Asbury Automotive Group Inc

Greetings. Welcome to Asbury Automotive Group's fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during today's conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll turn the conference over to Karen Reed, Vice President and Corporate Treasurer. Ms. Reed, you may now begin.

Thanks, Rob, 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 2022 earnings call. The press release detailing Asbury's fourth quarter results was issued earlier this morning and is posted on our website at investors.asburyauto.com. Participating with me today are David Holtz, 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. As a conclusion of our remarks, we will open the call up for questions and will be available later for any follow-up questions. 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 certain 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 2021, 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 posted an updated investor presentation on our website, investors.asburyauto.com, highlighting our fourth quarter and full year 2022 results. It is now my pleasure to hand the call over to our CEO, David Holt. David?

Thank you, Karen, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call. 2022 was a record year for Asbury. we generated $15.4 billion in revenue, up $5.6 billion from 2021. Our adjusted EBITDA for the year was $1.3 billion, an increase of over $500 million, and we expanded adjusted earnings per share by 38% to $37.66. We sold over 300,000 vehicles in 2022 and hit a milestone in number of cars we serviced at over 3 million, All of this is a result of our long-term trajectory to manage effectively through our growth, even at a much larger size. Looking back to 2017, we were a company with 6.5 billion in revenue. We have grown responsibly to over 15 billion in 2022. We have refined and maintained our operational discipline throughout this period. going from an adjusted SG&A to gross profit profile of 69.1 percent in 2017 to 56.8 percent for 2022. Through continuously enhancing our execution and optimizing our portfolio, we have been accretive and efficient while more than doubling the size and power of the company. Turning now to our results in the fourth quarter. We grew adjusted EBITDA by 71 million to 319 million, an increase of 29%. Expanded adjusted EPS from $7.46 to $9.12, an increase of 22%. Delivered an 8.2% adjusted operating margin. Increased revenue by $1.1 billion to $3.7 billion, and grew gross profit by $196 million to $738 million. Our gross profit margin was 19.9%, and our adjusted SG&A as a percentage of gross profit was 56.7%. For the full year 2022, we generated $987 million of adjusted operating cash flow. an increase of $355 million over last year, which speaks to our robust business model. At the end of December, we had $1.5 billion in liquidity. Even with large acquisitions in recent years, we have been diligent about our debt levels to support our long-term growth. Adjusted net leverage has decreased a full turn from 2.7 times at the end of 2021 to 1.7 times at the end of 2022. Our strong cash flow, liquidity, and balance sheet allows us flexibility and muscle to deploy our strategy. It enables us to be opportunistic with potential acquisitions or share buybacks. As announced, we repurchased 1.6 million shares during 2022 for approximately 300 million. Our board has approved an increase to our share repurchase authorization by 108 million to 200 million. We continuously evaluate acquisition opportunities that make sense for Asbury. We believe, based on the last several acquisitions, that we have shown discipline and held ourselves accountable to our robust criteria for opportunistic growth. In December, we divested the North Carolina stores as part of our continuous portfolio optimization. These nine stores represent an estimated annualized revenue of $590 million. We are opportunistic, strategic, and thoughtful regarding our capital allocation and maximizing our returns for our shareholders. Our guest-centric model also relies on providing a high level of commitment to our team members by offering best-in-class benefits, including equity awards to our teammates in our stores, which is unique among our peers. Our team members have also been giving back to their communities as volunteer hours were up nearly 70% year over year to our volunteer time off program of up to 40 hours per team member. Finally, I would like to thank all of my team members for an incredible year and a strong start to 2023. It is your hard work and dedication that provides a great guest experience and strengthens the performance of our business. The best is yet to come. Thank you. I'll now hand the call over to Dan to discuss our operating performance. Dan?