America's Car-Mart, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRMT) Q1 2025 Earnings Conference Call September 4, 2024 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Vickie Judy - Chief Financial Officer
Doug Campbell - President & Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

John Hecht - Jefferies
Vincent Caintic - BTIG

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the America's Car-Mart's First Quarter Fiscal 2025 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Vickie Judy, Chief Financial Officer of America's Car-Mart. Please go ahead.

Vickie Judy

Good morning, and welcome to America's Car-Mart's first quarter fiscal year 2025 earnings call for the period ending July 31, 2024.

Joining me today is Doug Campbell, our company's President and CEO.

We've issued our earnings release earlier this morning and it is available on our website along with a slide detailing our cash-on-cash returns. We will post the transcript of our prepared remarks following this call and the Q&A session will be available through the webcast after the call.

During today's call, certain statements we make may be considered forward-looking and inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management's present view. These statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provision 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 such forward-looking statements. For more information, including important cautionary notes, please see Part 1 of the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2024, and our current and quarterly reports furnished to or filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Forms 8-K and 10-Q.

Doug will start us off with his thoughts on the business and strategies for this fiscal year.

Doug Campbell

Thank you, Vickie. And thank you everyone for your interest in America's Car-Mart, and for joining us to hear more about our first quarter results.

As I mentioned in the earnings release, I'm pleased about the improvement in sales volume versus the prior year when viewed sequentially. If you recall, we were down almost 20% in the third quarter. We then finished down 13.6% in the fourth quarter and have closed the gap to be just under 10% now. We're pleased that website traffic increased both year-over-year and sequentially, indicating strong consumer demand. However, application volumes were slightly softer, contributing to the decline in sales. We believe that part of this decline is the need for more affordable vehicles.