Would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Adaire. You may begin.
Thank you. And it's my pleasure welcome everyone to the Q4 call. Before we start, I'm going to transfer it over to Will Franklin, who will do our safe harbor, then he'll pass it back to me. I'll give you a quick update. He'll review the financials and then we'll open it up for Q and A.
And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Will.
Thank you, Jay. Before we begin our comments, I'd like to remind everyone on the call that our remarks will contain forward looking statements, including statements concerning our views of trends in our business. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause the final results to differ substantially from those projected or implied by our statements and comments. The company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise these statements or comments. For a more complete discussion of the risks that could affect our business, please review the management's discussion and analysis and the risk factors contained in our 10 ks, 10 Q and other SEC filings.
With that, I will turn the call back to you, Jay, to begin the comments on our Q4 results.
Thank you, Will. Will give you an update on the financials for the quarter. So I'm going to focus primarily on some of the successes that we achieved in the quarter. We had a and in the year, we had a great year, we had a great quarter. We did start off the year with significantly higher ASPs or average selling prices of cars.
And we saw those average selling prices come down from Q1 to Q2 all the way to the end of the year. So there were some unanticipated headwinds that we faced in that because as vehicle sale price sells for less, we end up generating less revenue on a per unit. So we believe the primary driver of this was the decrease in scrap and the lower scrap prices basically caused buyers to pay less for the cars that we were auctioning off. In addition to that, we would throw in the strengthening of the U. S.
Dollar that took place during the same time frame in the last fiscal year, again, making it harder for international buyers to pay as much at auction for vehicles that we were selling. So in spite of these headwinds and these challenges, we had a record year and a record quarter. And as I said, I'll leave that to Will to talk about. At the beginning of the year, we talked about our focus on G and A. And in the quarter, we made huge improvements in our G and A.
So I would call that out so that there's some focus by the analysts and by investors to look at the improvements that we made. It can be very hard for companies in a growth mode, adding locations and making improvements to the business to at the same time reduce G and A and our teams just been really, really successful this year in getting that done and executing on those fronts and we're really proud of them for that. Across the board from operations to sales to our technology teams, we produced improvements for the company and you'll see the fruits of those improvements in the year that we're currently in. So we expect to in Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 of this year to be launching some new products, opening up in some new markets and driving volume for the company associated with that. In the UAE, we added 2 more facilities this year in Oman and Bahrain in the 4th quarter.
And we finished the year with 183 yards worldwide of which 28 are now outside of the U. S. We now have 2 years of vehicle sales with our 3rd generation virtual bidding technology. We refer to that as VB3. This as an example, this platform enabled us this year to sell a vehicle, a 2,003 Ferrari Enzo located in East Bethel, Minnesota to a buyer not too far away in Essex, Maryland.
We often give these great stories of vehicles selling in all sorts of foreign countries. And I've got another one that I'll give you that is similar to that. This is one that's not too far away, but the price is the key. It was the most expensive vehicle we sold in the year. It was $706,000 We had 5 Teslas that we sold this year to buyers in Ukraine.
I thought that was interesting that they're buying those types of vehicles. And it just really speaks to the power of VB3 and our technology and our ability to drive results even in the face of those headwinds that we talked about in the form of low scrap prices and the U. S. Dollar. In previous calls, we've talked about the average sale price, I'm sorry, the average age rather of vehicles that we're selling.
In 2,008, that average vehicle age was 8.6 years. In 2011, it had grown to 9.7. And it is currently in 2015 at 11.4. We believe that's going to drive additional unit volume as it has in the past as vehicles are aging, their probability of becoming total loss is going up. And so you'll see and you'll hear from Will some investments that we made in additional locations, expansions, etcetera, to make sure that we have the capacity to handle the additional volume that continues to come in.
And then finally, I'll just close with another Q on technology, but mobile technology. We launched our mobile app, 1st mobile app in 2013 on the iPhone platform. We launched the Android platform this year. And I'm happy to say that we have received over $8,800,000,000 worth of bids now via mobile. And in 2015, we finished selling now 12.5% of our vehicles over mobile devices.
So it has become a very strong part of our platform. And again, I think back to the days of having to physically show up to auctions and putting those auctions online allowed buyers to eliminate travel and weather and all the other friction points. And now you don't even have to be in your office. You can literally be bidding on vehicles from the local Starbucks. And we're seeing that now at 12.5% of our bids are coming in through mobile devices.
So with that, I'll transfer it over to Will and then upon his completion, we'll open it up for Q and A. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Jay. Let me make a few brief comments about our financial results for the quarter. Total revenue declined by $5,200,000 or 1.8 percent as the growth in volume was offset by a decline in revenue per transaction and the impact to the change of the percentage of cars sold on a principal basis, which carry higher revenue per transaction versus cars sold on the agency basis. Overall, volume grew by 8.2%. In North America, it grew by 8.6%.
The decline in ASPs resulted primarily from lower commodity pricing and the impact of the stronger dollar. The index for crushed car bodies, which we believe to be highly correlated to junk and dismantler buyer behavior declined by over 44% year over year. The stronger dollar continued to inhibit auction participation by international buyers and impacted the ultimate selling prices. Finally, the stronger dollar against primarily the pound, the real and the euro on a year over year basis resulted in a reduction in total revenue of approximately $5,800,000 Furnace car revenue declined by $7,600,000 or 16 0.4%. The decline resulted from reduced auction selling prices as the volume remained relatively flat.
In addition to the impact of commodity pricing and the stronger dollar, the average selling price was impacted by a change in mix as a higher percentage of cars came from our direct purchase program versus our insurance suppliers. In our direct purchase program, we buy and sell cars for our own account. While purchased car volume remained flat on an absolute basis, it declined as a percentage of total units sold. Service revenue remained relatively flat, increasing by $2,400,000 or 1%, as the increase in agency car volume was offset by a reduction in revenue per car and the impact of FX. Yarn operation expenses declined by $900,000 and was driven by reduction in the average cost to process each car and the beneficial impact of FX.
General and administrative costs declined by $7,200,000 The same quarter last year contained $1,100,000 in onetime costs associated with the restructuring of our department from California to Texas. In the current quarter, reductions came primarily from the rationalization of technology resources, lower legal expenses and the beneficial impact of FX. We expect our G and A cost to increase in fiscal 2016 due to growing international activity. On an overall basis, the change in FX reduced EBIT by approximately $1,500,000 During the quarter, we expended $30,100,000 for yard expansion, equipment and technology. This included $9,000,000 in lease buyouts.
Finally, during the quarter, we expended $233,500,000 for the repurchase of approximately 6,500,000 shares of our common stock at an average price of $36 per share. We exited the quarter with $456,000,000 in cash and $645,800,000 in bank and private placement debt. Excuse me. With that, we'll turn the call back over to you, Cassidy, to manage the Q and A segment of the call.
At this time, we will open the floor for questions. Our first question comes from Bob Labick with CJS Securities Incorporation.
Good morning. Congratulations on a nice quarter.
Hi, Bob. Thank you. Hi, Bob.
Hi. I wanted to start, the service gross margins were up year over year despite the FX and scrap you alluded to. And Will, you just mentioned that it was, I think due to the lower processing cost per car. That trend had been going up a little while ago. Can you talk about the drivers and how you lowered the cost to process each car and where that where you expect that to go over the next several quarters?
Sure. First off, we've cycled completely through the integration pain of the QCSA acquisition. And second and probably more importantly is we're starting to gain the efficiencies that are we're starting to see again the efficiencies that are endemic in our model and that is we have a lot of fixed costs. In fact, if you exclude the titling cost and the sub haul cost almost all of our costs are fixed. And 2 of the most important metrics that we look at are the number of cars per head and number of cars per yard.
Both of those are up nicely during the quarter. So we're starting to see the benefit of what we call fixed cost absorption in our processing cost. And then the third element of that is Sean Eldridge, our Chief Operating Officer and his team have worked extremely diligently to carve out any waste in our system and he's been very successful in the last year in doing so. Going forward, I wouldn't expect to see a meaningful change. I think that we'll control the cost, but I wouldn't expect to see significant reductions going forward.
Okay. Thank you. And then on to growth opportunities and internationally in particular, could you give us an update on the German market and your process there, what's going on there and any luck in terms of turning it more towards the U. S. Style insurance market?
Sure. We've had growth in that market in the year with our existing business that's there. And we are poised to enter into that market in the next calendar year. So I always hate to speculate on when that will happen and how that will look. But the plan is that as soon as we are open, we'll make an announcement as we've always done with press releases.
And then we can talk about that further, Bob, on calls as to the success we're having in that market. We've so Germany, clearly Germany is the biggest opportunity. We've also grown in the Middle East and we've grown in Brazil. So across the board, if you roll up the international team as a unit or as a whole as we do, as we think about it, We've seen growth or we've seen growth rather throughout the whole market. So we're happy with it.
It's been good. Great. Thanks.
And then last one, I'll get back in queue. You mentioned the $30,000,000 in CapEx and I think you said $9,000,000 in land. Was that U. S. Land?
Was that international? And do you have any idea for a ballpark of CapEx for next year?
No. Actually that $9,000,000 was a lease buyout. So I guess you could say that's land, but there's other outright versus the land that's included in the 30 net $30,100,000 All those lease buyouts were domestic in nature. We generally don't make predictions and give guidance on CapEx because of the uncertainties that surround buying this land. You can imagine how difficult it is to get zoning and how sometimes we can get up to the very moment of closing a deal and find out we don't have the right zoning and we have to start all over again.
So it's just it's really hard to predict how much we'll be spending in a certain period of time.
Got it. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bob.
Our next question comes from Ben Bienvenu with Stephens Inc.
Hey, good morning, guys.
Good morning, Ben.
So you referenced growth in G and A over time. That was a source of nice upside in the quarter and you guys have done a good job at reducing absolute dollars spent on G and A. What's a reasonable expectation for where that should go? And how high off of this level where we are today do you think we could see that skew?
Well, once again, we hesitate to give guidance in that other than to tell you that there's going to be more upward pressure in the absolute number during the course of fiscal 2016. That will be driven primarily by, like I said, international expansion. Some of that will be driven by the need to add more resources in our technology rollout for a rollout of some of our technology. I actually wouldn't expect it to grow much faster than I think they'll be leverageable. Okay.
Right.
And then maybe just touching on the tender offer and share repurchase. The stock is now below where the tender offer was done. You still have quite a bit of cash on the balance sheet. You generate nice cash. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts around your outlook for share repurchase, your strategy there and how you think about allocating capital given the surplus of cash on your balance sheet?
Well, we're always hesitant to discuss on calls how we view buying stock back. I would just put it this way, the tender price, as you stated already, was higher than the current price and the amount that we have to buy in was higher than what we ended up filling. And so I think most investors can probably read between the lines on that, how we view the stock. So we discussed this at the Board level and if it's something that we think makes sense going forward, then
we'll do it. Okay. And then last question for me. You've seen in recent quarters, typically the correlation between your unit growth and your largest competitor over the last couple of years has been a fairly tight correlation. But in the last couple of quarters, you've seen that disparity widen And while your Univo growth has been strong, it hasn't matched up with your peer and it hasn't matched up with the inventory growth that we've seen.
I'd just be curious to see help us understand what's going on, on the unit growth side, so that I can get better clarity there.
Well, I'm not sure what you're looking at. We don't disclose units and they don't disclose units. So it's very difficult for us to be able to see what units they're selling compared to us and vice versa.
Okay. So you referenced unit growth up 8.2% in this most recent quarter. They had unit growth up 14%. This is sort of the numbers that I'm looking at.
Yes. Well, we're a lot larger company in terms of volume. So when you talk about percentages, I think that's one piece I would look at. The other thing is its timing, our quarters don't line up. And you're talking about months that are going to be more have more activity in them than other months.
So as a company for us having the kind of growth that we're seeing right now, we're really, really happy with it.
Okay. And then sorry, one last quick and just housekeeping on what was the diluted share count at the end of the quarter?
It's $130,200,000 Okay, perfect. Thanks so much.
I'll get back in the queue.
Our next question comes from Ryan Brinkman with JPMorgan.
Hi, this is Samik on behalf of Ryan Brinkman. The first question I had was primarily related to the impact or the influence on pricing that you're seeing from the stronger USD like the interest or demand you're seeing from international buyers. And curious to know if you can sort of ballpark for us what percentage of your buyers at your U. S. Auctions are international buyers and sort of give us a sense of what interest that is having?
We look at the value of what we're selling internationally. And in this quarter, that was down to 21.8% as a comparison in the Q2 of fiscal 2014, that was 29.3%. So we're seeing a significant impact on their behavior because of the stronger dollar.
Got it.
And everything sequentially going down through the quarters through each quarter this year? Is that a good way to think about it?
No. Actually, sequentially, we're flat.
Okay, okay, okay. Great. And the second question I had was more about like in the what you're seeing now in terms of lower scrap prices, etcetera, which is pressuring pricing. Can you sort of talk about what levels you have or what is the ability that you have to take pricing to be able to offset some of this pressure that you're seeing?
No, we don't discuss pricing on conference calls.
Okay, okay. That's fine. And I just had a housekeeping question on the end, which was I didn't sort of catch if you disclosed your inventory number, like what was it up year over year, if you can just share that?
Yes. Inventory was up in North America about 9.6%. Worldwide, it was up 9%.
Okay, great. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Our next question comes from Elizabeth Suzuki with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Good morning. Last quarter, you noted that the stronger dollar impacted revenue by about $6,800,000 negative and EBIT by 1 point $3,000,000 In this quarter, those numbers were, I think you said $5,800,000 to revenue and $1,500,000 to EBIT. Do you expect foreign exchange that foreign exchange headwind to continue to ease? Or should we be expecting should we be modeling in kind of continued headwind for 2016?
We don't have any information that the market doesn't have. So I would suggest if you I would speak with commodities or foreign currency expert in that respect.
Okay. Thanks. Second question, is the year over year benefit from the roll off of the QCSA integration cost now complete? Or is there more that you expect in the coming quarters?
No, it's done. We're all they're completely absorbed.
Okay. And one more quick one. At this point, it's hard to we understand that it's still very early to determine what the ultimate impact of the VW controversy would be on the industry. If impacted vehicles have to be set to salvage auctions, I'd imagine that'd be a tailwind. But if they get retrofitted and there's a cascading impact on residual values, that could be a headwind for ASPs.
Do you have any approximate estimate of what percentage of vehicles that come through your options for VWs?
No, not off the top of my head.
All right. Well, thank
you. You're welcome.
Our next question comes from Bill Armstrong with C. L. King and Associates.
Good morning, guys. Just a quick follow-up on the G and A. Were there any nonrecurring items within that that might have kept it down during the Q4 or anything that might have been pushed out into the new fiscal year?
No, there really weren't. I mean, there's always one time that just when you have a company this size, you'll have things that are unusual in every period, but there's nothing that's material that we'd call out this quarter. We do a pretty good job of calling out those things that are material just so you can do your modeling. We don't have that.
Right. Got it. Okay. Thanks. That's really
all I had. Thank
you. Thanks,
Bill. Our next question comes from Gary Prestopino with Barrington Research.
Hey, good morning guys.
Hey,
Aaron. Hey, Jay, you basically said at the beginning of the
call that we're going
to have some new markets and new products Q1 and Q3 of this year. I know enough not
to ask you what those new products would be because you're not going
to tell us anyway. But in terms of new markets, are you looking to go into new regions of the world where you aren't right now or countries that are tangential to where you are in, say, Europe?
Yes. We're looking at In the Middle East. I think I resemble that remark that you just made, but we are going to be looking at expanding in existing markets that we're in and we are anticipating based on current what we can currently see in terms of volume coming in, in the U. S. We're anticipating having a significant a good year in terms of that.
Some of the new products I talked about are customers are aware of them, they're waiting for them and we'll be releasing them this year and some of them are going to allow us to expand further in some of our existing international footprint. So that's really what I was referring to.
Okay. And then I think one of the questions was asked, but I didn't quite get it. Did you think international revenue was about 22% this quarter versus 29% last year's 4th quarter?
No. International revenue is less than 2% of our total revenue. It was excluding the UK and excluding Canada. So if you're looking at the emerging side of our international strategy, it's less than 2% of our revenue.
No. What I'm getting at is what's your total international revenue as a percentage of sales? That's what I'm Yes.
And the numbers Will was giving out was international buying. That was the buyers what percent of the value of the cars that we sell to international buyers. Yes. I believe that's what he's referring. I'm sorry.
It's gone from 29% to 21% -ish.
Yes.
Right. But in terms of your the percentage that's total international in this quarter, do you have that handy?
That's what I gave you. That was 21
Okay. 21. Okay. That's fine. That's what I'm trying
to get at. And then if you look at that, how does that break down between vehicle sales and service? At one time, majority of that was vehicle sales because it was UK. But has that shifted more as a percentage into service? Can you give us a breakdown there?
Yes. So just to be clear, the number I gave you were the North American units sold to non North American buyers. And those are almost exclusively agency cars. Okay.
Okay.
To be clear, you're not giving him a percentage, our international revenues as a percentage of the company. Correct. I think he might have thought that. That's why I was
Yes. All right. I'll follow-up with you guys after the call. But anyway, in terms
of the tax rate going forward, Will, what you would use as the tax rate for next year?
You should probably be 30 35.5, 36.
35.5, 36. Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome. Thank you, Gary. Ending the Q4 call and fiscal 2015, we look forward to reporting in the Q1. Goodbye.