Asbury Automotive Group Inc

Greetings and welcome to Asbury Automotive Group's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Karen Reed, Vice President and Corporate Treasurer. Thank you. You may begin.

Thanks, Rob, and good morning, all. As noted, today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay later this afternoon. Welcome to Asbury Automotive Group's first quarter 2023 earnings call. The press release detailing Asbury's first quarter results was issued earlier this morning and is posted on our website at investors.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 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 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 2022 and 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, investors.asburyauto.com, highlighting our first quarter results. It is my pleasure to now hand the call over to our CEO, David Holt. David?

Thank you, Karen, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter earnings call. I am proud of the team's performance in Q1 and the execution of our business model across its diverse revenue and profit streams. As expected, we are starting to see trends as the industry begins to normalize. We are strategically operating within a changing environment, and we continue to prioritize profitability. Over the last couple of years, pre-owned has been depleted due to fleet levels and lack of leasing. Overall, with this limited availability of pre-owned inventory and an unbalanced new inventory by brand, we are focused on maximizing our gross profit streams. Now to our consolidated results. As a reminder, during 2022, we divested of 16 stores, four occurring in the first quarter, three in the second quarter, and nine in the fourth quarter. These stores contributed $683 million in revenue last year. Now, for the first quarter of 2023, we generated $3.6 billion in revenue, had a gross profit margin of 19.4 percent, Our SG&A as a percentage of gross profit was 57.9%, had an operating margin of 7.7%, and our EBITDA was 294 million. We delivered an EPS of $8.37, and we repurchased 110,000 shares for 21 million. In addition, from the start of the second quarter through yesterday, we purchased 32,000 shares for $6 million. We continue to monitor the marketplace for acquisitions that meet our stringent thresholds for returns and that are a fit for the company from a cultural and operational view. Our mindset continues to be that we are opportunistic, strategic, and thoughtful in maximizing our returns for our shareholders. Now expanding to all stakeholders, I would like to highlight that we published our second corporate responsibility report at the end of March. We invite you to read it if you haven't already. Finally, I would like to thank my fellow team members for a strong start to 2023. The guest-centric experience begins with you, and we are looking forward to what is in store. Thank you. I will now hand the call over to Dan to discuss our operating performance. Dan?