America's Car-Mart, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRMT) Q4 2023 Results Conference Call May 24, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jeff Williams - CEO

Doug Campbell - President

Vickie Judy - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Billy Healey - Bank of America

Derek Sommers - Jefferies

Operator

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for holding, and welcome to America's Car-Mart Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2023 Conference Call. The topic of this call will be the earnings and operating results for the company's fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023. Before we begin, today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay for the next 12 months.

As a reminder, some of management's comments today may include forward-looking statements, which inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management's present view. These statements are made pursuant of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The company cannot guarantee the accuracy of any forecast or estimate, nor does it undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

For more information regarding forward-looking information, please see Part 1 of the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2022, and its current and quarterly reports furnished to or filed with Securities and Exchange Commission on Form 8-K and 10-Q.

Participating on the call this morning are Jeff Williams, the company's Chief Executive Officer; Doug Campbell, President; and Vickie Judy, Chief Financial Officer.

And now I'd like to turn the call over to the company's Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Williams.

Jeff Williams

Thank you for joining us this morning. Productivity and market share gains continue, but current profitability is not representative of where the company and the business will be in the future. Our model is flexible, and we will continue to deploy capital to maximize appropriate long-term returns. Expect to earn returns on equity at levels we were generating prior to the pandemic, the mid-teens.

We're extremely excited about our company and the unique profitable opportunity in front of us. There's no other company sitting in a position to scale in this highly fragmented industry. Our book value is $79 per share. We have $500 million in equity, which we will protect as we move forward.

As discussed in our press release, competitive dynamics are rapidly moving in our favor. Our industry has had significant disruptive challenges over the last 12 to 18 months, leading to the sudden exit of two large regional competitors who were collectively serving over 80,000 customers, mostly in the Southeast region of the U.S. We will see benefits in our procurement and inventory areas, as well as in our sales and collection efforts from these 2 companies exiting the marketplace.