Asbury Automotive Group Inc

Good day and welcome to the Asbury Automotive Group Q4 2021 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Ms. Karen Reed. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thanks, operator, and good morning, everyone. As noted, today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay later this afternoon. Welcome to Asbury Automotive Group's fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. The press release detailing Asbury's fourth quarter and full year results was 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, Dan Clara, our Senior Vice President of Operations, and Michael Welch, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. At the conclusion of our remarks, we will open up the call for questions. I will be available later for any follow-up questions that you may have. Before we begin, we 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, which may include financial projections, forecasts, and current expectations, each of which are subject to significant uncertainties. For information regarding certain of the risks that may cause actual results to differ materially from these statements, please see our filings with the SEC from time to time, including our Form 10-K for the year ended December 2020, 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 GAAP measures on our website. We have also posted an updated investor presentation on our website, asburyauto.com, highlighting our fourth quarter and full year results. It is my pleasure to now hand the call over to our CEO, David Holson. David?

Thank you, Karen, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. In the fourth quarter, we closed on the transformative acquisitions of Larry H. Miller and Total Care Auto, powered by Landcar, Carlo Chrysler Jeep Dodge, Arapaho Hyundai Genesis, and the Stevenson Automotive Group. representing approximately 6.6 billion in annualized revenue. These acquisitions represent the right brands in high growth markets and are aligned with Asbury's culture. We look forward to deploying our joint capabilities and growing together. And I'm excited to have our new team members as part of the Asbury family. 2021 was an all-time record year for Asbury. For the full year, we grew adjusted EBITDA by 94% and adjusted EPS by 112%. We delivered an operating margin adjusted at 8.1%. We succeeded in adding great stores in targeted high-growth markets, and we completed the rollout of our online transactional tool, Clicklane, to all the legacy Asbury stores. In a challenging new vehicle environment, we delivered record profitability by improving our new vehicle margin, increasing our used vehicle sales, and growing our parts and service business, all while maintaining our improved employee productivity levels and using our strong cash flow for acquisitions. Our multiple business lines allow us to adapt and continue to deliver strong earnings in any business environment. We will also deploy Total Care Auto into our legacy stores and roll out click lane into our recent acquisitions, allowing us to further grow our earnings. Due to our record performance and strong cash flow, our balance sheet remained solid. Our adjusted operating cash flow for 2021 was $632 million, an increase of $189 million over 2020. Our net leverage ended this quarter at 2.7 times, We will continue to use our free cash flow to manage our leverage and maximize shareholder return through share buybacks and acquisitions. In our earnings release this morning, we also announced that our Board of Directors has approved an increase in our share repurchase authorization by $100 million to $200 million. Now I'd like to give you a quick update on our five-year plan. Our same store adjusted revenue grew almost 12% last year, exceeding expectations. ClickLane continues to deliver impressive metrics, generating over 570 million in additional revenue for three quarters in 2021. Despite lower new vehicle levels, inventory levels, ClickLane contributed an incremental 7% to our same store growth. As previously noted, we had a very successful year regarding acquisitions. With these results, we maintain full confidence in the execution of our growth strategy. Based upon our results in 2021, we will update our five-year plan during our Q1 2022 earnings call. I will now hand the call over to Dan to discuss our operating performance. Dan?