AutoNation, Inc. (NYSE:AN) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call April 20, 2023 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Derek Fiebig - Vice President, Investor Relations

Mike Manley - Chief Executive Officer

Joe Lower - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

John Murphy - Bank of America

Joe Enderlin - Stephens Inc

Bret Jordan - Jefferies

Adam Jonas - Morgan Stanley

Rajat Gupta - JPMorgan

Operator

Good morning. My name is Brika and I will be your conference operator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the AutoNation First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Derek Fiebig, Vice President of Investor Relations. So Derek, you may begin your conference.

Derek Fiebig

Thanks, Brika and good morning everyone. Welcome to AutoNation’s first quarter 2023 conference call. Later on our call today will be Mike Manley, our Chief Executive Officer and Joe Lower, our CFO. Following their remarks, we’ll open up the call for questions.

Before beginning, I’d like to remind you that certain statements and information on this call, including any statements regarding our anticipated financial results and objectives, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks that may cause our actual results or performance to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. Additional discussions of factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially are contained in our press release issued today and in our filings with the SEC. Certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC rules will be discussed on this call. Reconciliations are provided in our materials and our website located at investor.autonation.com.

With that, I will turn the call over to Mike.

Mike Manley

Yes. Thanks, Derek and good morning, everybody and thank you for joining us today. We reported first quarter EPS of $6.07 and that really is a result of our resilience of our business in this environment, but coupled with our disciplined capital allocation and as a result of those two things, that $6.07 was a record result for us. Now, Joe will take you through the numbers in detail, but before that, I wanted to discuss how we have been successfully navigating in the current environment and where we will be taking the business in the future.

Obviously, there is a lot of mixed economic signals in the market and within auto retail, which do warrant, I think a more cautionary approach than the past few years. Although I think it’s also evident that the current economic environment is having an impact, some of the concerns of late last year have not yet manifested themselves to the extent some thought they would and a consumer, in our opinion, is in no way tapped out and the industry is benefiting from lower unit sales over the past few years and an aging vehicle part, which has historically supported demand within the industry.