people who was talking to, they were the designers that used to work at Bentley, Rolls, Aston, et cetera. He knew from when he was, because he was a done deal, I would see these guys all the time. He said, I haven't seen you guys for years, where have you been? And they responded, we've been in Korea. We've been designing products for the Hyundai Kia group. And that to me explains how Hyundai Kia evolved so much. I mean, you look at a Genesis now, the styling, the stitching and the seats, the switch gear, the technology, it's beautiful. It's the same as you get an premium, almost exotic level vehicle. And so for the average customer who can show up and purchase a Genesis or tell your ride, and they're getting some of that styling that only European exotic retail is just able to offer. So that's incredible transformation that comes from design.
In addition to the engineering of the vehicles, most reliable or long term reliability, I think Hungary got the longest warranty in the business.
除了车辆的工程设计以外,就可靠性和长期可靠性而言,我认为匈牙利在行业中拥有最长的保修期。
It's funny you mention that because I have a friend, he's a doctor. And he makes probably like around 300, 400,000 dollars a year. And he was asking me about cars and asking, you know, he wasn't asking me what to buy. He was just asking me general questions.
I asked him, what do you currently drive? And he told me he tried to tell you ride. And I just found that, you know, I've said this story before, but I always think about that because when I was starting in the business, Hyundai, that was like the back down car, right? Or I remember the old Sonata's with that body style. I mean, that was the vehicle that you save for the customer that maybe, you know, couldn't get approved on anything else. And you need it.
And it's funny. Now, I speak with him. I'm like, wow, like, so you drive a tell your ride. They've definitely moved up market. And you know, they've done it with great products, great body style prices have moved up, you know, somewhat as well. But overall, they've definitely executed very well. And I think that explains why, you know, there's desirability by dealers to acquire these franchises.
Yes, I think that it was there. Those were brands that you kind of avoided. They weren't very profitable. You know, we got some data from a reliable source years ago that showed profits per dealership location by franchise. And the most profitable brands were Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, Land Rover, Toyota, Honda, the least profitable brands were some of the Korean brands. I think that's totally transformed now.
And I'm happy for the dealers who had these franchises for a long time, weren't really worth their time or money. And now are being rewarded. And of course, the catch is now they've got to invest a lot of money in these facilities to make it bigger and nicer. So there's there's a little bit of a fly anyway.
I want to dig deeper into the M&A market right now, right? So first of all, buyers, sellers, what's easier for you to find right now? There are always far more buyers than there are sellers. And that stayed pretty consistent? Yes.
There was a big spike of viewership sales in 2021 and 2022 that was driven partly for tax reasons, partly for economic reasons, partly for out of fear. And then I'll talk about those separately.
But when the pandemic hit, I mentioned the dealership values kind of tanked initially because people were afraid to buy a store. And so M&A just dried up for about three months. And then it took off again.
And buyers were really confident because they could see every month how much more money they were making in their stores. And it's all, this is great. I want more. So I'm going to take the cash that I've made. And when I'm making now and invested in buying more dealerships and the public companies were driving a good portion of that M&A.
They bought before the pandemic hit, there were probably 300, 350 stores a year that we could tell that we're trading hands in this country. And then in 2021, that number went to 700 stores. So the number of rooftops doubled for sale. That's dropped down now to, I think, this year might be around 500. So we're still, you know, what's that roughly 50% higher the volume.
But, but I think sellers have said, well, some sellers that I'm not really ready to retire yet, but because the goodwill value has doubled or more than doubled, I can retire today and have the same amount of money as if I were to send you work three years. So it pulled forward some people who might not be ready to sell, they just said, well, the prices are so high, I'm just going to take advantage of more conditions, get out.
I think there's also, you know, technology created some more confidence in the part of buyers. And what I mean by that is, when I got started in 1996 in this industry, I wrote a business plan for AutoNation. The business plan was all about national brands, economies of scale, best practices, and AutoNation would do in the car business what Blockbuster had done in the video business, you know, which is going to take over the market.
And we quickly found that none of what I had written in my business plan and predicted came true. You know, we didn't have any real economies of scale. We didn't have any better business practices. We didn't have brands that consume, since we were scared more about than other brands. We really just had a ton of capital that we used to quickly grow.
And then, you know, over 20, 30 years, AutoNation tried to then develop some some special abilities that would help it outperform a mom and pop operator. But when the pandemic hit, e-commerce spiked, right? Because people are saying like, I'm not going to a dealership, I'm afraid to go in there. So I'll just see if I can buy a car online.
And so now, now, larger dealers believe they have a greater capability to serve consumers that are interested in purchasing online. They have bigger inventories. They can ship cars, you know, across these, they can share even stores across different stores. They may have a brand like AutoNation as a national brand. Lithia is investing in driveway.com. So I have feeling one day Lithia becomes driveway with that company, maybe. Which, by the way, it's interesting because I just had the podcast with Darryl Cunningham to see a group on that, you know, you connected me with Darryl, which I'm very thankful for. It was a great conversation. But he has completely taken the other direction. He is all about staying local, you know, car dealership is a local business. I am not going with one centralized, you know, national brand. So just, you know, interesting dichotomy. And he really, you know, we dug into it and kind of, you know, he explained his thinking there.
So, so that is still out for the jury. I mean, we'll see what happens in the marketplace because what I learned is that, oh, business plus I wrote economies scale, national brands best business. It was all, it was all just what should have happened because it happened in other industries. But it didn't happen in our business because of the franchise nature of our industry and the fact that there are almost no economies of scale. You know, you buy the same product from the supplier at the same price. Right. So if I've got 54 stores, I've been the same price for 150s on the new side, on the new side. All they use, it's true too. You know, you're going to buy that vehicle at the market value because the customer can flip it to somebody else for 100 hours more, they will. Labor is the same. Real estate is the same. Utilities, you know, pretty much the same. If you look at all the major cost blocks, the public companies don't really have much of a win advantage or even large consolidators. But I think technology is an area where larger dealers do believe they're going to start to have over time some advantages or smaller dealers.
So for instance, and this does have to be just public companies, if I have a dealership group with 10 stores in a market, I've got a brand name and I could promote my website as a place where people can go and shop for vehicles and I have Honda Toyota for Chevy, Kia Hyundai Mercedes, whatever. I have a broad selection of products that I can offer to my customers. In between those 60-10 stores, I've got thousands of new used vehicles in inventory. There's a good chance that if I attract somebody to my site, I can sell them a vehicle, either just invite them to come and look at it in the dealership or if you want to go through online purchase, you can do that. And I would say people my age today, they still go to the dealerships, they might look online but still want to go to the store. People my kids age and I've got kids in 20s, they might be very comfortable clicking some buttons and buying a car from Carvana site on C or from modern nation site on C. And I think the population is growing in that section that is interested in in transacting online. Today is still small, maybe 5%. But in five years and 10 years, going to be 7, 8, 10%. I think it can. And just taking a little bit of market share every year can have a big impact on a dealer's bottom line and vice versa. Giving up a little bit of market share every year. And you start to get into that, well, and I'm not selling many cars these two. So I got to have fewer sales people. I'm going to advertise a little less. I'm going to have fewer units in inventory. You start to kind of slowly imperceptively get weaker and the other guy across towns taking that share slowly, slowly getting stronger. It may be a trend that is over time, a little hard to overcome if you're just sitting in one store.
Where do you think the economies of scale are operating leverages driven for groups that grow and are making acquisitions? What's driving that? Is it technology or is it other stuff as well? I think there's technology. But you know, at the end of the day, it's you're training people and deploying the technology. And there's some really good vendors out there, Cox, Reynolds, CDK, cars.com that can offer technology to large groups and make that same technology available to to a single store dealer. So you're not I'm in no way ever going to bet against some person sitting in a store that's the general manager or owner that's store because if they're a talented entrepreneur and they get out there every day after it, they're going to do just fine.
And that may be what what Darryl's talking about. You know, Darryl Kenningham, where he says that the low old guys can still succeed and that's been proven for decades. It's true. But but I think that if you have a way to attract eyeballs to your website and you've got 10 stores in an area, I don't think you have to pay the same price per impression to get concerned with your website as if I had one store. So if I'm if I'm paying a little bit less than advertising to sell a car, that makes my the rest of my store more efficient. Right. My salespeople are making more money because they're getting more more customers. That means I get the best salespeople. If I get the best salespeople, I'll have the happiest customers and I'll have the highest throughput. So again, that balance for talent and capital.
I think there's also, you know, on the technology side, I know AutoNation pays less for its tech stack. You know, the products it uses in its stores and a single dealer would. I know they pay less for insurance than a single dealer would, their self-assure in many cases. So these little areas and again, they're small. We pay a little bit less for technology, a little bit less than advertising, a little bit less for a sure business, baby. Yeah. Yeah.
So, so Darryl Kenningham, I spoke with him, I don't know, a month or two ago and you know, he talks about how it's a 5% business. And I think maybe you guys talked about that too. And I think what he means by that is for every dollar of revenue we make, we take in our profit is 5%. So it's a very low margin business compared to almost any other business out. I mean, care it's a jewelry or, you know, home improvement or anything. Auto retailers make probably less per dollar revenue than just about any category I can think of. So if you can, you can shave little portions of your expense structure off, like I don't have to have this many people because I can use technology. I don't have to pay for as much per car. I could pay less for insurance that if I can take out 1% of my cost structure, when I go from 5% to 6%, I just increased my profits by 20%.
Right. So when you start from a small base, grocery store, baby. Yes. Yes. So, so people like Darryl are keenly focused on getting a little bit more scale so they can reduce the average cost per transaction. And maybe they can also increase the gross profits they get from their vehicles too. If they have the exact vehicles that a customer wants, maybe they can charge a little bit more of that customer because they can transport across 20 miles, 50 miles, 200 miles. Obviously, you know, we're in a very low margin industry. How do you explain this rise in non-car business investors that are trying to enter the industry? Obviously, you have the big headline, you know, Nick Saban, the legendary football coach, who's been partnered with another dealer and has made lots of acquisitions.
I get messages all the time from business owners, people to just have, you know, idle cash that I want to put it to work in the car business. I'm curious here from your perspective, how you're, you know, what you're seeing in this area, how much demand you're seeing from kind of quote-unquote, dumb money just from the industry. And what is attracting people to the car business for investment? People are interested in franchise auto retail because it is proven to be highly resilient to downturns and highly lucrative during upturns. The cash on cash returns and auto dealerships it's needs most other businesses. It also enjoys support of a global manufacturer that designs the product, produces the product, markets the product, finances the product, finances the dealer. So there's a lot of support for that dealer.
The business is diversified, you know, you're in the new car business, you're in the use car business, you're in the finance and insurance business, you're in the arts business, you're in the service business, you're in the body shop business. So if one part of your business is down, keep calm and sit in other ways.
And it's a, it's a franchise system that is protected by state laws. And when I say protected, it means that if I own a Ford dealership in Orlando, Florida, Ford can't just drop another Ford point in across the street. There are laws that create certain amount of protection, like it needs to be 15 miles away before you can put it down. The laws say that every dealer can buy the Ford same product the same price. So there's, there's legal protections in place that support the longevity of these businesses.
And I think that a lot of investors have said, you know, I can invest in technology and maybe one of every 10 or 20 tech companies successful. I can invest in pharma and maybe one of every 20 drugs that gets tested becomes a blockbuster. Or I could put my money in these businesses that exist in every town in America. And I've been in here for over 100 years.
In the great recession we had 2008, 2009, General Motors went bankrupt. Chrysler went bankrupt. The average dealership made $600,000 a year. So there, I mean, this is not a very nice term. But some people have said that, you know, all the retailers are like cockroaches of any retail business. They're just going to survive. Good times, bad times doesn't matter. The business model is so strong, it's going to remain on average profitable. Now, certainly some dealerships do lose money and have lost money. But very few have closed because they went out of business.
So I think investors look around like, you know, if I can get 15% on an on leverage basis, that type of return and with some debt on, I can get high teens, low twenties. They'll take that all day long.
Now, I will also say that it's not easy for investors to enter our industry. I refer to dealerships as sticky assets. They're hard to get and they're hard to get rid of. And what I mean by that is if you're, you want to buy a dealership and, you know, there's no, you can't just, you know, open up the, the, you know, Zillow website and look for dealerships for sale, right? It's a private market. Most dealerships sellers don't want to interact with a new buyer. The only one to interact with somebody that believe will be approved because there's a two-step transaction process. A buyer and a seller have to be on the price and the buyer has to apply to the factory to be approved to become a dealer.
The factories don't really want newcomers. Nor do they want what I'll call fast money, you know, private equity firms buy business, put a lot of leverage on it, try to pull some levers in three or five years exit. That's the traditional private equity model. And auto manufacturers are really interested in a long-term relationship with a dealer 10, 20, 30 years, maybe even multi-generational because they want that dealer to be investing back to our balance for capital and talent. They want people to invest in nice facilities. They want people to invest in training to try to attract and retain great general management. Long-term thinking. Exactly. You know, that's kind of the Toyota way, onto way. And I think the domestic brands kind of feel the same way.
So the private equity firms, family offices that we see being successful in entry now, and there are a number of them that have done very, very well, they're coming in with Evergreen capital. Meaning I'm going to put this money in and there is no timeline on when I'm going to take it out. Could be in there for three years, could be in there for 30. So long as you feel like we're getting a good return, we're going to leave it at. And we're going to partner with existing successful proven management teams. So you're not to worry about us being the investor messing up the business we're going to buy. We've got vetted, smart, successful, well-known management teams that are going to run these stores for us. We're just replacing one family's money with another investor's money. That's the pitch that we've seen be successful.
And I think that, you know, there's certainly more investor groups to come in if they pursue that same model of long-term partnership with proven talent. Because, you know, these businesses have become so valuable and the groups keep on getting larger. You know, we're representing a transaction now. We're on full sale. It's over a billion dollars. You know, so you need a lot of capital out there that can buy these businesses.
Can you give us a preview? Give us a little sneak peek? I don't want to jinx it. Fair enough. Maybe the next time we speak, I could be more open about it. But I'm still a little superstitious. I'm eager. Yeah. I hear you.
But, you know, every year, there's a couple of these big deals that happen. And sometimes there are public companies that are the buyers, but a good amount of time, there's still individuals, families that are stepping up to say, have that amount of capital to acquire these groups.
What are you seeing in terms of dealer sentiment? Like, is there fear in the market? Cox automotive puts out this dealer sentiment index, which has been, you know, taking quite a dip. But I'm curious to know from you, you know, anecdotally, just, you know, on the street with your polls. What are you seeing?
I would say there are kind of maybe three types of auto retailers. You know, the people that want to grow, and they have confidence. You know, they want to get bigger. They like this industry. They want more of it. They want to shovel all their chips in. There are people that have decided they want to exit. They're on the sell side, you know, and that's probably, I could be 20 to one buyers to sellers, you know, could be that kind of ratio. And there are people in the middle who say like, well, I don't want to get out because I still like the money I'm making. And I like having the job that I do, like my position on my community, the lifestyle that provides to me. But I'm not sure I want to put in more. So there, in many ways, they're the future sellers, five years, 10 years, 20 years, whatever, they're not going to grow.
And there's a phrase that friend of mine had years ago, Sam Swope, the erratic in Tucky. Smart man, he had a phrase when you're green, you're growing, when you're ripe, you're rotting, you're green, you're growing when you're ripe, you're rotting. So that growth that you get through acquisitions, in my opinion, is very healthy for an organization. Because to be approved by the factory, you have to have good sales efficiency, good customer satisfaction, and nice facilities. So you have to be a good dealer in order to be a dealer of another store. So your core operations have to be healthy. But also when you acquire a business, you're usually going to absorb some talent, some young people there, and that maybe it's just a single store. Maybe they one day could be your CFO, or maybe one day they could run your biggest dealership. So these acquisitions are a way that organizations can acquire more talent. And then they become a snowball, right? If I've got three stores, I'm going to go to four stores, I'm bigger, I'm stronger, I have more leverage with my vendors, right, getting back to the economy scale. If I have 10 stores, now I've got the ability to hire fixed ops expert, an F&I trainer, digital marketing expert, and that all should make me perform better than the guy that doesn't have those special consultants or advisors in the company. So I think M&A acquisitions make organizations healthier, and stronger, and more resilient towards downturns, as opposed to that, you know, if you're right, you're rotting, you're just sitting there standing still.
People in your organization, they're ambitious. You know, if you're a sales person, and you're not going to grow at all, and there's a sales manager that's 40 years old, sitting there, how are you ever going to get promoted in that company? It's just one position that you could one day compete for. So those people may leave and join larger groups.
You reminded me of something that is pretty embarrassing, but when I was in my teens, I had just, you know, started getting into like the business world, like more formally and stuff like that, you know, interested in it. And I remember learning for the first time as a team, that a business is supposed to always grow. It sounds so childish, but I found that just mind boggling because it was bizarre to me. You know, I grew up at an entrepreneur or household, but you know, immigrant family, like small business, just wasn't anything corporation. And so the businesses, as far as I saw physically, they were never growing. You know, maybe they were growing behind the scenes, but physically something like that, to me, looked like something pretty stagnant. And then when I discovered that a business is healthiest, and generally speaking, it's supposed to always grow. I just, it's so funny when you say that, because I think back to those days and just not knowing.
And so yeah, funny little story there. I maybe, if it's a ten of capitalism, but maybe it's not healthy, I'll be better off if we just found the light will be added, it's black or more.
I think by now I've seen businesses on both sides of the aisles. And I think you definitely want to be moving forward because, you know, the way I say it is if you're not growing, you're regressing. Well, that's, that's so when you're growing, you're growing when you're right, you're running. It's a, it's another agricultural way to say it.
Lots of people listening to this podcast, you know, are looking for opportunities in this business, whether it's employment opportunities, whether it's, you know, opportunities to build a company or a technology to sell to dealers. Maybe it's consumers that are just curious to know kind of what's changing if I'm going to need to go buy my car, or maybe it's investors that want to invest.
So with that said, where do you see dealers adding value the most nowadays? As if you're advising dealers, right, on their businesses nowadays, how are you having that conversation with respect to value creation so they can get the most money for their dealerships, you know, or, you know, build the best possible dealership? Is it, does it step from a specific department? Is it, hey, focus on your service department versus this? Is it kind of more holistic? How do you think about just adding value, creating value at a dealership nowadays?
So profits drive a lot of value. And I think that for dealers that are seeking to maybe sell in the next couple of years, we definitely recommend taking a hard look at their business. And we regularly provide valuations to dealers that are thinking about selling. And those valuations, we identify areas of improvement that we think the next guy could make. And if we take that information and ensure that with a deal, like we had a presentation yesterday to do two owners, they own two stores, one's a Toyota store, and their gross profits they're getting on new vehicles we didn't see any room for improvement there, but their finance and insurance profits were under $900 per car. That's less than half what they should be. And then their fixed operations has actually declined over the last four years. That's also really surprising. We haven't seen that at all in any other group that I can think of because labor rates have gone up significantly. The more people trying to get their car service because they can't get new cars. So almost every other service department has expanded significantly.
So our advice to these folks were, well, if you want to sell now, what we can sell now, we'll point these areas out to a buyer, we'll get some value for that upside, because buyers will pay a little bit more if they can see a room to improve business than if it's hitting on all cylinders. And so we can recommend to them, you know, here's some F&I companies that could come in and train your existing staff, you don't have to fire people, but you need to tend about what products you're selling, how are you selling those in the store, what's the process like, because they should be making an extra thousand dollars car in F&I on new annuals. And then on the fixed operations, you know, this company had increased its labor rates by about $60 during the pandemic. So they pushed the rates up a lot, but none of that money is really flowing through the bottom line. So to us, that's almost an internal audit. Like, how's that possible? War ROs, vortex, higher labor rate, no more gross, there's something that doesn't really add up to us.
So that we recommended, you know, hiring in a fixed-up specialist to come in and review, how does it go from the customer drives in the service driver, even before they drive in, you know, what marketing are you doing to get customers come in? They do come in. What happens between when they drive in and starts to talk about the needs they have and then when they pick up the vehicle, how is it that there's not more gross profits in location? But these two departments are the ones that could be most quickly impacted by dealers.
So years ago, when I was at our nation buying stores, F&I was a real strong suit for automation. It's always been one of the leading F&I companies in the country. They do an excellent job in financing their customers and providing insurance products to their customers.
And then fixed operations, you know, for years it was a leader and advertising to customers. Don't just advertise in the car sale, but promote your ability to service those customers, get them back into the service drive. Those are two areas when all our nation was buying fewer ships that it focused on immediately and did have a quick impact on improving those departments.
Often it had a hard time sustaining the sales levels of the businesses it bought because that's sometimes where the entrepreneurial talent come in. It's not a one size fits all in sales. You have to know the local market quite well. But those two areas, if you want to add value as a dealer, I would say you can do that within weeks. Because if you're improving F&I, you're not really taking any business away from a competitor. If you want to improve your new car sales, you're probably going to have to take business from somebody. That's a very good point. And used, again, you're competing with a lot more people on the use side. That's an investment in capital to get more products done to train, etc. There is some risk in boosting your use car operations. But F&I and fixed, that is in my opinion, the fastest way to improve the profit and dealership. Using your current staff, you don't have to think about hiring new managers.
Yeah, just changing some things around. I'm curious to know, last time we spoke, you were talking about talent in this industry. And specifically how you never knew how much money you could make in the car business. And I think many people don't. I think I've posted some stuff about it. And people have been surprised by a cop that a general manager can make or sales manager and whatnot.
What do you think in terms of growing talent in this industry? Do you think we still have to make some structural changes or systemic changes to the way dealerships operate to attract more talent? Do you think just virtue of the income that's there more talent will start flocking to the car business? What's your outlook on industry talent? As we just mentioned, are we progressing or are we regressing?
It's a great question. I think that the amount of money that salespeople, sales managers, general managers, fixed managers, F&I folks have made in the last year, three years from industry has been incredible. I was on the phone yesterday with somebody who invested in a dealership. He borrowed the money to invest in a small Korean brand. And he did great things with it. He really, really grew this company significantly. And part of his pay package when he joined was he would get 20% of the profits because it was a small store. He's making like $3 million a year now as a general manager of his business. He deserves it in many ways because he took the risk. He made the investment, etc. And that won't be sustained probably. And you can't say that this is a path that people should just go because to make $3 million a year is remarkable for anybody. But I'm hoping that this word of compensation leaks out to our industry.
But I actually think we could be in for a little bit of an exodus of talent because the salespeople who are used to making 100, 300, 700,000 dollars a year selling new cars at Oversticker, they're going to have a significant retraction or compensation when cars are selling for sticker or less. And will they be accepting of that declining compensation or are they going to leave and get back into mortgage brokerage business or selling something else rather than cars. So I think a number of the orders are a little afraid that as these grosses come down, as the profits come down, there's going to be a flight of talent from our industry.
I would love it if it were more public, how much money you can make in the car business. One of my teammates wrote a piece that he published in LinkedIn, and I think it's on Twitter too, or Acts about GM versus MD. And he talked about how much money the average general manager makes, how much money the average doctor makes. General managers make war. And one general manager never went to college, they didn't need that formal education, they just were good entrepreneurs and worked hard. And in many ways, they have our quality lifestyle. Status, I think that's one big distinction that whether we like it or not, the reality is to tell the world operates. If you're an MD of status, and frankly, when I was in my earlier days making more money than any of my friends, hundreds of thousands, people were like, oh, you sell cars, right? So I think status is a real big thing here.
I think you're right. I have two boys that joined our company here earlier this year. They're 24 and 26. And I suggested to them, you should go work at a dealership six months a year or whatever to have some knowledge, some experience, because I'd never worked in the car business before I joined Auto Nations. I didn't bring anything to the award, just brought some investment banking experience.
But because I sat in on all of the operations meetings, I absorbed a lot about what was really going on at the dealership level. I think my kids, and I suggested that to them, year would be better off in the future if you take six months or a year of work to a dealership. They both looked at me like, they didn't say no way, dad. But that wasn't what they had been raised to do. That wasn't what their peers were doing. One of my kids was in an undergraduate business program, and he was doing spreadsheet modeling, LBO modeling, finance and economics. There was no, what do you say to a customer when they walk in the door? There's none of that. The other son was doing consulting. He was working with strategic issues about how to advise companies. You got to go sit in that lot, or you're going to sit in that BDC center and you're going to answer phone calls and deal with what it takes to get a customer in the door and then sell them a vehicle.
So I think that you're right. There's still a change needed in our industry because the reality is I think a lot of general managers who work really hard and I think it is sort of every penny they make, tell you that it is challenging and fun what they do to orchestrate a company of 50, 70, 100, sometimes 200 people are in these organizations and get the new card apartment to work with the U-Scard apartment to work with service department to work with the body shop, advertising, HR, IT. You're running a big enterprise, a $100 million more enterprise. Then some doctors, I think have finished medical school and certainly that we need physicians. Why they save our lives at J-O-S. We need doctors.
But some might say, well, I'm just kind of punching a clock and working for a big company to tell me what I do, when I do it, how I do it. I'm not really ever going to ever do anything different than this. And so for some people, I would think that a career in automotive, if you're actually in business, can be really exciting because within a short amount of time, you can be the CEO significant enterprise versus if you go into consulting, you go and you work at Deloitte. You know, you're going to be, Bill and Miley, our clients to get advice about technology, HR, whatever, you probably will never have a chance to really want a business and be an entrepreneur. And that's what I think attracts and attains people to our industry is the excitement. They love the products. They like working with people and they can make a great living doing it.
Alan, hey, give us your outlook for the car market for the next year. I think it's going to continue to be really strong in terms of demand for products. We've been told by the Fed, they're going to be three interest rate cuts, probably the second half of next year. I think there's going to be a decline in the profit of dealerships during that time. We estimate, you know, dealership values are coming down one to two percent per month. That could accelerate a little bit if margins come down faster than what people think. But there are going to continue to be a lot of people that want to grow. They like the car business. They understand that the profits will come down. They're going to factor those declining profits into their offers. We'll still see dealership values really more than twice what they were before the pandemic. I don't think anybody really believes we're going to go back to the level of profits we were at in 2019. If nothing just goes in inflation, cars cost more. If the Martin stays the same, the profits are going to be higher.
I think there are also some entrepreneurs who say that, hey, once the managers, the salespeople, they're used to making a certain amount of money, they want to maintain that living. So people are not going to go right back to cutting these prices to the bone and making no money on the sale of a gorilla or a camera. This won't make sense to them anymore. So I think that the business is going to continue to be strong in 2024.
I think M&A is going to continue to be strong in 2024. I love all the new products that are coming out. We're going to probably deal with some rocky issues on the EV side, because there's an oversupply of those vehicles. I think the politicians will roll back their requirements for going all EV. I think that the plug-in hybrids to me is a great compromise that satisfies consumers that want to burn no fossil fuels when they go to school or to work. Like a man, you go to 40 miles, but they can also drive 400 miles to the beach or to the mountains or to grandma's house. So I feel like that technology is going to rise in its importance to our future.
And hopefully we'll have peace in the Middle East and in Ukraine next year. Amen. Alan Hake, thanks so much for coming on. If anyone wants to learn more about you or HakePartners, of course, you can visit HakePartners.com. Link is going to be in the show notes below. We're also going to attach a link to the Hake Report below, which again is a wealth of knowledge. And if anyone wants to get in touch with you, how can they reach out? My email is Alan at HakePartners.com. And you can call me. I fear in my phone is the my own phone number I have. That's 954-646-8921. Extremely accessible and easy. I'd love to see it.
Alan, thanks so much for coming on. It was great. Pleasure talking with you. All right. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating. Consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.