Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Group 1 Automotive's first quarter 2026 financial results conference call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the floor over to Mr. Pete DeLongchamps, Group 1's Senior Vice President, Manufacturer Relations and Financial Services. Please go ahead, Mr. DeLongchamps.
Thank you, Jamie, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's call. The earnings release we issued this morning and a related slide presentation that include reconciliations related to the adjusted results that we will refer to on this call for comparison purposes have been posted to Group 1's website. Before we begin, I'd like to make some brief remarks about forward-looking statements and the use of non-GAAP financial measures. Except for historical information mentioned during the conference call, statements made by management of Group 1 Automotive are forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve both known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause the company's actual results in future periods to differ materially from forecasted results.
Those risks include, but are not limited to, risks associated with pricing, volume, inventory supply, conditions of market, successful integration of acquisitions, and adverse developments in the global economy and resulting impacts on demand for new and used vehicles and related services. Those and other risks are described in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC rules may be discussed on this call. As required by applicable SEC rules, the company provides reconciliations of any such non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures on its website. Participating with me on today's call, Daryl kenningham, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Daniel McHenry, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'd now like to hand the call over to Darrell.
Thank you, Pete. At Group 1, we pride ourselves in performing effectively in challenging times. We've successfully navigated economic recessions, the COVID pandemic, and the CDK outage in 2024. We focus on what we can control. By remaining a pure-play retailer, we minimize distractions and remain focused on what we feel are our core competencies. We estimate that Q1 2026 weather impacted our results by about $7 million in gross profit, driven largely by our after-sales business. Important to note is that Group 1 typically pays our employees during weather closures, and in some markets, our stores were closed for as long as a week this year. In the first quarter of 2026, we continued to focus on our strengths.
Where our performance did not meet our expectations, we acted promptly to address those issues, and I will provide further details on those areas later in my remarks. In the U.S., our new vehicle margins remained robust at over $3,300 per car, exceeding $3,250 for the third consecutive quarter. We saw sequential improvement in used vehicle PRUs and a $95 same-store year-over-year increase in adjusted F&I PRU. Two years ago, we introduced a virtual F&I process in our U.S. stores, giving customers the opportunity to conduct their transactions with a virtual agent. This innovation is now installed in one-third of our U.S. stores, doing 20% of our deals in those stores. We're very pleased with the results of virtual F&I. Our PRU results are strong. Transaction times have improved, improving customer convenience and the overall experience.
Thus far, customer feedback is very positive. In addition, compensation costs are lower than compared to our in-store transactions. We anticipate continued growth in virtual F&I through the remainder of this year and into 2027. In after-sales, we're committed to setting ourselves apart. This quarter, we increased same-store customer pay gross profits by nearly 6%. We're pleased that in our U.S. business, our customer pay repair order count rose by 2.5%. Our growth in after-sales is driven by marketing initiatives utilizing artificial intelligence, vertically integrated customer data management, decreased technician turnover, completion of our workshop air conditioning project, and the addition of 130 new technicians on a same-store basis. Turning to a progress update on our Group 1 U.S. store rebranding initiative.
We successfully completed the rebranding of half of our U.S. stores and anticipate being complete by the end of the year. Our team is actively gathering insights from each converted market, allowing us to refine our approach and apply our learning as we go. In the long term, we believe rebranding will improve the effectiveness of our marketing investments and drive greater customer retention, particularly as we focus on engaging households under the Group 1 brand, especially in cluster markets. Our U.K. operation is demonstrating notable progress across key segments. New vehicle margins remained steady year-over-year, while same-store volumes increased 2%. Same-store use volumes rose nearly 5%, accompanied by sequential PRU improvements. F&I continued its positive trajectory, up year-over-year and sequentially on a same-store constant currency basis.
Our U.K. parts and service business continues to accelerate, increasing 20% year-over-year in same-store gross profit, and customer pay increased 18%. We're applying many of the same principles we use in our U.S. business, opening our workshop schedules, expanding our hours, pricing our maintenance offerings on the aftermarket competition, eliminating diagnosis fees, and increasing capacity by hiring technicians. Turning to our U.K. SG&A performance, we incurred $3 million in incremental costs due to government-mandated national insurance and minimum wage increases. Without this headwind, we improved our leverage, but we continue to focus on further efficiency there. In the U.S., SG&A performance did not meet our expectations. Consequently, in early April, we implemented cost reduction measures in our U.S. business, cutting our headcount by nearly 700 full-time employees and reducing SG&A costs by approximately $14 million through contract and vendor elimination.
We expect that these efforts will remove $50 million of annual costs from our U.S. operations that will return our SG&A leverage to a more acceptable level. In both markets across all areas of our business, we continue to look for ways to leverage technology, including artificial intelligence, to improve our returns. Many of these investments are still in the early stages, but they are beginning to demonstrate real benefits. AI can support customer acquisition and retention, enhance inventory optimization through more informed sourcing decisions, drive efficiencies by digitizing processes to reduce SG&A, and put more consistency and performance across all of our rooftops, a key strategic focus for Group 1. We will continue to drive these efforts and look forward to sharing more details in the future. In the 1st quarter, we also continued our commitment to disciplined capital allocation, particularly in M&A and share buybacks.
We divested two Mercedes-Benz dealerships in California. These stores were high-cost operations with significant real estate and operating constraints. In the U.K., aligned with the Volkswagen Group's ideal network plan, we acquired one Škoda and two Volkswagen dealerships while also disposing of one underperforming Volkswagen and one underperforming Škoda dealership. In the U.K., we finalized a framework agreement with Chinese OEM Geely, and we'll open three Geely dealerships in Q2 in facilities that we already own. We are in additional discussions with Geely and other Chinese OEMs about further representation. Our primary intention is to develop direct understanding of the retail model of Chinese brands. We also believe there is significant profit and sales opportunity with these brands in leveraging our large corporate fleet business in the U.K.
During the quarter, we repurchased 205,190 shares, or approximately 1.7% of our outstanding shares. We are managing the business with discipline and purpose, ensuring we deliver strong, resilient performance that our shareholders expect, even in today's dynamic environment. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Daniel McHenry.
Thank you, Daryl, and good morning, everyone. In the first quarter of 2026, Group 1 Automotive reported revenues of $5.4 billion, gross profit of $878 million, adjusted net income of $104 million, and adjusted diluted EPS of $8.66 from continuing operations. Starting with our U.S. operation, first quarter performance remained solid across most business despite continued pressure on volumes and margins. New vehicle unit sales declined both on a reported and same-store basis, reflecting not only ongoing affordability concerns, but a tough comparative period which saw elevated new vehicle sales ahead of tariffs. However, new vehicle GPUs increased sequentially from $3,260 to $3,313. We continue to maintain strong operational discipline through effective cost management and process consistency.
Our used vehicle operations performed in line with the broader market environment. Used vehicle retail units declined both on a reported and same-store basis, which were partially offset by higher selling prices. GPUs declined approximately 3% on the same store and as reported basis, reflecting continued pressure on vehicle acquisition costs in a more competitive sourcing environment. We continue to leverage our scale and operational flexibility to strengthen used vehicle acquisition while executing disciplined sourcing and pricing dynamic used vehicle market. Our first quarter adjusted F&I GPUs were up nearly 4% on an as-reported and same-store basis versus prior year comparable periods. Aftersales stood out as a key bright spot, with both parts and service gross margin reaching a new quarterly high.
Gross profit continues to benefit from our efforts to optimize our collision footprint, shifting collision space opportunistically to additional traditional service capacity and closing collision centers where returns do not meet our requirements. Same-store customer pay and warranty revenues increased approximately 3% and 5% respectively, with corresponding gross profit growth of approximately 6% and 9%. Our technician recruiting and retention efforts continue to pay off, with same-store technicians up 3% year-over-year. Overall, our U.S. business continues to demonstrate resilience, with strong aftersales performance and disciplined execution helping offset ongoing normalization in vehicle margins. Turning to the U.K. While the U.K. remains a challenging operating environment, performance improved across several key areas. New vehicles performed in line with expectations. Used vehicle same store revenues were up over 6% on a local currency basis, with volumes up nearly 5%.
Same-store GPUs declined 2% on a local currency basis, leading to an increase in same-store used vehicle gross profit. Performance re-reflects improved demand and throughput despite continued margin pressure in a competitive used vehicle market. Aftersales delivered year-over-year growth in both revenue and gross profit on an as-reported and same-store basis, while F&I delivered year-over-year growth in revenue and gross profit on a same-store basis. The aftersales business remains an important stabilizer within the U.K. operations, and along with F&I, is a key area of focus as we work to enhance profitability by bringing best practices from the U.S. Same-store technicians are up 3%, adding significant capacity to our shops. Same-store customer pay and warranty revenues were up over 6% and 12% year-over-year on a local currency basis.
Same store F&I PRU reached $1,128, with an as-reported and same-store PRU both increasing over 8% year-over-year. We are continuously taking decisive actions in both the U.S. and U.K. to control costs, strengthen operational efficiency, and position the business for improved returns as market conditions stabilize. Turning to our balance sheet and liquidity. Our strong balance sheet, cash flow generation, and leverage position will continue to support flexible capital allocation approach. As of March 31st, our liquidity of $714.3 million was comprised of accessible cash of $191 million and $523 million available to borrow on our acquisition line. Our rent-adjusted leverage ratio, as defined by our U.S. syndicated credit facility, was 3.09 times at the end of March.
Cash flow generation year to date yielded $147 million of adjusted operating cash flow and $95 million of free cash flow after backing out $53 million of CapEx. This capital was deployed in the same period through a combination of acquisitions, share repurchases, and dividends, including the acquisition of $135 million of revenues through March 31st, $72 million spent repurchasing 205,000 shares at an average price of $353.08, and $7 million in dividends to our shareholders. We currently have $306.3 million remaining on our board-authorized common share repurchase program. For additional detail regarding our financial condition, please refer to the schedules of additional information attached to the news release, as well as the investor presentation posted on our website.
I will now turn the call over to the operator to begin the question and answer session. Operator.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your telephone keypads. If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, you may press star and two. We do ask that you please limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question today comes from Alex Perry from Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions here. I guess just first, I was wondering if you can walk us through the cost savings plan in more detail. It looks like $50 million in annualized savings, with benefits beginning in the second quarter. Maybe if you could help us parse out sort of what the expected second quarter benefit is and what we should expect in the back half as well just provide a bit more color on the overall plan. Thank you.
Alex, hi, it's Daniel here. I would say coming out of January and February, you know, we could see some weakness in the market and in our SG&A leverage at that point was, you know, much lower than we would have expected. Going into March, we went about developing a cost cutting program, 700 heads to come out of the business. They have all been completed by the end of April. Total cost effective of that headcount reduction is approximately $35 million. In addition to that, we've taken a cutting exercises around contracts as Daryl talked about earlier, and that's close to $15 million in terms of cost.
On an annualized basis or a quarterly basis, we would expect that to be about $12.5 million a quarter. Now, what would that have done for us in terms of Q1? If we had taken that cost out on January 1 Q1, U.S. SG&A that, you know, was circa 70.5%, we would have expected that to have been about 68.5%. It's about 200 basis points out of cost in terms of the U.S. You know, additionally, we continue to take cost out in the U.K., but we do have that additional National Insurance in Q1 that we didn't have last year.
Really helpful. Thanks for all the color there. My second question is, I just wanted to ask about the used business. What is the path on sort of getting the used profitability back up to historical levels? I know you mentioned some of the sourcing costs on the used side, but maybe just talk through the path there and if we should expect any sort of near-term improvements on the used GPUs. Thanks.
Well, this is Daryl. We saw some nice sequential improvement in used PRU. Sourcing is the big challenge right now, one, because the SAR was depressed on the first quarter, there were fewer trades. We ended the quarter with 26 days. We don't rely very heavily on auctions. 11% of our sourcing comes from auctions, we really work hard on the organic sourcing. The problem there is, it's heavily late model vehicles. Our mix of cheaper, higher margin used cars in our inventory is very light compared to what it's been historically, everybody's scrambling for those. Everybody really wants those 'cause obviously one of the reasons people buy used cars is 'cause they're more affordable. As we get better at that, you know, I expect we'll see margin improvement.
I think we're better and more disciplined at our inventory acquisition. We're much better and more disciplined in both the U.S. and the U.K. on aging management, pricing decisions, to market, trying to use more technology in both markets. While I don't think you'll see leaps and bounds of improvement, I do think this additional discipline and the lack of supply provides a floor on used car PRUs.
Incredibly helpful. Best of luck going forward.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Brett Jordan from Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.
Hey, good morning, guys. This is Patrick Buckley on for Brett. Thanks for taking our questions. There have been some recent headlines around rising negative equity values. Have you seen similar trends with your customers? Has there been any impact on converting a potential customer to a buy on the sales floor when they realize they've got to write a check to make the transaction happen?
You know, short answer is yes. I think it's a fact negative equity is at a high and can be a headwind. We try to watch affordability measures quite a bit. You know, the average car payment is high, insurance rates are high, negative equity is high. Also there's evidence that affordability is actually a little better now than it has been in some time. When you look at car payments as a percentage of people's salary and people's pay, it's actually takes fewer weeks on the measure that a lot of people watch. It's better in 2026 than it has been.
I think there's a lot of things going on with affordability right now. Negative equity is one piece of that puzzle. Things like tax rebate checks are another piece of that puzzle. I think there's puts and takes on both of that. To answer your specific question on negative equity, I think that's, yeah, we see that, but we also see that, I don't think it's a huge limiter. It's just another piece of the affordability puzzle right now.
Great. That's helpful. Then focusing on the U.K., you know, there's been a bit more of a prominent impact from recent energy spikes there. You know, how has the consumer held up into Q2? It sounded like Q1 was a pretty healthy quarter from a demand side. Has there been any signs of a pullback more recently?
You know, one of the things that we were really pleased with, in the U.K. in the first quarter was our order take rate going into the plate change month in March was very high, higher than we'd seen in honestly several years. You know, when you go into a plate change month, you really know how it's gonna come out. By about the middle of February, you know what the end of March is gonna look like 'cause the order bank dictates what kind of volume you're gonna do. We were really pleased all through January and February with our order, our March order take. I don't see that that has, on a relative basis, April's not a plate change month, don't get me wrong.
On a relative basis, I don't see that that has changed materially. One thing we're really pleased about going into the second quarter in the U.K. is the health of our used car inventory is significantly better than it was a year ago. One of the challenges in the U.K. market is when you have two months, March and September, which drives so much of your new car volume, it creates these huge used car inventories in April and October. If you don't have a lot of discipline in the way you manage your used car inventories, you can get caught. Candidly, in the past, we've been caught.
I'm really pleased with our aging, I'm really pleased with our inventory levels and our discipline this year in the U.K. on our used car inventories, and we hope that means better things for us in used cars this year there.
Great. That's all for us. Thanks, guys.
Sure.
Our next question comes from John Babcock from Barclays. Please go ahead with your question.
All right. Thanks for taking my question. The first one just on your plan to exit the JLR brand, where does that stand? Also, did that impact your U.K. operations, or is that now considered part of discontinued ops?
It's not discontinued ops because materially it's a very small part of our business. We're in active negotiations on a number of them, both with the OEM and with potential buyers. We've closed one of the nine. We're in active discussions on several more and very close to contract finalization. Once we get those finalized, we'll be able to announce those. We're pleased with where we are on that.
Okay. Then just back to the cost actions. With the 700 people that you guess cut from the workforce, where were those? Were those, I'm sure they're probably spread across, you know, different teams, but were those more weighed to the sales side? Were those more in the back office? You know, I don't know if you could provide any more color on that, but that would be useful.
It was across the board. What we did was we took SG&A as a percentage of gross targets by literally by store and market and business unit and assigned headcount targets based on that. It came from across across the enterprise in the stores, in the corporate level. You know, fortunately, in some of our corporate activities, we've been able to implement some technology which helps us keep our productivity up, we didn't need some of that count. It was across the board, and that is that's done. I mean, that's not what we're going to do. We have already done that and executed that on the headcount side.
Yeah. Understood. Are you able to provide any split between U.S. and U.K. or?
That's all U.S. It's Daniel here, sorry. The all $50 million was all U.S. headcount reduction.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Rajat Gupta from JPMorgan. Please go ahead with your question.
Great. Thanks for taking the question. Kind of follow up on the disposal question, you know, the California stores that you divested, could you give us a sense of proceeds and any EBITDA earnings impact we should dial in from that? I have a couple of quick follow-ups.
You know, Rajat, we don't typically declare what the proceeds were. I think it's fair to say the multiple that we got from those stores was much higher than the multiple that the company trades at. You know, both the stores needed CapEx and significant CapEx. They had fairly expensive real estate attached to those stores. I would say for us as a company, we were pleased with the outcome for selling those stores.
Got it. Got it. Okay. That's helpful. On parts and service, you know, thanks for calling out the weather impact. You know, if I adjust for that, you know, the U.S. business would have grown roughly 4% versus the 2% that you reported. I'm curious, like how we should think about that in context of, you know, just the general outlook you've given in the past around mid-single-digit type rate. You know, maybe there was some warranty headwinds. I was just curious how we should think about that going forward.
There's a little warranty headwind. I mean, you know, on a year-over-year basis, warranty was only up 4% for us in U.S. The mid-single digits is still safe, the model, Rajat. Two things to keep in mind with us. We've converted some of our collision center into shop space, and you can't necessarily just turn that off one day as a collision center and turn it on the next day as a service workshop because you have to put all new equipment in there, and you have to restaff it. There's some transition time between when it stops being a collision center, when it starts being a productive workshop.
You see a big negative on our collision comps because of some of those collision centers that we've closed. You know, at least what we're seeing and what we see in the sector is there's a decline in the collision business in general, which exacerbates that, which you see that in our wholesale parts numbers. We were only up 2.8%, not very much. Lower margin part of our business. You take the collision decline, which is a lower margin part, and you take the slower growth in wholesale parts, and you mix that into CP and warranty, and you see a slower number on after-sales growth.
You know, we had almost 6%, I think, gross profit growth in the same store, gross profit growth on customer pay in the U.S. Pleased with that. Always want it to be more, you know, when we, when we try to pull all of our after-sales levers, that's generally directed at customer pay. Hope that helps.
That's helpful. Just one clarification. The F&I adjustment, the $6.8 million, what was that tied to?
Rajat, that was effectively adjustment. It represented a one-time non-recurring adjustment to our revenue and calculations for retrospective rebates, effectively.
Understood. Okay. Thanks for all the color. Good luck.
Our next question comes from Jeff Lick from Stephens Inc. Please go ahead with your question.
Good morning. Yeah, thanks for taking my questions. You know, Daryl, I was just wondering, you know, as you look at this, you know, the first 4 months of this year has been pretty noisy. I was curious if you could just kinda parse out where you think, you know, the consumer is or maybe, you know, bifurcate, you know, the typical mass affluent luxury consumer versus, you know, maybe the volume consumer. You know, as we get through April, we've, you know, heard from some of your peers that, you know, April's been okay, but maybe, you know, feels a little weak, like people are being cautious because of the war. Just kinda curious for your thoughts on where things are at.
I wouldn't disagree with what I've heard so far from our peers or some of the industry experts on the consumer. There's no shortage of distractions for consumers these days. Which, you know, as you know, in our industry, consumer confidence and the SAAR run right together. As consumers lack confidence, I think it is a headwind to us. I do think, you know, there's evidence that consumers are still spending. We've seen it in ex-weather, we've seen, you know, still some decent performance. There's no shortage of distractions for consumers right now. That's for sure. That's one of the reasons we took the cost actions we did, Jeff.
Because we wanna make sure that we're lean enough for if, you know, the SAAR does stay in this range, you know, mid-fifteens, 15.6, 15.7, something like that we're able to compete there, and compete there effectively.
Just to follow up, for whoever wants to take this. On, you know, on the 700, headcount, you know, as you guys look at that, obviously in the back of your mind, you're always thinking, "Well, gee, if we do this, it's conceivable it could come back to haunt us in terms of, you know, operational abilities either on the cost side or, you know, or on the gross margin side." What are some of the areas where you might be worried about? Maybe you could think, talk about just as you think about the dealership of the future, 'cause obviously I think some of that's in this as well. You're not just looking at getting rid of people as a knee-jerk reaction to cut costs.
These dealers are, you know, the dealerships are evolving in terms of functions that can be, you know, performed by software and whatnot. I'm just curious, where are you worried that if you cut to the muscle, it might show up negatively?
I don't think, I don't think we cut muscle on this one. We, we tried to be very logical about it. Where we did touch, what I'll call productive, which is not a perfect descriptor, but people who sell and service vehicles, where we did touch that, you know, we focused on very low productivity areas of our business. Are there places where we're using technology, which we're using a lot in our, especially our sales department, to manage customers and inbounds and leads and sales and conversion. We feel like we have enough technology overlay that's gonna compensate for those lower productivity salespeople that we might have separated with.
On a technician basis, you know, we touched very few technicians, and if we did, it was really around some that were very, lower productivity. We've actually leaned into more technician investment during this period. There's some things we didn't touch. We didn't touch any of our people development initiatives, any of our training initiatives, any of our people retention initiatives. We're continuing to finish out our air conditioning project across our dealerships. We continue our technician mentoring program. Three-quarters of our techs are part of a mentoring program now, our hourly techs, which we feel like is vital to retention and growth. We didn't touch anything that touched what we consider longer term growth opportunities, especially in after sales.
Jeff, it's Daniel here. I can give you one really typical example of where we cut costs. This quarter, Q1, we rolled out digital deal jacket across 100% of our dealerships. Effectively all of the deals are either signed online or held online. Traditionally, we would have had a scanner in the dealership scanned in 100-ish pieces of paper that would have formed the deal jacket. Clearly going to 100% digital meant that that scanner was no longer required.
Scanner being a person.
Being a person, correct.
Correct. Okay, awesome. Well, thanks very much for taking my questions, and best of luck in Q2 and the rest of the year.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from David Whiston from Morningstar. Please go with your question.
Good morning. The upcoming Geely U.K. locations, are they going to be standalone or in existing Group 1 footprint somewhere?
They're in buildings we already own, that's usually part of a either a franchise that we have or in a cluster of dealerships that we have, where we might have, as an example, North of London, we have a site near Watford, a BMW store where we had a Mini standalone store and a BMW standalone store. Mini is now part of the BMW operation. It left us an empty showroom and service facility on the same campus, and we were able to put Geely in there. We don't have to go sell Geelys and BMWs in the same showroom, and it gives us a separate facility, but it's one we already own. There's no incremental cost to do that except for some minor imaging investment.
Okay. On the... Okay, thanks. On the virtual F&I mean, I'm just trying to balance here. It's great for perhaps efficiency and speed for the customer, but are F&I managers losing some opportunities here financially?
No, they are not. This is Pete DeLongchamps. Actually, they're gaining opportunities because they become much more efficient. They're actually doing more deals at the store level. You know, the key to this is customer convenience was the driving factor. As we perfected this, what's happened is we've lowered turnover, we've lowered comp, we've actually increased the PRU on what I'd say, the bottom performers. This has really been a terrific initiative that has paid off in, you know, four different ways.
You know, one way to look at it is on the productivity of the F&I producers. Many of the folks that are virtual F&I managers for us used to work in our stores. They now are virtual F&I managers doing deals all over the country. You know, in an average day, an F&I manager might do three deals. As a virtual agent, they can do eight, seven, eight, nine, 10, and that's kind of the numbers we see. We're really pleased with that. We think we're able to attract a different type of employee because now we can offer things like part-time work and they can work from home. It's taken us two years to get here.
I don't wanna make it sound like it was simple. The team has worked really hard through our learning process on this. It was a long ramp-up, and that's one of the reasons we haven't talked about it until now. We feel like there's certainly some productivity gains as well as quality of life for our team.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question comes from John Saager from Evercore. Please go ahead with your question.
Hey, Daryl. Thanks. I wanted to just dig into a little bit of the, the divergence between the U.K. and the, and the U.S., and where you think you might have more impact on the SG&A cost savings over time.
In either market or in one specific area?
Yeah. Is there, like, basically more low-hanging fruit in one region or the other?
I don't think there's low-hanging fruit in any region, honestly. I feel like since COVID, we've been pretty disciplined with our SG&A, and I think we've demonstrated that. Our headcount is still lower than it was pre-COVID. I, you know, I think in the U.K. there's still opportunity. There's still things for us to do as we've. You know, one of the things we were really pleased with in the first quarter was our growth in our lines of business. You know, we saw F&I grow, after-sales grow quite a bit. We had nice same-store sales growth in new cars and pre-owned. You know, we gotta just make sure we contain the cost there as we grow. That's a real focus for us.
Whether it's marketing costs or people costs, some transaction costs, we don't have as much automation in our U.K. business as we have in our U.S. business. That's a focal area for us. You know, I think there's opportunity there. In the U.S., it's about people productivity. It really is. Whether it's a technician or a salesperson, and that's where most of our headcount is in our stores, and, you know, how do we put them in a position to be as productive as possible. Those are areas that we're really focused on in both markets.
John, it's Daniel here. One thing that I would note would be in the U.S. specific, January and February SG&A as a % of growth was outsized, some of that was around the weather that we had in the U.S. March SG&A, as a % of growth, was a lot more healthy. You know, clearly with some of the actions that we have taken, hopefully that will continue into quarter two and three.
That makes sense. Yeah. Thank you very much. You know, relative to the 84% in the U.K. for the full year of 2025, you guys did have some obviously improvement in Q1. I would expect that to come back again in Q3. Do you think that we could end the year materially lower than that 84%, or is 80% still a bridge too far for this year?
John, it's Daniel again. You know, the aim is to get as close to the 80% stated SG&A as a percent of growth as possible. On the basis of where we were in quarter one, I think that that's possible, but it clearly will require consistent work.
All right, thank you.
Our next question comes from Michael Ward from Citigroup. Please go ahead with your question.
Thanks very much. Good morning, everyone.
Good morning, Mike.
Sorry to keep on with this. I just wanna double-check and make sure I'm doing the math right on this. The $7 million impact from weather was all on parts and service in the U.S. Is that correct?
That's correct, Mike.
That was our estimate, Mike. It's probably a little conservative.
Yeah.
We tried to be conservative with it. Yeah, we assume that all the vehicles that we lost were replaced. Whether that's true or not, who knows?
Yeah.
And, um...
Right. The parts and service you don't get back. It's just.
We felt like no.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. If I'm doing the walk right with SG&A, you still paid your people, so that had about an 80 basis point impact inflating the SG&A's percentage of growth. That's our start point at 70.5. Is that right, Daniel? Is that what you're alluding to?
That's correct.
Okay. You have the cost savings, which knock it down 150 to 200 basis points. I'm assuming that with the brand rollout, there are some additional operating costs that are unusual as we go through this year. If we're at kind of a status state, we're getting down to somewhere in the mid-60s as % of SG&A's % of gross in the U.S. Is that the right way to think about it?
You know, Mike, I think if you think about the walk and where let's just reverse the effect of the weather and assume that we had the $12.5 million cost reduction, we're somewhere close to the high 67%. That doesn't include any of the rebranding or any of the, of the other stuff that's in there.
Okay.
Mike, on your question on rebranding, we did have some incremental costs, you know, for signage and uniforms and things like that we've done in the stores that we've done. One thing I was really pleased to see in March was we had real leverage on our operating advertising spend.
Interesting.
We saw some really good leverage on in March. Some of that is because it's March, you got more volume to spread it over. two, what I don't want to call it a trend yet because we don't know, but we're doing more with Group 1 advertising than we ever have because we have about 50 stores that are on it. Rather than advertising 50 different brands, we can now advertise one.
Right. Right.
and get more leverage on it. Hopefully we'll see that continue as we go through the year. You know, we're trying to do more advertising from a, you know, one voice rather than 148 different store voices.
Yeah. Makes sense. Turning to the U.K. a little bit, what is your current position with the China brands? I saw that you're expanding kind of your relationship with Geely. How many stores do you have? Like, what do they represent and where are we going, do you think?
We have three that we've signed agreements with that will become live in Q2. We have a framework agreement with Geely, we can go beyond three. We have three stores that have specific dealer agreements with Geely that will be operational in Q2. We're talking to Geely about more than three. We're also talking with some other OEM, Chinese OEMs about representing them. We've taken a little slower pace. We got a little concerned. I mean, their fast growth is great. Good for them. That's great.
We're a little concerned they got over-dealered in some of, some brands, which, you know, we could say we're, you know, we could have gone and signed some dealer agreements last year and been part of that sales growth, but it might have actually hurt profitability, 'cause the UIO is still growing. Really, they've only done any real volume for six, eight months in the U.S. There's not a lot of UIO yet to drive service departments. We're, we were taking a little slower approach. We're in now and, you know, we're excited to learn this, how the retail model really works for Geely. We're watching some of the other brands, and we're in really active discussions with some of the other brands. We think, you know, we're gonna rely on our formula, Mike.
You know, we feel like we're good dealers, we're good representatives of OEMs. They will want us to do business for them, and they will come to us and try to enable us, you know, expanding our footprint with them. That's a formula that's worked for us in both markets. We feel like it'll work well with the Chinese as well.
Makes sense. Thank you very much, everyone. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Mike.
With that, everyone, we'll be concluding today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Daryl Kenningham at Group 1 for closing remarks.
Thank you, Jamie. In summary, we remain committed to our strategic initiatives, local focus, operating excellence, differentiated after sales and disciplined capital management. We'll continue to build on our results from the first quarter. The U.K. remains a priority as we build on improving our operating performance, executing on our various initiatives there, and shaping the portfolio to drive better returns. We believe consistent execution against these priorities positions us to navigate near-term challenges, while also building long-term value. Thank you for your time today. We look forward to discussing our second quarter results on our call in July.
With that, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be concluding today's conference call and presentation. We thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.