Okay, great. So I'm excited to introduce our next presenter, who I feel truly lucky to be able to chat with today: AutoZone. AutoZone is one of the largest aftermarket retailers of aftermarket parts in North America, with over 6,000 stores. They have 17 million shares at a $53.155 billion market cap, net debt of $8 billion, and an enterprise value of $64 billion. Speaking with us today is CFO Jamere Jackson and VP of Finance and Treasury Brian Campbell. Brian, Jamere, thank you for being here today.
Sounds like you're so far away. It's okay.
Jamere, so just to kind of start the conversation, if you could give us an introduction to AutoZone, what you do, who your customer base is, and what their needs might be.
Yeah, thank you, and it's always great to be here with you and the team. It's always a good opportunity for us to be here as we're here this week doing other things and meeting with our suppliers and those sorts of things, but AutoZone is one of the largest retailers of aftermarket auto parts in the country. We have almost 7,000 stores in total, got about 6,400-6,500 in the U.S., close to 800 in Mexico, and a little over 100 in Brazil. We serve both the DIY customer and the commercial customer. Our business mix has been about 70% DIY, 30% commercial, and growing, and we've had a fantastic opportunity over the last few years to really accelerate our growth in the commercial business, which is pretty exciting for us from a growth standpoint. We've got about almost 130,000 AutoZoners spread across the Americas.
We're really excited about not only the current environment, but also where we're headed in the future.
AutoZone has a pretty complex and large distribution system. Can you review with us kind of what the customer needs are and how you're able to meet those with that system?
Yeah. Our business is primarily a break-fix business. Roughly 85% of our business or so is failure, and maintenance related, which is kind of our bread, and butter, if you will. We've got about 15% of our business that is discretionary in nature, and we've got a pretty sophisticated distribution network to be able to service our customers really across the country, and we've been adding capacity there because as our industry continues to grow, and as our business continues to expand, we've added additional capacity to be able to meet that growing business. It's a business that has been consistent, steady, and just remarkably resilient through the cycles.
When you think about the way the car park has actually grown over time, when you think about the nature of the business, particularly the needs of the DIY customer and the needs of the commercial customer, we've done a tremendous job over the years adding capacity and adding the parts that are necessary to be able to service that market.
Yep. And I guess more specifically, I think last year you discussed building out eight Hub stores and 11 Mega Hubs. Can you quantify any of the return on that investment or the decision to do that?
Yeah. I mean, one of the keys to being successful in the marketplace, quite frankly, is how do we forward deploy inventory and get as many parts as we can as close to the customers as we can? We've done that with multiple distribution points. We start with our distribution centers, obviously, that service multiple stores. And then we also will put what we call hubs and mega hubs. These are big box formats in local markets where we're able to expand the assortment that goes above and beyond what you see in a normal satellite store. So a normal satellite store can have anywhere from 25,000-30,000 SKUs. A hub store will have, call it 50,000 to maybe 60,000 SKUs, and then a mega hub will have 100,000 plus SKUs.
And the name of the game is to figure out what are the vehicles in the market and making sure that you've got enough inventory to service the customer both on the DIY and the commercial side of the business. We've been really focused on expanding our hub and mega hub network, particularly as we look to grow our commercial business. And that has been really important because on the commercial side of the business, you need a much broader assortment of inventory. And it's not always inventory that you're going to carry in a satellite store. So if you think about what we do in hubs and mega hubs, you'll have engines and transmissions and some of those long-tail parts, if you will, that are slower turning.
You can use a Hub and a Mega Hub network to service those customers that need that inventory where it wouldn't necessarily turn as fast in a satellite store.
Wonderful, and then I do want to touch on that growth because it's been impressive on the do-it-for-me side, but I guess to stay on the DIY, it's about 70% maybe of your $18 billion in revenue. Can you just tell us some factors that differentiate that DIY customer and how you service them better, but then we've also, we have heard to a certain extent some pressure on the end consumer, so if you can discuss that as well.
Yeah. I mean, the DIY side of the business is where we started our business, if you will. And we've got deep roots there. We've been able to service that customer over time. And then we introduced our commercial business probably about 30 years or so ago and are still looking to grow our market share there. On the DIY side of the business, I mean, you have several different segments of customers. You have the folks that are sort of the avid DIYers who are looking to do really complex jobs. And then you have the folks that are more occasional in nature. And then you have some folks that are literally looking to come in, and get wash and wax and accessories, and those sorts of things. So it's a pretty broad customer base, if you will.
But what we've been able to do is take a look at what are the vehicles in operation in a market and tailor the SKUs and tailor the inventory that we have in that local market to be able to service that customer. So we've got a pretty sophisticated set of data science that enables us to know exactly where those customers are, where those vehicles are, where they shop, how they shop, and that informs how we go build out our stores as we move forward.
Great, and as we've talked about, you have this do-It-for-me business that has the opportunity, I think, to really double or at least kind of where the market's growing. If you can kind of expand on that opportunity, I know they have about commercial, I think, in 92% maybe of your store base. How do you kind of leverage that traditional DIY business by adding the commercial to it?
Yeah. We're really excited about the commercial growth opportunity in our business. Right now, we have a four or five share in a market that's over $100 billion. And so it's a tremendous growth opportunity for us. Our market share on the DIY side of the business is in the mid to upper teens. And so as we think about the opportunity in commercial, we see our commercial business in the future approaching the kind of market share that we see on the DIY side of the business. What's exciting about commercial over time is that we've continued to expand our presence there. You mentioned the fact that we have our commercial programs in over 90% of our stores. And that basically leverages our DIY infrastructure.
So it's a pretty efficient way for us to go grow our business without necessarily having to go add a bunch of boxes and a bunch of occupancy costs associated with it. The customer is different, very clearly. And what we've had to make sure that we've done over time is make sure that we have the parts available to meet that customer's need so that they can service a really broad array of fix-it solutions, if you will. So over time, we've expanded our assortment. We have put a professional salesforce in place. We've added technology to service that customer and speed up our deliveries. And importantly, we've jammed a lot more inventory in the local market so that that customer has the parts that they need to service their customers.
Great. And just to that point, we talked about you adding the do-it-for-me and leveraging that kind of those assets. We now estimate that your sales per store grew 40% to $2.5 million, excuse me, over the last five years. Given 40% growth, I mean, at some point at the store level, do you hit capacity or is there plenty of opportunity to?
There's still significant opportunity, and not only do we have the opportunity to do more inside of our existing boxes, but we've continued to add stores in trade areas to meet the demand that's in the marketplace, so historically, we've built, call it 200 stores or so in the Americas. As we look at the market opportunity going forward, there are a couple of things that really stand out to us. One is there's been some consolidation, if you will, on the margins with some of the smaller independents. That's given us a market share opportunity. The second thing that we see is that we continue to find new trade areas just in terms of where the population is migrating and where the vehicles in operation are.
We see an opportunity with a growing and aging car park that there's an opportunity for us to have more assets in the marketplace to be able to meet that demand. So over time, what we've been able to do is grow our business in a very capital-efficient way to meet that market opportunity. And we do that with a combination of adding more inventory in the local markets and existing assets where it's possible. And in some cases, you're doing that with Hubs and Mega Hubs and then adding to the store base as we move forward. So it's a pretty exciting growth profile as we move forward.
Great. And you did about maybe 6% - 7% in do-it-for-me growth for the year. But I think historically, we've seen a line of maybe double-digit growth in the do-it-for-me business. Is there a point of inflection or when we get there?
Yeah. We've been pleased with the progress that we're making on the do-it-for-me side. During the pandemic, we saw a couple of really nice opportunities for our business. Number one, we had a pretty significant competitive advantage just based on the inventory that we had available. That gave us an opportunity to surprise and delight some customers where we may have been third or fourth or fifth on the call list. It gave us an opportunity to move up the call list and service those customers. And in many instances, we've retained a good chunk of that business as others have gotten back in stock.
As we think about the opportunity going forward, again, as I said, we're probably a four or five share on the commercial side of the business and all the initiatives that we have in place in terms of adding assortment, building out our Hub and Mega Hub network, the things that we're doing with our sales force, and jamming more inventory in the local markets closer to customers. Those are things that are a winning formula for us. So we think there's a great opportunity for us as we move forward.
Great, and just want to talk about another impressive opportunity. Last year, you grew international growth of about 10% constant currency for a two-year stack of 30%. Can you discuss the international strategy going forward?
Yeah. We've had a business in Mexico for several years now and have steadily grown that business. We're approaching 800 stores in Mexico and are going to continue to expand our business there. It's a great market for us. It has a large car park. It's an aging car park as well. In fact, the cars in Mexico are a little bit older than the cars that we see in the U.S. In the U.S., it's on average close to 13 years or closer to 16 years old in Mexico. We have the largest chain there. And if you add it up, sort of the outlet share of the next six or seven chains combined, they don't approach ours. So we've got a big opportunity there. And much like the opportunity that we had in the U.S., we started there with a DIY-first mentality.
But we did open nearly every store in Mexico with a commercial program with this notion that there's a big opportunity there. And we see a big opportunity in commercial in Mexico as we move forward as well. Brazil's smaller. We've been there a little over a decade. We've been slow and steady and measured. We always think about when we look at the retail landscape in Brazil, there's a lot of carnage for people that went really fast or didn't really understand the market. So we've been deliberately slow to make sure that we understood the market, we understood the opportunity. And we've continued to build there in a very disciplined way. And we think the business in Brazil, when we build it out, can be as large as our business in Mexico. So we're pretty excited about the international opportunities.
It's roughly 12% or 13% of our store base today, but increasingly becoming a bigger part of the growth story at AutoZone.
Perfect, and of course, we welcome questions, Mary.
I'm not going to ask you about Carquest.
Okay.
But you guys have been extraordinarily creative in the last 20, 30 years. How many customer names do you have in the do-it-yourself business? I'm thinking about Costco. They charge an annual membership fee, and they give a big discount. Have you ever thought about going to a DIY to maintain their loyalty and saying, "Hey, can we charge you twenty bucks a year and give you a big discount?" So I go back to the number of names you may have in your database, much like, what's this hotel? The Flamingo here. All right, they're paying attention. So they have the names of anyone that's gambled here. And they give you loyalty cards and points. I'm just curious about that aspect of the database that you have.
Yeah. I mean, we have a very rich database today of customer names. And they're part of the AutoZone Rewards program, literally into the millions, if you will. And we do a pretty nice job today of driving loyalty sales with that group. In fact, we have one of the richest loyalty programs in the industry. And that's done a couple of things for us. Number one, it's helped us understand what vehicles they have. Those folks that are in our database, we see every vehicle that's in the household. We know when they add a vehicle because they'll come in and add it when they're buying new parts. And it's enabled us to be very surgical in terms of the things that we want to do from a marketing standpoint. So it's a very powerful data source for us to be able to market directly to those consumers.
I think the other thing that really stands out to us about that data source, if you will, is we started the AutoZone Media Network a few years ago, and that rich first-party customer data that we have is something that's very important for the brands and the suppliers that we deal with as well who would like to reach customers and do that in a much more fulsome way, so it is a great data source for us. It's a good opportunity for us from a marketing standpoint, but it also gives us a lot of intelligence about what vehicles are in what marketplaces, and I always get a kick when I'm in the store. I'll go in and put in my parents' phone number, for example. My dad's an avid DIYer. He's 93, almost 94 years old.
I can literally look at all the vehicles that we've had over time and all the things that he's bought that have warranties on it, etc. It's a fantastic data source for us. We do use it.
Great. And then just to touch on outside of that, another interesting growth driver, you opened 213 stores in fiscal year 2024. In the past, I think you've discussed reaching 500 new store openings at some point. Can you discuss the return on investment on opening a new store and the opportunity, I guess, to accelerate that?
Yeah. I mean, we're pretty disciplined from a capital allocation standpoint over time. We have a l everage target that's roughly two and a half times EBITDA, if you will. That gives us a tremendous amount of financial firepower to invest in our existing assets, to grow our business, and to ultimately give a lot of money back to shareholders in the form of our share buyback program. So as we think about this opportunity to go accelerate our new store growth in the future, and what we've talked about publicly is the notion that towards the end of the decade, we could see ourselves opening close to 300 stores in the US each year and 200 stores internationally each year. So a total of 500 stores. And we've typically been in a 200-ish to 250-ish range in the Americas over the last several years or so.
And this opportunity is really brought about the things that I talked about. You've got a growing and aging car parc. You've got some consolidation of some of the smaller players on the fringes. Trade areas continue to expand. And now that we have a pretty robust commercial program, the unit economics on those boxes is significantly better than they were a decade ago when we were opening boxes. So it gives us an opportunity to actually improve the returns that we're seeing at the store level because we have that additional volume from our commercial programs that are basically leveraging that DIY infrastructure. So it's, again, a very attractive growth profile. And we're able to do that and still do very shareholder-friendly actions in terms of the buyback program.
Wonderful. Brian, did you have a question?
Yes. So I guess a relatively short or shorter-term question, so I apologize. But as you look at the business, and we've been talking about this, but if you look at over the next several quarters, what has to come together, both internally and externally, to get sales growth at AutoZone back to that normal algo? I'll throw out, I guess we've been talking a lot about some of the pressures in the broader space, maybe tariffs. But from your perspective, what really has to happen here?
Yeah. I think a couple of things we've seen over the last several quarters. If you look at the DIY business, that discretionary portion of the business, call it 15%-18% of the business has been under a lot of pressure. And that's due to what we're seeing in the macro. The lower-end consumer clearly has been under some pressure. And where we feel that the most in our business is in the discretionary purchases. So discretionary purchases, think of things like accessories, car mats, wheel covers, fuzzy dice, lots of those kinds of wash and wax. Those are the kinds of things that people, when they're entering our stores, are not putting those kinds of things in the basket. And that portion of the business, candidly, has been down sort of mid-single digits, if you will, over the last several quarters or so.
So you've got a low-end consumer that's been under some pressure. On the commercial side of the business, what we've seen is that some of the end markets there have felt a little bit of pressure as well. If I think about some of our customers in the tire vertical where they've had negative same-store sales numbers for the last several quarters or so, the commercial business in total has probably been flattened down a little bit. And yet we've continued to grow even during that cycle. So I think the things that have to come together, one is consumers got to feel a little bit better about where they are today and really what the prospects are for the future. And I wouldn't say that the consumer's in bad shape.
I think if you look at 4% unemployment and you look at wage growth and with a firm hand on it as well, most people are working and most people are getting a raise. But that uncertainty about the future does cause consumers to pull back a little bit. And we've seen that impact our business. Our business certainly isn't immune to some of those kinds of dynamics. So I think the consumer thaws a little bit. And the growth initiatives that we have in place are going to continue to perform. And we think that not only us, but I think the industry gets back to its normal growth rates in the quarters that are ahead. So things have been a little bit softer, but we're pretty pleased with our execution and pretty pleased with where we are overall on a relative basis.
Great. And then I think to touch on a couple of concepts here. Inflation from 2021 to maybe 2023, we saw double digits. You guys were able to pass that on while maintaining margin pretty much. Can you talk about kind of currently the pricing inflation you see here, if you think consumers would accept more at this point and what you think about that going forward?
Yeah. Pricing in our industry is relatively inelastic. I mean, when you're in a business that's needs-based, primarily break-fix for an element of spending that is needed when you think about the mobility needs of the consumer, our business is pretty inelastic from a pricing standpoint. There are a couple of dynamics, though, in our industry that sort of drive pricing. And one of them is inflation. When you see product cost inflation, generally speaking, that inflation is passed along to consumers. And during that period that you referred to, we actually saw hyperinflation. It was a combination of all the things that you've known and heard about in the supply chain with supply chain snarls and freight costs and labor challenges. All those things drove at certain periods, we saw high singles to double-digit inflation from a cost standpoint. We were able to pass those things along.
As things have come back to some sense of normalcy where you're not paying significantly higher freight costs and you're not seeing as much product inflation, it's put some pressure on the ticket averages because the industry is just not raising retails nearly as fast. And this industry is very, very disciplined from a pricing standpoint. When product costs go up and there are inflationary pressures, you take pricing up. When it's not moving, you generally don't see as much being passed through in terms of pricing. So ticket averages have been depressed. And that's part of the reason why you're not seeing the sales in the industry grow as fast over the last few quarters or so because we did come off of a period of sort of hyperinflation, if you will.
I think over the next few quarters or so, we get back to some normal inflationary periods, if you will. And you'll start to see that show up in ticket averages. I've been quoted a number of times as saying, in this industry, inflation is kind of our friend. Sometimes I get in trouble for saying that. But it really truly is when you have that kind of inflation and you're able to pass it through in an industry like ours, it gives you an opportunity to grow and maintain the margin base as well.
Thank you.
Sorry. Jamere, how would you frame the risk that inflation could be subdued for a little bit longer, maybe sort of flat to 1%, give or take for maybe 12-18 months?
Yeah. I mean, I think there are some things that are happening today that suggest that we're going to start to see some more inflation. In fact, we're this week meeting with a number of our suppliers. And quite frankly, they're talking about the places where there are some cost inflation. We've seen freight take up a little bit. We've seen some more inflation from a product cost standpoint. And wages, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, are in that 3%-4% range. So ultimately, that's going to find its way in the product costs. And you'll get back to some normal inflationary periods. It's just that you had the hyperinflation and then freight came down fairly significantly. Industry doesn't take pricing down, but it doesn't raise prices nearly as fast. So I think that happens.
Then there's a couple of big questions, I think, in the macro, things like tariffs and other things that potentially are going to bring some inflation into the industry, whether we like it or not. I think we'll get there. I think it'll be over the next few quarters or so.
I think we have a question over there.
Hi. I was wondering if you could talk about roughly what percentage of your commercial deliveries are coming directly out of a mega hub versus a store? And how has that sort of evolved over the past couple of years? And just generally, any learnings you've had as you've tested different delivery algorithms?
Yeah. I mean, the overwhelming majority of them are coming out of a store. What we've done over the last few years or so is we've been using our Hubs and our Mega Hubs to do more direct deliveries to the customer. So in the past, we've used those assets primarily as a replenishment source for some of the surrounding stores in the network. We've invested in technology and changed the way we do some of the logistics there such that we're doing a lot more direct fulfillment from the Hubs and the Mega Hubs. There's a significant advantage for customers because they get parts faster and gives us an opportunity to grow our business faster. So we've got a plan today that would take us to north of 200 Mega Hubs. We have a little over 100 today. And then we'll go to probably 300-plus Hubs.
All of those big box formats are not only important because of those sales that we do within the four walls, but they're an important replenishment source for the entire network. We're being really aggressive about getting those boxes identified and built and servicing our customers.
Yeah, and then the conference, we have talked about higher interest rates on factoring agreements. Do you think the 130% AP to inventory ratios are kind of sustainable at these levels?
Yeah. I mean, right now, we're in the 118, 119, 120-ish kind of range. I think we'll stay sort of in that zip code as we move forward. I think the pressure from an interest rate standpoint obviously puts pressure on our suppliers. But quite frankly, they view that as another input cost. And it ultimately finds its way into pricing over time. And it's still a pretty good deal relative to what they could do on their own. So one of the reasons that our AP to inventory rate was elevated wasn't necessarily associated with interest rates. It was the fact that we were turning the inventory a lot faster. And particularly during the pandemic, and now that things have gone back to some sense of normalcy in terms of turns, we're going to be in that high teens, high one teens to the 120-ish range going forward.
Great. Okay. Well, we did run up against time. I saw a couple more questions. Gentlemen, Brian, Jamere, thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure to speak with you as always.
Thank you. Always good to be here. Take care.