Good morning, everyone. I am Michael Lasser, the Hardline, Broadline and Food Retail Analyst from UBS. I could not be more excited to have my friends from Advance Auto Parts with us. This is a special session because this is the first fireside chat that the leaders of Advance Auto Parts have done since they joined the organization 2.5 years ago. It's been an incredible journey that these folks have led this organization on. There is a lot to talk about. I'm pleased to be joined to my immediate left by Shane O'Kelly, who really needs no introduction, but he is the Chief Executive Officer of Advance Auto Parts. Ryan Grimsland is to his left. He is the Chief Financial Officer. Lavesh Hemnani is somewhere around in the audience. He leads the Investor Relations function, does a great job.
As I mentioned, AAP has been on a journey, not just in the last 2.5 years, but really for the last 20 years. Where I wanna start this conversation, Shane, is, you know, give a sense of what the last 2.5 years has been like. You know, we were just talking, and I was saying, well, for all of us in the audience, it feels like every year is 10 years. You were saying for you, the last 20 months has been like 20 minutes.
Mm-hmm.
Give us a sense for why?
Yeah. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Great to be here. Great to share our story, and never been more excited about where we're going with the company. I was in the U.S. Army, and my first military unit had a motto, a mantra of deeds not words. It's auspicious and fitting that we're doing our first fireside chat here today after 2.5 years because we've been focusing on the deeds of getting the company to a solid foundational footing in our first 2.5 years. We've been engaged in consequential, decisive, meaningful, transformational initiatives in those early days. For example, we sold Worldpac. By the way, not just the sales process, but managing the TSA subsequently. Big move. We made the decision to consolidate our DC network.
In the world of retail and distribution, there are a few moves bigger than that. When I got to the company, we had 50 inclusive of Worldpac. We will now sit at 16. We made the decision to cut headcount in headquarters. We made the decision to invest in our front line. We made the decision to introduce a new node in our network called a Market Hub. We made the decision to rejuvenate our new store opening capability, which had fallen by the wayside. We made the decision to go to the capital markets and raise $2 billion to ensure that we had continuity with supply chain financing. As you think about actions to get a company in good stead, we had to be decisive in those early years with these huge actions. We're really pleased with the progress in each.
As a result of which, we're now focused on our strategy, which we put quite simply as the right parts in the right place with the right service. Going forward, that's where we're now driving the business. We put these transformational moves behind us to now focus on being an auto parts supplier. As we do that each day, we get better. As we get better, we earn our place in the market.
As you look back, it's been. There's been internal challenges and external challenges. What unexpected challenges have you faced? Most importantly, are you where you are today, where you thought you were gonna be when you started this journey?
We feel great about where the company sits today. I think worth noting that for the first time in three years, this eclipses our arrival, we've now returned the company to a positive comp and positive operating income, profitability. That's a big step to legitimize what you're doing and to tell folks, "Hey, we've come through these tough stages to get to where we are today." That's a huge marker I put on the wall. In terms of things that we wanna continue to do, we've consolidated the DCs. A good next step is to now better optimize what occurs inside the four walls. That's what we're focused on, but that's part of our three pillars of our strategy. If you think about what we've done with our stores, we've introduced a new operating model.
We can now better refine what we're doing with labor and truck allocation. There are clear things that we're doing today to continue our trajectory. By the way, if you look at our guidance, we wanna be at a 1.5% comp and a 4.1% operating income. Those are the things that help get us there. Those are now inside the bounds of what traditional auto parts companies would be doing day in and day out, and beyond the scope of where we were doing things like consolidating the DC network, or by the way, I didn't mention before closing stores, we exited entire markets. We left the state of California, for example. We pared the number of independents that we work with, so we reduced that number.
We've done those types of things to now be in the business every day, getting better to hit the guidance that we just talked about.
Very helpful. I didn't give Shane enough due with his background. Shane's been. He spent a long time at McKinsey. He mentioned he was in the military. He spent time at The Home Depot, leadership in the oil and gas industry. You've seen a lot.
Mm-hmm.
Is it fair that we characterize over the last 20 months, there's just been heroic and heavy lifting at Advance, all the factors that you've mentioned. At this point, it really comes down to execution. Everything you've seen throughout your tenure within the business world would suggest, and tell me if this is fair, that what separates one organization from another is the consistency and degree of execution, and that's where you have looked to get Advance to at this point.
Indeed. I would further describe it as you need to be able to do decisive things. Sometimes to get to consistency, companies are unwilling to do tough things.
Yeah.
We've demonstrated that we can do that. To get to consistency, your strategy has to be understandable. It has to be relevant to the industry and the condition, and the state of where you're at. Then you gotta have good people to drive that consistency forward and create those processes. We've talked about the decisive actions. We've touched on the strategy, the right parts, the right place, the right service. We haven't touched on people, where we've now got leaders in seats who are statured and capable in the tasks that we're asking them to do and starting to now put forth the results that we're looking for. That's been a key part of our focus in the last 12 months.
Like you said, in the fourth quarter, there were some changes to the operating model.
Mm-hmm.
Can you provide a sense of what those changes have looked like? How are they gonna empower those at the store level to execute on a day in, day out basis and, you know, drive the performance of the business?
Yeah. I'll come at this question a couple of ways. First, in our industry, in our business, there are three fundamental questions that determine whether or not you get the sale. The first is, do you have the part? By the way, as we get to tariffs, Ryan on unpacking elasticities and things like that. By and large, if you have the part, you're in the game. Second is, when can I get it? For the pro customer, this means getting it to their shop expeditiously, and I'm gonna come to that. What's the price? That last one, you have to sort of be within the bumper.
We're looking to be able to successfully address those questions each and every day at our 4,200 stores and enable our 800 independents to be able to do the same. Okay, how do you make that happen? First, in some of the other organizations I've been in, being able to replicate consistent process across your stores is really important, and that's where our operating model, the idea that we have clarity in how we do things across the company is important. Inside of retail, labor is an absolute critical component of that. Ryan's done a wonderful job measuring labor and directing what our targets need to look like.
By the way, as we go forward this year, we're further segmenting it to make sure we're not looking at things in terms of averages, but at the uniques, at the individual store level. If you're high and you're low, the average might be good, but the experience wouldn't be the same. We're doing that. Second, in terms of asset allocation, delivery vehicles are really important for us. We run thousands of drivers every day out to pro customers. In general, inside of retail, if you have extra assets, you're gonna be remiss about or disinterested in giving them to somebody else. You wanna keep them for your own benefit. What we wanna do is get our vehicles to where they're used most effectively. That's. Those are two components.
There are a lot of incremental components beyond that, how we onboard, how we train, how we greet, how we solve customers' problems. There's activities going on in each of those. We're seeing progress, and I'll give you a very key indicator of that. Time to serve. We were, call it 50 minutes, north of 50 minutes in aggregate in terms of how long it took us to get a part to a pro. We've taken 10 minutes off of that. That's a function of looking at how you manage labor. That's a function of how you look at how you manage your delivery vehicles.
Now think about that going on across other pro activities to include the assortment that goes into the store, to include the level of expertise, to include when an outside salesperson visits, to include how our inside counter pros interact, by the way, also in terms of how we manage our DIY customers and solve their problems. At every turn inside the store, we're looking at their processes. We're trying to simplify the activities they have to do to be able to be engaged with the customer, and we're seeing success in terms of time to serve. By the way, we've also introduced NPS, which we're working through. We've introduced a new loyalty program to help with our DIY customers. Lots of activities geared towards returning to positive growth.
Your enthusiasm and excitement is infectious. We're all excited about this.
Yep.
Who would have thought taking 10 minutes out of time to serve would be so exciting, but it really is. B, is it a function of continuous improvement and really consistency in that execution at this point? If you had to lay this down on a scale, you know, are you in the first couple innings of generating this consistency in execution and improvement with a long runway to go?
Yeah. I would say we're in the mid-innings. If you think about the initial innings, we're doing those decisive actions. By the way, also identifying the things that needed to be done, getting the leaders in the seats, getting the strategy and the key actions by each of those pillar areas, the right parts, right place, right service, so that we can go about them. We have demonstrable wins in each of them. If I think about merchandising, where how we source from our vendors and the costs we pay, that has been a key activity. We've had notable benefit to the margins from that, but there's still more to go so that every vendor going through a PLR process knows what to expect.
By the way, there are also contingent activities that needed to be in place. For example, if you're a vendor and I say, "Michael, I want the best price inclusive of transportation," you say, "Shane, but I'm shipping to 38 DCs and some of them you want a UPS shipment, some of them you want an LTL shipment, some of them you want a truckload shipment. I can't really do that." Now, when I say we're at 16 DCs and we'll take truckloads, please, you can now factor that into your cost, which then helps us get to our cost.
That's another example of how we're getting from what had been the initial innings, which is let's have good merchants who know what a PLR is, and we call our vendors to the table to start having these discussions, to now we're doing it as a matter of routine and now doing it with better operational capabilities elsewhere in the business to create value. Gonna call it mid-innings. We've got lots of great things ahead for 2026, and we feel very good about the guidance that we've put out.
You highlighted the benefits from going from so many DCs to a base of 16 DCs. The consolidation of the relationships that you have with vendors is gonna be a big one. What other types of benefits do you see, and are they still in the early stages?
Oh, we could pull out a long list here.
We've got time, Shane. Well, let's just get it going.
Let's hit a few. Let's talk about assortment. This is a great industry. I think everybody should know that if you're covering other sectors, if you're new to auto parts, it's a fantastic industry. The U.S. car parc is large. In terms of the complexity of parts, that's going up. In terms of how long people are keeping their cars is going up. In terms of how far they drive, going up. You have all these fundamentals that are robust. By the way, it's still a fragmented industry. Even if you add up the large players, you only get to a minority type share. It's great to be doing this in an industry where the backdrop is so positive. Now, back to that large car parc.
Who's gonna have the parts? How do you know what you put in Florida, where they might be driving a lot of Kias and Hyundais, versus what you put in Kansas City, where there might be a lot of Ford F-150s? You have to know which cars are driving in your geographies. You have to know what the failure rates of those components are, and then you have to know the age of the vehicle in terms of whether or not you wanna have that immediately available or you wanna have it at an upstream node in your supply chain. We've added 100,000 SKUs into our system. We've engaged Palantir.
I know AI is very in vogue, and we view AI as a chance for us to get to a level playing field that without it, we'd have to sort of grind our way there. AI is a chance for us, if you think about it, instead of building landlines, if we can go straight to cell phone towers, let's do that. On assortment management, if our methodology wasn't as robust, then we can now use AI to catch up and have the Kia parts at that Florida store. That's a good example of where we're doing that. We feel really good about that. We're using AI in pricing, which is another. We operate in a rational industry, and I think that's really important. Back to the great industry fundamentals, including rational behavior.
Having said that, the complexity of how individual SKUs are priced in markets or where maybe we can be a little bit higher to skim or maybe we're a little bit lower based on the number of competitors in a particular geography. We can do that in terms of that geography, in those geographies on pricing. In terms of stores, we talked about the operating model. On the DC side, getting to productivity is really important. Productivity is measured in lines per hour. What we found as we were consolidating the DCs, it's very difficult to simultaneously optimize what's going on in the four walls of a DC if you're also tapping the DC leader on the shoulder and saying, "Listen, Michael, I need you to take over 300 stores from a DC we just closed down the street.
By the way, they have some different products and different routes. Can you do that? We focused on being able to absorb that volume. Now you've got it absorbed, let's focus inside your four walls in terms of where you put your conveyor systems, how you pick, how you put away, how you think about reslotting, those types of activities. Those are just a few. Ryan, I don't know if you wanna jump in on any others, but across every sort of area of the business, we're now beyond the big muscle movers to now starting to say, "Hey, we're an auto parts distributor and retailer, and we're getting better at these things.
You break up our three pillars, and this is a lot of the focus here, which is merchandising excellence in supply chain optimization and then store optimization. In merchandising excellence, I think we're mid to late innings there. We've had a lot of big success in driving gross profit. In fact, this year, gross profit rate will be around 45%. It's a big milestone for us in our three-year journey that we had. Supply chain, maybe, when we think about optimizing inside the box, early innings. We had to, as Shane said, get down to the consolidation. The productivity unlock comes after the investments we're making this year. We did get, even when we were consolidating, we got 5% improvement in lines per hour during all of that.
A lot of good work that was happening, but now it's really getting in there, and we've got Ron, who's in place now, really driving the right productivity in those boxes. On the store side, from an innings perspective, we've done a lot to help them. The right parts, the right place is all the work that Shane talks about, the work with Palantir to get the assortments right, the service level in those stores. That's an unlock that I think is early innings because we've got to invest in technology. We just rolled out Zebra devices at all of our stores. There's a technology unlock that'll happen this year with that type of capability. We won't have to buy RF guns off Craigslist any longer or eBay. We've got new technology coming to stores. We've got to upgrade our POS.
That's gonna take some time. Those don't happen overnight. We wanna unlock
The tasking work the store employees are doing today, and that's gonna take some technology, it's gonna take some process improvement in the stores. With Tony there, having done this in multiple retailers, really gonna be an unlock for us.
They've only worked together for 20 months, and they're finishing each other's sentences.
Mm-hmm.
Pretty incredible.
Been through some trenches.
There's a lot to unpack from what you had just mentioned. That was great and then very helpful. Before we do unpack all of that, I wanna pivot to something that you mentioned, Shane, which is there's been a lot. It's a great industry. There has obviously been a lot that's been happening in the industry. Tariffs have been top of mind. You know, more recently, the IEEPA rollback has been very in focus. So can you give us a sense of how you see that impacting what happens in the aftermarket? You know, are prices gonna roll back? What's done is done. How do you see this playing out, either one of you?
I'll ask Ryan to do the tariff impact in terms of ups and downs, but my sense rational industry that probably doesn't roll back would be my guess.
Yeah.
Just.
There's been a lot of factors that have contributed to the cost increases.
Yeah
Not just tariffs that have influenced this over the last few years, right?
The initial tariffs we've finalized negotiation on with most of our vendors, so those are in. For the most part, price and inflation has been able to help mitigate that cost increase, and it's a very inelastic industry, as you know, able to pass on a lot of that cost increase in the form of price. We saw that inflation last year. We expect inflation to remain the same till we got about 2%-3% this year. We expect that to happen. On IEEPA, a smaller portion of our product is direct, so from a refund standpoint, while this is still very fluid, we're not expecting it to be very material for us. However, for our vendors, as this starts to unfold, we'll work with them.
Very constructive dialogue with them, and we'll see. It's to me, it's a little early, somewhat fluid right now on what that would look like. I think Shane brings up a good point. It's a very rational industry. Prices tend to stick here. Depending on how this plays out, then we'll be able to get a better sense of what that impact might be. I wouldn't expect that prices would roll back necessarily, but what it might do is stabilize them.
Got you, Ryan. Very helpful. Obviously, the market investors have been having a watchful eye on what's been happening geopolitically and then the impact that it's had on the price of oil. The obvious question is: how are you thinking about, as gasoline prices increase, the potential impact it will have either on the demand side for the auto aftermarket, or this is a bit more, cost-intensive, from an input standpoint. How could it have an impact there?
A couple of thoughts. The good news about what we needed to do, Ryan and I have enough to focus on internally. That doesn't make it easier when there's lots of things going on in the external world, but we've got knitting internally to focus on that we've been focused on that creates value. I think that's important. I previously ran an oil and gas distribution company. My sense on the United States is the $4-
Magic number.
It also depends on how you boil the frog. America responds better in, e.g., less negative impact economically if the oil price increases gradually versus if there's a sudden shock. At $4, I think people start to say, "Hey, I might curtail miles driven," is kinda
Mm-hmm.
By the way, it's gotta get there. How it gets there, we touched on, and how long it stays there, if it's just there for a brief period of time. But, you know, beyond that, back to the first part, we have enough to do internally to get better that, you know, that even with headwinds and tailwinds, there are things that we're doing inside of the company that make us a more effective organization.
Got you.
We haven't seen any price increases yet from this. I think it's still too early on the gas going up. There's a lot of contracts that we have in this industry that have a commodity element to it. If this prolongs, that could add some pressure. Like we said, the industry is fairly rational from a price standpoint. If it leaps in, might be.
It, it-
Might be a price thing.
If you think about where, you know, beyond what happens with the consumer, oil goes into how we move our stuff around.
Yeah.
There's an interesting sort of set of forces where we're having the discussion with the vendor now that says, "Hey, we've only got 16 DCs to ship to, so let's think about that." Also, we're shipping from our stores from those DCs. We're looking and we're rebidding all of our freight contracts so that we have fewer, better capable carriers because we have fewer DCs that we're pushing out to for our own replenishment to our own stores.
Mm-hmm.
Obviously oil can impact those contracts. It's not a huge component of it, but just know that simultaneously we're looking to get to a lower position relatively because we hadn't done that and we would have, you know, with our 50 different DCs, you'd have a myriad of carriers who are working either inbound or outbound.
Got you. I wanna reiterate a few points that you made. One, this is a great industry. Two, there's a path for Advance independent of what happens with the industry. Three, you know, the persistence around these elevated energy prices will matter a lot. Putting those factors aside, how do you see the outlook for the aftermarket over the next year or so? One of the debates is the industry has experienced the benefit from passing along some like for like inflation. Maybe that starts to fade. Does that result in slower growth for the industry? Maybe on the other side, there could be less deferred maintenance.
That would drive an offset. How do you see this playing out?
Yeah. Again, I think the pricing in this industry is a lot like an extension ladder. Once it locks up at a higher level, it really doesn't go back. The other thing that's interesting is, for our customer, the car is the linchpin for everything they do. By the way, they're often in one of the lower spend cohorts in aggregate. They might have one car for the family. That car is how they get to work, it's how they get to church, they get the kids to activities. If that thing's not running, they're getting it fixed. I don't necessarily see demand curtailing. I don't necessarily see pricing going down. It's inelastic in that regard.
We're optimistic based on our forecast for this year in terms of maybe you talk about our guidance and how you wanna reaffirm that. We're looking for 2026 to be a good year for us.
There's always inflation, natural inflation that comes in. The ability for this industry to pass along that inflation and price is better than most. I would expect, you know, inflation to continue to come into the market in a more reasonable way going forward. I do think the car parc is increasing. Miles driven has increased. From a current projected forecast going forward, the industry will still stay healthy.
Yeah.
Right? The inflation might not be as high when you have tariffs coming in, et cetera, but it's still gonna be persistent, right?
Yeah.
It's gonna be there.
We're very comfortable with our guidance that we put out this year.
Very helpful. The key is to your customer, as to the Bloomberg or FactSet for this customer base.
Yes. That's right.
We get.
All right.
You know, last question on the industry.
Yep.
Artificial intelligence and technology has been a hot topic.
Yeah
Not only for this community, but really across the economy. As an operator and a leader of a business, you are at the forefront of trying to understand these issues. How do you see this impacting your organization? How do you think it impacts the aftermarket? You know, we're starting to see things like autonomous vehicles and other changes to the car parc that could have an influence longer term. How are you thinking about this?
I think the big one is ADAS.
That's the automated driving, you know, or maybe you can just,
No, I'm doing advanced detection.
Yeah.
If you buy a new car today, you're gonna have between, you know, at least 10, 14, 16 different systems that help you do things, blind spot monitoring, automated cruise control, automatic braking, all these products that need calibration and fixing. There's a nice pro-growth dimension coming from that because if you get your car aligned, if you change your windshield, if you bang your bumper, these systems have to get recalibrated and you can't do it yourself. I do think there's some interesting trends that people aren't necessarily giving credit for. Everybody thinks about electric vehicles as a big technological shift.
It's important to note that these systems that cars have are very expensive to fix.
Yeah
replace.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
They may break down less often, but they're.
Yeah
Very expensive tickets.
We have a robust parts and equipment business, so we not only sell those types of calibration equipment, but we'll train you on how to use it. That's a great way. We constantly have people coming through, learning how to use that equipment because they can charge for it. 'Cause otherwise you're going to the dealership to get that changed. Let's talk through technology in the industry. Electric vehicles adoption rate I think has actually waned.
Yeah
as a percentage of new vehicles.
No one cares about it anymore. Yeah.
I call it 1%+ o f the aggregate fleet that's in the U.S. As the incentives go away, and as people realize that they're stuck with a big paperweight after they've owned the vehicle for a number of years, I think you see the rise of a hybrid, so an engine and a battery component. Americans have range anxiety, and we like to drive, and the number of charging stations relative to gas stations, it's something like 14 - 1, something like that.
Yeah.
Electric vehicles have not proved to be the boogeyman for our part of the industry that perhaps people thought when they first came out. I think that's out there. Hybrids are great, 'cause they got an engine.
Two different systems to fix.
Lots of things to fix. I think that's important. I do think as it relates to technology in the industry though, it's what are we doing internally to adopt technology to be more effective, and how can we take advantage of changes in technology to make sure that we're getting our due? We talked about some of the things we're doing in AI. We talked about things we're doing in terms of Zebra devices, and we're looking at things in terms of how we route software, how we manage labor. I think there are a lot of areas of a business where AI can be applicable that in the past you'd have to have a lot of tracking systems and come at it from a very granular bottom-up perspective.
Well, one other thing is these cars that need this much electronic equipment, they actually come now with two batteries. There's a lot of things that happen to. One, you've got
That industry is gonna change, but whatever happens.
Mm-hmm
Advance and the auto aftermarket should be there to support the changes in the industry.
Right. Yeah. I'll just add to that, you to be where we are, and to have come through what we've come through, we're now in a position where we're gonna be a participant.
Yep.
We're excited by that. We are genuinely excited that we've come through these tough things, and we're now in a position where if you think about where we're gonna go from a profitability perspective, you know, that's a marked improvement from where we were just a couple of years ago.
It's interesting because as these cars become more complicated to fix, that's gonna push more demand to the commercial segment of the market.
Yeah
... which has been an area of strength-
Indeed
For Advance. What is underlying that strength? How are you looking at Advance has been a little bit more discerning around some of the profitability characteristics around its customer relationships.
Yeah.
How are you seeing this unfold now?
That's a well-said nuanced comment. We've long had a right to win in pro. It has been a staple part of Advance's portfolio. It stems from how we run our outside sales team members and the level of training we provide them and the capabilities we expect from them. It stems from software programs that we put in place behind them to include sales software that says, "I'm going to Michael's shop, and every shop like yours, you know, is buying these products, but you're not.
I know I can have a good conversation around a product that's relevant for you versus talking about the sports or the weather. We have TechNet, which is a point of distinction where we offer a comprehensive suite of programs to a pro shop to include warranty service, so they can repair a car in one state. Single shop.
Yeah.
It could be your parent's shop, and you can fix a car in Georgia, and the guy or gal can have an issue with it, and we'll warranty that repair in Florida. We provide the warranty, we provide the labor rates, we provide tools like MotoLogic that enable them to see and show customers the breakdown of what's going on in an engine so that customer can understand the part. Outside sales, software programs, tools and equipment that we talked about, our commercial parts pros, where we have them, at a separate counter in every store. We feel very good about our capabilities to compete in the pro segment and look for us to do that.
In fact, in Q4, we had a 4% comp in Pro, and notably, that includes a slight waning of some national account business.
Mm-hmm
... which means our Main Street business was growing above that. Main Street, we think, is a sweet spot for the pro business, both in terms of the number of shops and the margin profile of selling to those shops.
The pro business is an area where you can effectuate a lot of the outcomes. You can have the right part, the right place, the right time. You can focus on having effective relationships. At times, it can be more challenging. On the DIY side, you can't force a consumer to come to your store over someone else's store. How do you think about the pacing of improvement in the DIY customer? What's happening?
Yeah
with the DIY customer today?
Yeah.
I have one follow-up.
Yeah. I invite Ryan to jump in, but a couple of things that are important. First, in the wake of closing stores, we're number one or number two in terms of store density in 75% of our markets. That matters. If you're a consumer and you gotta drive somewhere, you want to be able to drive to an Advance Auto Parts. That's an important component. Second, we've improved the assortment in the stores, so it's more likely that we're gonna have a part that you're looking for. Third, we've introduced a new rewards program. Advance Rewards, we've enhanced some things that really used to be frustrating to customers, such as combining coupons and things like that. We're improving our web experience.
We know that a lot of journeys begin online in some form or fashion. We have a really good mobile app, which I think, you know, increasingly that becomes the starting part of the journey. There's just a handful of things. Last I'll say is we're measuring NPS, and we're getting that feedback directly down to stores every single day. You know exactly who gave you a five in terms of our survey, and we also send each store the Google results.
Yeah.
You know exactly what you're doing. I'll say that when I read those feedback comments, the thing that impacts the consumer's experience more than anything else is how they were made to feel by the team member when they walked in the door. One of our standards is we should greet you inside of 10 seconds of your arrival, and we should come out from behind the counter and say, "Hey, Michael, what are you looking for today?" Because even in instances where we don't have the part or the customer doesn't buy from us, if they were made to feel good when they shopped with us, that they tell other folks. By the way, when we get a complete transaction, they tell everybody.
In instances where we disaffect them, they tell folks about that too.
Like-
You make investors feel good, so we understand that. Go ahead. Yeah, sorry, Ryan.
No, I got.
Yeah.
How can I follow this? I mean, this is great.
I know. That is very hard to follow. I glossed over something that I think is important. One of the questions that came up in the wake of the fourth quarter was the benefit that Advance had received from closing stores and transferring sales.
Oh, yeah.
You know what? The point you just made a minute ago, Shane, was important in that the market needs to consider that, but it also needs to consider the fact that there was a headwind from some customer decision choices.
Yeah
You made, such that maybe those have to be a bit of an offset. It won't be as hard of a challenge. Is that?
Right. That's a great way. I'll unpack that for a second
We have been going through our portfolio and how we go to market and making adjustments. We think we're taking a much more balanced approach to that portfolio of where we lean in, that's customer portfolio. On the pro side, you have national accounts, regional accounts, Main Street accounts. I think in the past, we focused real heavily on national accounts.
Mm.
Slightly lower margin profile, higher cost to serve, and we've alienated some of the Main Street. We have shifted that priority to balanced approach. In some respects, we've walked away from some business on the national account side because it just wasn't profitable to the levels that we'd like, the higher cost to serve, and we'd like to use those resources to fulfill on the Main Street side. That does create a little bit of a headwind for us. There's a mixed impact in our pro numbers. If you think Q4, we had like roughly a four comp in Pro. Main Street outperformed that because you have this headwind of national accounts.
All right, think about our core Main Street business outperforming, the gap which you'd see to our peers on the pro side wouldn't be quite as large as it looks like, just given there's some shifting in that portfolio.
When does that stop being a headwind?
By the end of this year, the big chunks are done. We'll have cycled most of that by the end of the year.
Got you. Where I wanna spend the last few minutes of our time together, even though I could do this all day, is on the profitability. I think the team deserves a lot of credit because you have not been afraid to make some pivots when that call has been necessary. You set out a long-term operating margin of 7%. You are still committed to that. It's just the timeframe may be a little different than what you had originally thought. If you could unpack that and give us a sense of what's changed, what's been in your mindset to say, "We still think there's a lot of opportunity to improve the profitability. It just may take a little bit longer.
I'll have one sentence, and Ryan has the details. April 2nd came along.
Yeah.
-and, uh, um, and then-
We haven't even been a year removed from the.
Yeah.
It's hard to believe.
managing that. By the way, we, you know, the global stage in terms of conflicts, so again, we have enough to do internally that we can do things to make the company better, but the timeline gets impacted a little bit based on what's going on.
We still think. You said long-term, still think it's a medium-term target.
Yeah.
I think it's still a good target for us to go after. There is some timing element to it. One, as we made adjustments throughout the year, whether that's related to tariffs, but also supply chain and how much productivity we'd get initially from it when we were doing the consolidation or on the store side. You know, 99% of our transactions are an engagement with a frontline associate. We're really cautious about the impacts we have there. To get the right productivity out of our stores is important, but it's also important we maintain a good interaction with our customers. The timing of that, getting new leaders in that are focused on those things, I think this year is gonna be really telling around what is the achievability timeline for that.
Because we're investing a lot in supply chain and getting productivity. When will we get that productivity? We'll learn more this year. On the store side, how soon do we get productivity out of that? Has the technology come along that enables that productivity we wanna get out of there? I think on merchandising excellence, significant progress, and we're really happy with that. Getting to a 45% gross profit rate by the end of this year is just really good work by our merchandising team. I think the other pillars are the ones that we need that investment and the timeline to mature this year before we can kind of say when we're gonna get that seven. On that 45%, do you have good line of sight? Is that a. You know, what could drive potential upside there?
You've got a private label launch this year that probably provides.
Yeah.
Some help to it. Although the work that's been done on the supply chain side, can you help dimension these different pieces?
Yeah. A lot of good work already done and baked on the margin expansion. Still some more to do, but a good chunk of that. Last year, when we started last year, we were just starting out. We did a lot of work. We'll finish up this year and be in a good place, but a good portion of our gross profit expansion, we've already baked with contracts with the vendors on strategic sourcing. We're engaging on strategic business planning with our vendors. Those are really fruitful. So we feel more confident in that rate and the timeline to get to there. Upside, downside, I think within our guidance range really accounts for that, on the gross profit rate. I think that's where you'll see the positive upside. Downside is really in that gross profit rate.
I think we wanna give our supply chain teams time to really drive the right productivity within those facilities. We've got investment going in there, so that's not where we're gonna look to try to get upside.
One of the themes we've heard from all of the participants in the aftermarket is that costs of doing business have risen, healthcare, wages, liability expense. Shane, you've mentioned a couple of times that Advance is in a good position 'cause it controls its destiny.
Mm-hmm.
It's got some idiosyncratic drivers. How do you think about these rising costs as an influence on your ability to achieve some of your expectations?
Ryan’s done a great job here that he can describe. We know that there are dimensions that aren't mitigatable, healthcare benefits. We gotta take care of our people, and make sure our associates feel like, this is a great place to work and that they can have a career there. There are some things where we are, you know, we bob along in the current like everybody else does. What he's done is gone across our G&A and found other opportunities that have mitigated what would otherwise just be, you know, up and to the right.
Yeah, we did a big indirect spend initiative.
Went after a ton of expense there. Just give you an example, we have, like, three cloud providers. Most companies don't have three cloud providers.
Yeah.
We'll transition into one, and that will be some cost savings. We've had a lot of inefficiencies in our SG&A, and we've been able to get some of that and fund it. We've seen general liability go up. That's an industry issue, right?
Yeah. Definitely. Yeah.
We've seen that, but we've been able to find savings in other areas through our indirect spend that have been able to mitigate some of those costs as well. Healthcare is another one. We've seen general healthcare costs go up, but we hadn't RFP'd a lot of those programs for a while, so we were able to go get some cost out that we're able to mitigate that. I think the key point really here is we've got 60,000 associates. We wanna make sure they do have the right benefits and career here. The very first investment that we made.
Mm-hmm
was $100 million into our frontline associates.
Yeah.
We're really keen on where SG&A is going and making sure it's going to the right use. It's going to our frontline associates. It's going to our stores. That's where the interactions with our customers happen.
Very helpful. Shane, another way you have pivoted, and to your credit, and you've been very flexible, is to say, "Listen, we're just trying to do a little bit better every day.
Mm-hmm.
That seems to be the mantra with which you're operating, which is probably what we could all do in our day-to-day basis.
Yeah.
If this doesn't go as you thought it would, what would be that factor that interrupts with your ability to do a little bit better each day?
I don't see anything that gets in the way of doing a little bit better each day. I think the idea that we've done the really tough stuff. I think if you'd asked me that question and said, "Hey, Shane, can you consolidate the supply chain? Can you really get an NSO capability going? Can you really extract value from the vendors?" In those early days, when you haven't sat across from somebody and said, "Listen, I want a 10% price decrease," that's where you'd say, you know, the tough stuff could impede what we're trying to do. Now it's just around, you know, being in the industry.
Really, unless the industry fundamentals change radically, we've got a right to be here, and we feel, again, where I opened, I've never felt better about where this company is going because now we're doing the basics that in the prior years, we had to be doing these huge structural shifts. Now we're just in the business every day. We're focused on merchandising. We're focused on supply chain. We're focused on stores. We've got really good leaders who understand their craft in those respective areas. They're gonna start unlocking value in those areas beyond the muscle movers that we've done already. We think it's a great time to be at Advance. We're excited by it.
We think 2026 is gonna be a great year for us, and we certainly appreciate you guys covering us, and/or investing in us. Good to be here.
Two of those leaders are sitting on the stage today. We thank you very much for being with us.
Indeed.
Please join me in thanking.
Please.
Thank you, guys.
Appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, it was fun.
Good. Don't sit here. Let's sit here.