Asbury Automotive Group Inc

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Asbury Automotive Group Q4 2020 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Matt Petone. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Asbury Automotive Group's fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay later today. The press release detailing Asbury's fourth quarter results were issued earlier this morning and is posted on our website at asburyauto.com. Participating with me today are David Holt, our President and Chief Executive Officer, E.J. Guido, our Chief Financial Officer, and Dan Clara, our Senior Vice President of Operations. At the conclusion of our remarks, we will open the call up for questions and I will be available later for any follow-up questions you might have. Before we begin, I must remind you that the discussion during the call today is likely to contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements other than those which are historical in nature, including those statements relating to the duration and the contemplated impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and financial performance, as well as the financial projections and expectations about our products, markets, and growth. All forward-looking statements are subject to significant uncertainties and actual results may differ materially from those suggested by the statements, including potential impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic on us, our industry, and our customers, suppliers, vendors, and business partners. For information regarding certain of the risks that may cause actual results to differ, please see our filings with the SDC from time to time, including our Form 10-K, For the year ended December 2019, any subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our earnings release issued earlier today. We expressly disclaim any responsibility to update forward-looking statements. In addition, certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC rules may be discussed on this call. As required by applicable SEC rules, we provide reconciliations of any such non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable gap measures on our website. It is my pleasure to hand the call over to our CEO, David Holt. David?

Thanks, Matt. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. We have just reported another all-time record fourth quarter despite continued volatility and uncertainty in the economy. As SAR recovered from Q2 lows, we delivered a strong gross margin of 16.7%. which expanded 80 basis points versus Q4 of last year. We also remained very active in managing expenses, and we achieved FD&A as a percentage of gross profit of 61.4%. Our focus on gross profit and expense management once again produced a great quarter, with adjusted EPS of $4.44, up 76% over the prior year. I would also like to call out that 2020 as a whole was a record year for Asbury. For the full year, we grew adjusted EPS by 36%, increased adjusted income from operations by over 70 million to 405 million, an increase of 21% and the highest level ever. We acquired a Chrysler Jeep Dodge store in Denver from John Elway. We acquired eight Park Place dealerships, two collision centers, and one auction center in Dallas, which in total added 1.9 billion in annualized revenue. We launched Clicklane, our communication technology and ecosystem, which allows for a true online car buying and selling transaction. We publicly announced our five-year strategic plan, which targets growing the company to 20 billion in revenue by 2025. Our balance sheet remains strong due to our performance and cash flow. Our pro forma net leverage ended this quarter at 2.1 times. This will allow us to maintain a more active acquisition pipeline and grow our business strategically by deploying capital. Looking back over the last three years, we've dramatically transformed our portfolio by acquiring 2.5 billion and divesting 700 million in annualized revenue. Our acquisitions had much higher margins than our divestitures and were accretive to our overall margin. This helped us achieve our 5.7 operating margin compared to 4.6 in 2018. We will continue to optimize our portfolio in the future. Turn to our key objectives in 2021. We will continue to build a strong culture obsessed with the guest experience. Roll out our Clicklane platform to all stores by the end of Q1. Be great partners to our OEMs by delivering an exceptional and transparent guest experience. Grow our same-store revenue across all departments. Build our M&A pipeline to support our goal of acquiring $5 billion of revenue by 2025. And maintain net leverage added below three times while executing a more active capital allocation strategy. Finally, we know the only differentiator we have in a franchise system is the level of service we offer. Our strong performance is because of all the men and women in our stores who show up every day committed to serving our guests with passion and professionalism. Their incredible performance inspires all of us to be better today than we were yesterday. Our future is bright, and we look forward to sharing this journey with all of our teammates who run our business every day. We are thankful they are here, making a meaningful difference. I will now hand the call over to Dan to discuss our operating performance. Dan?