Good day, and welcome to the Q3 2022 earnings call. This conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to Karen Reid. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator, and good morning, everyone. As noted, today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay later this afternoon. Welcome to Asbury Automotive Group's third quarter 2022 earnings call. The press release detailing Asbury's third quarter results was issued earlier this morning and is posted on our website at investors.asburyauto.com. Participating with me today are David Hult, 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 prepared remarks, we will open the call up for questions, and we'll 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 uncertainty. 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 2021, any subsequently filed quarterly on Form 10-Q, and 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've also posted an updated investor presentation on our website, investors.asburyauto.com, highlighting our third quarter results.
It is my pleasure to hand the call over to our CEO, David Hult. David?
Thank you, Karen, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter earnings call. Before we get started today, I would like to take the opportunity to say that our thoughts are with all those affected by Hurricane Ian. Thankfully, our team members living in the path of the storm are safe. Also, thanks to the preparedness of our teams, we are fortunate in avoiding any notable damage to our stores and inventories. I will note that although we make adjustments to net income to reflect the effect of Hurricane Ian, we estimate that the store closures had a negative earnings impact of $0.14 per diluted share on our third quarter results. For the third quarter, we grew adjusted EBITDA by $115 million to $329 million, an increase of 54%.
Grew adjusted EPS from $7.36 to $9.23, an increase of 25%. We delivered an 8.1% adjusted operating margin, increased revenue by $1.5 billion to $3.9 billion, and gross profit by $288 million to $768 million, and drove F&I gross profit per vehicle to $2,480, up $569 from prior year. During the quarter, we continued to integrate our acquisitions, build a strong balance sheet, and reduce our net leverage. Our day supply increased to 19 days, partially due to deliveries delayed by Hurricane Ian, yet still low day supply and inventory affecting overall unit sales. Year -to -date, we have generated $782 million of adjusted operating cash flow.
Net leverage has decreased from 2.7x at year-end to 1.9x at the end of the third quarter. Our strong cash flow and reduced leverage enable our focused capital allocation strategy. Currently, the car park average age is over 12 years. We have pent-up demand from supply constraints over the past two years, and our parts and service revenue continues to strengthen. We look forward to continuing to deliver strong results for our shareholders, being outstanding partners with our OEMs to steward their great brands now and in the future, and offering an environment where our team members can thrive while providing the most guest-centric experience in automotive retail. Once again, I would like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of all my fellow Asbury team members.
It is through your passion and persistence that we continue to deliver these strong results for our shareholders and to be the most guest-centric automotive retailer. Thank you. I will now hand the call over to Dan to discuss our operating performance. Dan?
Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. I would also like to thank all our teams nationwide for their hard work, dedication, and commitment to delivering an exceptional guest experience. Now, I will turn to our same-store performance compared to the third quarter of 2021, unless stated otherwise. In the third quarter, new vehicle inventory continued to remain well below normalized levels and consumer demand outstripped supply. At the end of September, our total new vehicle inventory was $332 million, and our day supply was at 19 days, up seven days from the prior year quarter. Due to supply constraints, new vehicle volume declined 16% year-over-year.
However, we experienced a significant increase in our new average gross profit per vehicle, which increased $717 from the prior year quarter to $5,782. We anticipate new inventory levels to remain low through the end of the year, and we are focused on maximizing profitability while also remaining steadfast in our commitment to our guests. Turning to used vehicles. Used retail revenue was flat to last year. Our total used vehicle inventory ended the quarter at $368 million, which represents a 31-day supply. Our used-to-new ratio for the quarter was 120%, up from 112% in the prior year quarter and in line with our second quarter of 2022. Shifting to F&I.
We've delivered another strong quarter with an F&I PVR of $2,254, an increase of $339 compared to the prior year quarter. Thank you to our F&I team once again for this impressive result. In the third quarter, our total front-end yield per vehicle increased $307 per vehicle to $5,916. Moving to parts and service. Our parts and service revenue increased 12% in the quarter. Our customer pay revenue continued its momentum with a 15% growth. Jumping to Clicklane. Not including LHM and Stevinson, we sold over 6,800 vehicles through Clicklane in the third quarter, a 13% increase year-over-year. In fact, Q3 was Clicklane's best quarter ever.
We experienced a 16% increase in visits to our websites, reaching a noteworthy 10 million visitors in the quarter. Based on the activity from our legacy Asbury stores, we are on pace to generate approximately $1 billion of revenue from Clicklane in 2022. We are excited to announce that Clicklane is now rolled out to the Stevinson and LHM stores. We expect to generate $2.2 billion in revenue for 2023 from Clicklane across all stores. Though sales of new vehicles continue to be constrained by a lack of inventory, we achieved 92% of our transactions this quarter were with customers who were incremental to Asbury's dealership network. Average transaction time remained roughly in line with prior quarters, with eight minutes for cash deals and 14 minutes for finance deals.
Total front-end PVR of $3,450 and F&I PVR of $2,093, which equates to a total of $5,543 of total front-end yield. The average Clicklane customer score increased to 718, which is higher than the average credit score at our stores and demonstrates a robust omni-channel consumer. The average down payment for vehicle was $9,481, up from $6,713, or 41% versus last year. 81% of consumers seeking financing received instant approval, while an additional 10% required some offline assistance. 91% of those that applied approved for financing. 41% of Clicklane sales had trade-ins, with 53% of such trades reconditioned and retailed to consumers.
95% of our Clicklane deliveries were within a 20 mi radius of our stores, thus allowing us the opportunity to retain our new customers in our parts and service departments. Clicklane customers are converting at more than double the rate of traditional internally, but we won't see the full potential until inventory levels normalize. We achieved almost 200,000 online service appointments, an increase of over 50,000 or 35% compared to Q3 of last year. I will now hand the call over to Michael to discuss our financial performance. Michael?
Thank you, Dan. To our investors, analysts, team members, and other participants on the call, good morning. I would like to provide some financial highlights for our company. For additional details on our financial performance for the quarter, please see our financial supplement in our press release today and our investor presentation on our website. Overall, compared to the third quarter of last year, adjusted net income increased 43% to $205 million. Adjusted EPS increased 25% to $9.23. Net income for the third quarter of 2021 was adjusted primarily for the sale of dealerships, which netted to $0.18 per dilutive share. Third quarter 2022 did not have any adjustments. The estimated reduction in EPS due to Hurricane Ian was $0.14 per dilutive share.
As David mentioned earlier, we did not include this impact as an adjustment to our quarterly results, but are providing to help size the hurricane's effect. During the last week of September, we experienced lost business for closures of our 24 stores in Florida, which represents approximately 35% of the same-store unit sales. We continue to pay our team members while those stores were closed. We estimate the impact of same-store SG&A as a percentage of gross profit to be 40 basis points, thus 50.4% when excluding the impact of the hurricane. Year-to-date, we generated adjusted operating cash flow of $782 million. Excluding real estate purchases, year-to-date, we spent approximately $60 million on capital expenditures.
Our balance sheet remains strong as we ended the quarter with approximately $1.2 billion of liquidity comprised of cash, excluding cash at Total Care Auto, floorplan offset accounts, and availability on both our used line and revolving credit facility. We recently amended our credit agreement to enhance flexibility in supporting our strategic objectives. Also, at the end of the quarter, our pro forma adjusted net leverage ratio stood at 1.9x , down from 2.7x at year-end and 2.1x at the end of the second quarter. For 2022, we are planning for CapEx of approximately $120 million. This amount excludes real estate purchases. For the quarter, TCA made $22 million pre-tax income, which included $1.9 million of net investment losses. Excluding the investment losses, TCA would have made $24 million for the quarter.
TCA provides us the opportunity to expand horizontally into our F&I business. TCA has generated $65 million of income year-to-date on the Larry H. Miller stores, excluding net losses on investments. We now have expanded TCA into all of our Colorado stores, and we anticipate a full rollout to our existing stores by the end of 2023. As a reminder, we expect EBITDA from this unique asset to hit $185 million by 2025. Finally, I would also like to thank all of our team members at Asbury who have dedicated themselves to building a brighter future for ourselves, our communities, our shareholders, and all of our stakeholders. I will now hand back over to David to provide some closing remarks. David?
Thank you, Michael. In closing, with our diversified revenue streams, we continue to generate robust cash flow and profits. With the age of the nation's car park at historic highs and our fixed operations performing so strongly, the resilience of this business model continues to deliver solid results. We've maintained our disciplined expense control through significant revenue growth, almost doubling the size of the company in a depressed car environment. We continue driving towards strong execution across these lines, and we are always evaluating and optimizing our portfolio. This concludes our prepared remarks. We'll now turn the call over to the operator and take your questions. Operator?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please keep pressing star one. If you wish to cancel your request, please signal by pressing star two. We'll now take our first question from Daniel Imbro from Stephens. Please go ahead.
Yep. Thanks. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for taking our questions. You know, David, I want to start talking about Clicklane, actually. I think in the slides, you said 95% of deliveries are within 20 mi. I mean, do we have enough data yet to track the service attachment on those sales and how sticky they are? Is it the same as a physical sale? Just thinking about the lifetime value of using Clicklane more in market versus new markets and what you're seeing on the data side there.
It's a great question, Daniel. It varies by market and depending upon whether it's a metro or a single point market, but it generally lines up with what we're selling out of our conventional stores. You know, the benefit and the focus to stay within a 25 mi- 50 mi radius is really to ensure we capture that parts and service business. Our intent is to govern sales, you know, beyond 50 mi when possible, because again, the revenue from parts and service is just too important to us.
Got it. No data yet on whether that's, I guess, working or you're keeping those service sales?
Yeah. It's early on. A lot of them are coming up on their first oil changes. Like I said, so far, we're seeing similar results as if we sold the car in the showroom compared to Clicklane.
Got it. Second one I wanted to ask on was on the F&I redesign you guys talked about last quarter. You know, I think that included some bundling and new tools. How is that progressing? I know it's early, but then obviously the FTC, I'll tie that in with that question. You know, they've closed the comment period talking about potentially looking at and impacting the F&I departments. So how does that impact your F&I business or some of the bundling and other tools you've introduced there?
Hey, good morning, Daniel. This is Dan. I'll start with the last question, and then I'll go to the second iteration of our F&I tool. You know, I think we've always done and supported the proper disclosure and full transparency in the F&I products. That is the right thing to do for our consumers, and it is the right thing to do for our business. We, you know, we've always operated under that condition, and we will continue to operate. We will adjust to whatever the FTC puts out there, again, under the full transparency spectrum. From the second iteration of Clicklane, you know, it's the first quarter where we started rolling it out.
We don't have enough data for me to really share with you on what is going. What I will tell you is that we continue to tweak it based on what we see from a consumer standpoint on what they like, what they don't like, and continue to make adjustments to make sure that we're providing what they want. On the digital aspect of the sale.
The only thing I would add to that as it relates to the FTC and pending stuff, you know, we have a tremendous amount of folks that are professionals at disclosing these products and selling them professionally. You know, traditionally, our mix is 50% products and 30% reserve. Everyone's compliant trained. We're constantly tweaking our training to get better at what we do. At the end of the day, just like I'm sure all our peers do, we strive to only sell products that are needed from our consumers and add value, and certainly have a tremendous amount of confidence. Whatever the outcome is, we'll maintain our F&I numbers.
Great. Last one for me. Just wanna touch on the SG&A side. You know, I think you continue to lead the peer group, staying in the high 50s despite used GPUs normalizing. Any update on hiring, maybe where that ratio of SG&A to gross shake out either in 2023 or 2024 as the industry evolves, you know, given the cost savings you guys have realized?
Yeah. I mean, I think the thing in there is, you know, productivity per employee is one of the key things for us. The change in our business in terms of selling some of our cost stores in Mississippi and replacing those with Park Place and then some of the new acquisitions. We still have a ways to go on the acquisitions, but we think when the margins come back, you know, to whatever they end up back at, if that's 2024 or 2025, you know, 2023 or 2024, we're kind of in that 60 range for SG&A percentage of gross to low -60s.
Also, there's some potential to be able to bring that number back down into that mid-50s range once Clicklane gets enough volume under it, and that will help us change the, you know, comp structure in the stores. That's kind of a, you know, a second wave when Clicklane gets to be a higher percentage of our sales.
I would add to that, Daniel. If you look at our same store SG&A, it was 55.8%, which is pretty solid. You know, it obviously shows that we haven't reached our synergies yet with our acquisitions. There's definitely some tailwind there for us to work on over the next 12 months to get that in line with the rest of the company.
Great. Really appreciate all the color today, and good luck going forward.
Thank you.
John Murphy, Bank of America, please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. You know, obviously there's a lot of crosscurrents going on here that are a little bit unusual, particularly on the new vehicle supply side of the equation. You know, just curious, I mean, you know, it seems like you guys had, you know, slightly lower volume, but higher grosses, you know, and it seems to be kind of varying between group and, you know, conversely some, you know, slightly better, you know, volume, but a lot lower grosses, you know, but still very strong grosses in general. I mean, when do you think this is going to normalize?
I know you guys said you think it'll stay tight through the end of the year, but you know, it seems like it's gonna stay relatively tight, you know, well into next year, which should be supportive of grosses, you know, well into next year. What is your take on this, and how do you manage this? Do you just keep taking much higher grosses and you know, fight through this? Or I mean, how are you thinking about it and how do you manage it?
John, this is David. I'll start, and then Dan can jump in. You know, this is one of those deals where they're not all gonna come back at the same time. I think generally, a lot of the domestics with the supply will come back, late first quarter into second quarter. The imports and luxuries, it really could be the second half of the year at best. Still hard to tell. You know, when you look at our quarterly results in the tables and where the unit sales came from, you know, the vast majority of the volume comes from import. When you look at-
Mm-hmm.
You know, a couple of the import brands that represent 25% of our import business that we never had a five-day supply of cars in the quarter, that's why you're seeing such strong margins. I think those brands are still gonna struggle into the, you know, first half of next year to get back to a normalized day supply. So we're still selling, pre-selling into our pipeline, percentage-wise a little bit less than prior quarter, but still really great results of pre-selling cars that are coming. So the demand is still there. You know, I can't stress it enough at point on the script.
With the average age of the car around 12 years, there's just that natural attrition or benefit that we're gonna have that, you know, even whatever headwinds come our way, we feel like that we'll maintain better than most sectors. Do you wanna add?
No, I have nothing to add. You wanna say it?
To follow up on that, I mean, we're gonna be in a constrained environment. It sounds like we'll be in a constrained environment, you know, well into next year. Even a reasonable recovery on the new side is gonna take a long time to restock the one to six year old car fleet. I mean, it might take, you know, 3+ years , at least before you even get a recovery there. Does that bode well for your parts and service business? Can you know, push growth there further? Where's your capacity in your service base? Is there an opportunity for you to really grow that much faster to offset what might be a still continued constraint on your used vehicle business?
Yeah. Yeah. John, I'll start with the parts and service piece first. It's one person's opinion, not guidance, but I think the next 10 years, parts and service has a tremendous opportunity to have tremendous strength. You think about the number of combustible engines on the road, electric cars coming. This quarter is no different than the previous four quarters for us. Our highest repair order dollars per ticket were on electric vehicles. So, the first-generation warranty work is gonna be strong in those vehicles as they enter into the market. So, between combustible engine, higher retention numbers, electric business coming back to us for retention, larger dollars generated, we think parts and service is gonna be in a great space for a while. You know, when you look at our used business. We were back 10% in the quarter.
We were backwards pretty good in PVR. When you break down the PVR and you look at, you know, what we normally generate for gross profit on our trade-ins, we were $2,300-$2,400 a car, which was significantly higher than what our overall number was. It's because, to your point, the used market has been so depressed for so long. Cars haven't been available. When you're buying cars in the open market, you know, you only get them if you pay more than anybody else. That certainly has been bringing down our margin. We think over time it'll normalize, but it's gonna be a ways out. I mean, it's probably a good 18-24 months out before we start to really get some of our trade business back normal.
Got it. Just, I'm sorry, just one last thing. David, you'd mentioned something about Clickl ane, and that you didn't want to go much beyond a 50 mi radius around stores, because you don't retain the consumer for parts and service. I'm just curious, is there a normal physical radius, you know, for the normal physical stores before we get into Clickl ane that you think that might be 10 mi or 20 mi, and it's now larger because of Clickl ane at 50 mi? Or is it just Clickl ane will garner a higher market share in that 50 mi radius, and it's kind of the same as what you think about with a normal physical store?
Yeah, I'll start and then Dan can jump in. I think what's been consistent through the quarters, which has been a little bit surprising to me, is that north of 90% of the customers that have purchased live in our communities but haven't done business with our stores. I look at that as a couple things. The independents or the private caps that we're dealing with in the markets don't have the full transactional tools. The consumers with the strong credit scores see the value and time saved, and we're gaining these customers for it. I think we're gonna continue to see strong penetration for the next few quarters, until the private side catches up with the technology. It's just logic-based.
I mean, if you could purchase a car in 14 minutes compared to sitting in a showroom for two and half hours, what's a better use of your time? We think that'll continue to grow. I think the other aspect is within our tool. You know, if you're buying a car in New York and you're buying it from one of our stores in Atlanta, when you purchase the vehicle, you type in your address where you want the car delivered to, and it's almost like Google Maps. We map out in real-time exactly how many miles it is to you and what the cost per mile is or the overall cost to ship the car to you.
So you have to factor that in too, that delivery, if you will, or that cost to deliver the vehicle is being passed on to the consumer. We don't have it marked up. We have a national transportation company that services us well and servicing those customers well, but it's an additional expense to the consumer. It's not to say that we haven't shipped cars 500 mi or 1,000 mi. We have. We just don't like to do it because we want to retain the relationship.
John, good morning. The one thing I'll echo on what David is saying is going back to the primary market area responsibility that we are by our OEM partners. You know, it's key to maintain that. As you as I mentioned on my script, we reached close to 200,000 online service appointments. When we look at convenience, which is really what ultimately what the consumer wants within the primary market area that we service, I think that has given us a competitive advantage, and that's what we're seeing in that mile radius stay right within our PMA, and reaping the benefits of it from a retention standpoint and the entire domino effect.
Very helpful, guys. Thank you so much.
Thank you, John.
Ryan Sigdahl from Craig-Hallum Capital Group, please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Want to start on Clicklane. Solid metrics as the brand continues to get better there. Curious on the 2023 guidance for $2.2 billion in sales. I think I caught that right in the prepared remarks. Growth has been slowing sequentially, on a unit basis there, I guess. What are the main drivers to more than double sales year-over-year next year?
Yeah, it's just Ryan, this is David. A couple things I'll point out. The 6,800 sales were really just the legacy stores. Year-over-year, we were backwards in new car volume, but yet Clickl ane was up 13%. I think there's a huge delta between the amount of transactions that increased on Clickl ane compared to the decrease in number of units that we sold. The increase to next year is simple math. It's taking the same. We added over 70 stores on top of the legacy stores. It's taking those stores and extrapolating out the same conversions that we have in the other stores to get to that number.
The big increase is all the LHM, Stevinson, Arapahoe, and Koons stores that we've added in the last year or end of 2021 that are gonna be in that number now for 2023.
That makes sense. Helpful. Just on capital allocation, any change to how you think about that given kind of all the crosswinds and current conditions, both potential M&A line as well as current business, stock, et cetera? I think you were the only public franchisor not to buy back stock in the quarter, but just how do you think about that?
Yeah, it's a great question, Ryan. You know, we've been fairly disciplined on making sure that we get our leverage down to 2x before we did anything. We're there at 1.9x. We believe, like I'm sure all our peers do, that we're trading at a really low multiple, and people don't appreciate the cash generation that we offer and how strong this model will be going into a recession or not. It's now time for us to focus on that, and we're gonna see what the best returns are for our shareholders. There might be a combination of repurchasing stock and making acquisitions. We don't feel the gun to our head to grow stores.
We really are looking at our portfolio, and we've turned down a lot of stores that we've looked at, and we really wanna focus on the stores that we think will culturally fit into our organization and be accretive to us on day one. Otherwise, naturally, our highest returns will certainly be repurchasing stock. We also, as Michael pointed out briefly in the call, and you'll see this in 2023, you know, we're gonna have a fair amount of capital expenditures catching up with these new acquisitions and their facilities over the next couple of years.
Thanks, David.
Yep.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from Bret Jordan from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys.
Morning.
I got on a little bit late. You already talked about this, but did you comment on sort of trajectory longer term and new unit GPUs? I mean, obviously one of your peers said possibly pre-COVID levels before stabilization and others sound like we might be structurally higher forever. Did you give color there?
Sure. This is David. I'll start, and Dan can jump in if he wants. I've said this a few times, so I'll stay with this, Bret, but then I'll try and give a little bit more color to it. You know, 2019, we didn't have the large luxury stores in Dallas or Park Place. We had a platform of stores in Mississippi that was a drag on the company. Then we just bought some high operating margin stuff out west between the Miller organization and Stevinson. Materially, Asbury is a different company. Even if, you know, it got draconian and we went back to those margins of 2019, we would never get there because we're a different company.
I would say going forward for the next few years because of the average age of the car being over 12 years and the pent-up demand that's there, and we're still selling over 25% of our inventory before it ever gets here, we think margins are gonna stay healthy through 2023. The question will be, you know, how it impacts me and some of my peers. It's gonna be based upon, you know, what level of brands we have percentage-wise and what their inventory comes back with on a days supply. If you look at it, we put in the table some pretty good numbers on luxury sales, import, and domestic sales. Imports, the volume numbers.
You know, there's two import brands that dominate the percent of that, mix for us, and we're extremely low day supply with no line of sight of it coming back. As we sit here today, we think next year is gonna have very healthy margins. We think we're gonna continue to see extremely strong growth, in parts and service.
Great. Thank you. I guess on the TCA business and the legacy stores, could you talk about the penetration, you know, the trends you're seeing in the Larry H. Miller stores since you've owned it?
Sure. If I don't get this question right, please come back around. Generally speaking, the LHM stores have higher penetration numbers than the legacy Asbury stores in selling products. It's taken us a while to get our network linked and get TCA aligned with our legacy stores. It was literally last month that we started rolling out the legacy Asbury stores with TCA. We started with our Colorado stores with Stevinson and Mike Shaw and Arapahoe Hyundai. Our next state will be Texas, and then we'll continue to roll them out. It'll take us to the end of 2023 to get there.
Philosophically, we're aligning with LHM with the rest of legacy Asbury as far as compensation, how we pay our folks, and using their methodology to get hopefully the same increase in sales that LHM has experienced. It's too early on to say that there's any track record there yet, but I'm hopeful in our next earnings call, we can have that conversation, give some factual data for you.
Great. Thank you. Thank you.
Yep.
Rajat Gupta, JP Morgan, please go ahead.
Great. Thanks for taking the questions. You know, just wanted to follow up on, you know, one of the F&I questions earlier. You know, at $2,500 today, you know, $1,800 pre-COVID, you know, where do you think F&I settles down on a normalized level for the company, you know, including the impact from TCA? Could you help us bridge that gap from pre-COVID to that normalized number or maybe from today to that normalized number? Thanks. I have a follow-up.
Dan, this is Michael. I just wanted to kind of from a numbers perspective, if you look at you know the dealership operations, we were at you know $2,200 for F&I PVR, and then on a consolidated basis, we're at that $2,480. That kinda gives you a little bit of a color on the impact of TCA on the numbers 'cause the difference between that dealership number of $2,200 and the $2,480 is the TCA impact. You know granted that TCA impact's only on a portion of the store, so just on the LHM stores. That should help you maybe you know do a little bit of math on what that's worth in the future.
We don't see any reason that F&I goes backwards at the store level, and the TCA will just continue to improve that number.
I would say, Rajat-
Mm-hmm.
Just to add on to that, you know, the cost of sale, as you, as you well know, over the last 18 months has gone up dramatically. F&I numbers float up with that, both in the reserve that you're getting 'cause you're financing more and the products that you're selling. If there's all of a sudden a sudden decrease in the cost of sale, you know, that could be a headwind for F&I numbers. As we look into the future with electrification, more expensive cars coming, and what we're seeing the propensity of consumers to spend on products, we think that there's more opportunity for us to grow F&I. I don't say that there's significant dollars there by any stretch, but I think there's room to improve a little bit more.
Got it. Where are you in terms of product penetration levels today, you know, versus pre-COVID, and where do you think that can go?
It's a great question. Currently, we're right around 70% for products and 30% for reserve. As we start to sell, and I would say it's probably more 2024 than 2023, but a larger portion of electric vehicles, it'll be interesting to see if that product mix changes at all or it sustains at that level. We would like to get to a 75% product and 25% reserve, but we're not there.
Got it. Maybe just a follow-up on SG&A. You know, in the past, you'd mentioned that, you know, you're slowly working to, you know, pivot your personnel expense or just the headcount structure to more fixed versus variable, you know, particularly for the Clicklane transactions. Curious where we are on that path. Any metrics you could share on you know what changes have already occurred and where you see that settling in over the next three, four years.
Rajat, this is David again. I would tell you, as it relates to compensation, nothing has changed. I don't anticipate any change starting on our end until we get to what I would call critical mass with Clicklane. The target we have in our mind is, you know, between 45% and 50% of our sales will have to come on Clicklane for us to start changing how we compensate people, how we staff stores and hours. We think from a productivity per employee level, we're pretty good, and that shows in our same store SG&A number of 55.8, especially in these high-interest rate markets are higher than what we're used to. So we feel confident that we're running lean and mean.
We still feel as we sit here today, two to three years from now, which we'll achieve that 45%-50% number. If we get there, then that's when we'll start to see opportunities with SG&A.
Got it. Great. Thanks for all the color.
Yes, sir.
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. Our next question comes from David Whiston from Morningstar. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Going back to same store, new vehicle unit volume declining. You know, I get that the profitability is the focus for GPUs. But a year ago, inventory, the industry was incredibly low, yet you guys were still down year-over-year. Is that because now in 2022, there's a huge decline in midline import availability or is there something else going on there?
Yeah. You know, I would say I haven't had the chance to study our peers, but when you look at our brand mix, while we finish with a 19-day supply, those midline imports were single-digit day supplies, and most of them were around five days. I think that was the material impact there for us. You know, the luxury car business, we sell a lot of luxury cars in Florida. A lot of those deliveries got held off because of the hurricane, so they fell into the fourth quarter, if you will. I would say some of it is a timing issue from our standpoint. But you know, at the end of the day, you know, we were still backwards a fair amount on inventory, but Clicklane was a positive number.
You take the puts and the takes. You don't want a massive hurricane like that to hit your largest state, if you will. We think we're thankful our folks weathered it well and that the business did. We think that just means there's some pent-up demand, hopefully for the fourth quarter with Florida.
Okay. On credit availability, is there any pullback in that being available for both new or used customers?
Zero. We're seeing real healthy down payments, real strong credit scores. I'm not saying that won't change at some point, but it hasn't yet. There's still a good amount of cash out there, and the credit's holding up really well from what we see. Just as a quick reminder, David, when you look at our portfolio business, our subprime business is a low of 8% and a high of 10%. It's certainly a meaningful piece of our business, but it's a smaller piece.
Okay. On the consumer behavior question, I guess, compared to the start of the year, we've obviously got much higher inflation now. People's food budgets are getting squeezed, but it still remains low. Are you seeing consumers perhaps more tired of waiting for inventory? Or is it more the opposite where they're just basically saying, "Well, we'll just take what we can get?
Yeah. David, this is Dan . I think we see a mix of it. You know, some consumers, and I'll attribute it more maybe to the luxury side of the business where, you know, there may be a little bit of frustration. You know, that customer knows what they want and they're waiting for it. The other, you know, domestic and imports, whenever we do see some shift to maybe take in or letting go of a particular option that they wanted, just to be able to get what we have in stock or coming readily available within the next truckload. It's a mix, but overall, I think that also if you think about the whole pandemic that we went through, it shifted consumers' mind as well.
As before, it was all about right now, right now, right now. It's just about whatever you try to buy out there that you have to wait. It's conditioned the consumer to be more patient and work with us as our product becomes available.
Okay. Last question on F&I penetration. You talked about the product, if I heard you right, going up to 75%. Where is the opportunity on product penetration? What in particular?
Yeah. We'd like to get to 75. We're not there. It's that old adage, you know, I'll just use a round number of 100 stores. You know, if you take the bottom half and get them averaging the top half, you get to that 75% number. Our main core product that we focus on the most is our service contract business. People keeping their cars a lot longer, it's a great value add product for a consumer, and it's a great product for us from a retention standpoint. That's the number one product that we focus on.
Okay. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you. As there are no further questions in the queue, I'd like to hand the call back over to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you, operator. This concludes today's discussion. We look forward to discussing our fourth quarter results soon. We appreciate your time today and participation in the call. Have a great day.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.