Asbury Automotive Group Inc

Greetings and welcome to Asbury Automotive Group fourth 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, Mr. Chris Reeves, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. Thank you. You may begin.

Thanks, Operator, and good morning. 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 2023 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 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 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 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 2022. Any subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q in 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 fourth quarter results. It is my pleasure to now hand the call over to our CEO, David Holt. David?

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and year-end earnings call. 2023 was a productive year. With meaningful growth from M&A and growth within our stores, a reflection of our hard work that was recognized with several accolades. This year, we were ranked 18th on Forbes' list of America's Best Midsize Companies. We were recently named as one of America's Greatest Workplaces 2023 by Newsweek, receiving a five out of five star rating based on company reviews. Kuhn's was also awarded by Newsweek, one of the few auto retailers alongside us named for this distinction. And we're honored to be named 2024 Best Companies to Work For in the Retailer's Industry by U.S. News and World Report. These are great affirmations on our journey to be the most guest-centric automotive retailer. It must start internally before you can see it externally. Now for our consolidated results for the full year of 2023. We delivered $14.8 billion in revenue. had a gross profit margin of 18.6 percent. Our adjusted SG&A as a percentage of gross profit was 58.5 percent. We generated an adjusted operating margin of 7.3 percent. Our adjusted earnings per share was $32.60, and our adjusted EBITDA was over $1.1 billion. In addition to the Coons acquisition, we repurchased 1.3 million shares for $258 million, and we produced an adjusted operating cash flow of $705 million. Looking to the future, we are committed to deploying capital to its best and highest use, to strengthening our balance sheet, and to running strong, disciplined operations. The world has evolved significantly since we initially laid out our vision for growth in December of 2020, and we are very pleased with what we have achieved so far, including $11 billion of acquired revenue and the strategic entry into markets we have circled for many years. We have strong convictions for this vision of smart growth. This vision acts as a strategic framework for how we think about our business. serving to inform our decision-making along the path to $30 billion or greater in revenue. This framework allows us to continuously adapt to macro factors that may impact the timeline for our journey, but not how we think about achieving it. To us, we believe it is more realistic to consider it a matter of when rather than if. As we prioritize discipline and balanced capital allocation, being good operators of our business by accelerating same-store growth and seeking opportunities through M&A activity. We plan to deploy capital when the opportunity arises, such as with Kuhn's. We were fortunate to make a great acquisition in a great market with an outstanding group of team members and leaders. Going forward, we will continue to seek acquisitions of this caliber. We plan to optimize our portfolio for markets with strong demographics and friendly state franchise laws and assets with quality operators and performance. There are additional details about our updated vision and framework in our investor presentation. Before I hand the call over to Dan, I'd like to once again express my appreciation for all our team members for their continued focus on the guest experience and their hard work. Thank you all very much. Now, Dan will discuss our operations performance. Dan?