Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining. My name is Rajat Gupta, member of the Automotive Equity Research Team at J.P. Morgan . Very pleased to have with us the team from OPENLANE, Peter Kelly, CEO, and Brad Herring, CFO. Peter has a few prepared remarks and a small slide deck, after which, we can dive into Q&A. Thanks, Peter.
Good morning, Rajat. Thank you very much. Thank you all for being here and for your interest in our company. Really appreciate it. Yeah, just a few remarks to start off, and then we'll get into a discussion here with Rajat. OPENLANE, we are a digital marketplace leader for wholesale used vehicles. I just want to speak about the wholesale used vehicle market and then our digital positioning, just to give you some context. Wholesale used vehicle marketplace, first of all. If we go back to 2019, pre-pandemic, industry volumes in that marketplace, approximately 15 million units per annum. That volume has been compressed a lot, due to pandemic and supply chain, supply chain issues. Analysts estimate approximately 9 million vehicles last year.
I just want to point out that this is one part of the industry where there's been a lot of volume compression, based on just pandemic and supply chain-related issues, and we've obviously been affected by that because that's the industry we're in. That's a significant compression. However, most experts agree, and we believe, that those volumes are poised to start to recover from here forward. The industry is getting back towards normal. Vehicle production is getting back towards normal. We're seeing more inventory on dealers' lots. We're seeing used vehicle prices start to decline, and we're starting to see increased volumes in the wholesale market. I think that's gonna play out over many years to come, and that's gonna be a strong tailwind in our business as those volumes recover towards normal over a multi-year period.
That's one important driver. The second point I just want to touch on is the digital positioning. We're clearly a digital marketplace leader in this wholesale used vehicle market. Why, why have we chosen that? Well, a number of reasons. The first one is, digital has been gaining share in this industry. The industry historically was more of a physical, auction-based model, but even pre-pandemic had moved maturely in a digital direction and continues to move in that direction. The digital part of the industry is, is gaining share, and that's really the growth part of the industry, and that's where we're 100% positioned at this point.
We have significant share with dealer-to-dealer business and with commercial sellers, US and Canada. We believe that both of those categories are gonna move increasingly more digital in the years to come as well, and we'll benefit from that as well. The other reason to choose the digital positioning is just, you know, the efficiency of the model. The reason it's gaining share, it's more efficient for customers. It's faster, it's less expensive, it takes less time. There obviously are network effects and other efficiency benefits in a digital marketplace itself. Also for us, it's a much more scalable model. It's much more of a fixed cost type of business with high marginal economics for incremental cars sold.
We're seeing that really start to play out in our business already, even though volumes still remain challenged. You know, we see two real drivers of our business as we look to the future. One is this, I'll call it a cyclical recovery in industry volumes, which is substantial, probably of the order of a 50% growth versus the current levels. The other one is a secular shift as our digital model gains share vis-à-vis the historical model. That's what... That's the essence of the growth thesis for this business. Real quickly, just a couple of slides. Our purpose statement: We make wholesale easy so our customers can be more successful. Our platform... Sorry. Please, my bad. Can you hear me better this way?
Yep, it's better.
My apologies. I thought nobody could hear me there. I should have known Chase would have J.P. Morgan would have good audio equipment, so apologies for that. Make wholesale easy so our customers can be more successful. So simplify the transaction for them, make the process easy, and ultimately earn more of their business by doing that. Our vision is to be the leading digital marketplace for used vehicles in the world. Obviously, our focus at this point is North American-based, and we are the digital volume leader in North America by a, I'd say, a substantial amount when it comes to pure play digital businesses. The addressable market we serve, so, 60 million used vehicle transactions annually.
About $40 million of those are retail used vehicle transactions and close to $20 million wholesale used vehicle transactions on a North American basis. We're playing more, obviously, in the wholesale side of that business, but we do increasingly offer some services that touch the retail transaction and the retail trade-in transaction, enabling dealers to conduct that business more effectively. We look at our addressable market as really the wholesale side of that, the $20 million wholesale used vehicle transactions. Then marketplace participants, we're a business-to-business, a wholesale business. Participants are dealers, commercial sellers, finance companies, rental car companies, and so forth. Obviously, the majority of that 100,000 customers are dealers, both franchised and independent dealers in North America.
We report in 2 segments, 2 business segments, a marketplace segment that I view as our core business. That's the digital marketplace business that I talked about. We also have a very strong finance business. We offer what's called floor plan financing to independent dealers. When dealers are purchasing vehicles in our marketplace, they can avail of financing. It's typically short-term, 60-day inventory financing, that drives a strong, profitable business on the finance side of our business as well. To go into a little bit more detail on both of those segments, the digital marketplace business, we sold 1.3 million vehicles last year. We're expecting to grow that number a little this year, despite industry volumes remaining very challenged this year. $23 billion in GMV that was represented by that.
Approximately 50,000 unique sellers and buyers participating in, participating in our marketplace. Again, versus that industry number, obviously, we've got strong penetration out there with franchised and independent dealers in North America. Offering about 200,000 vehicles for sale on our platforms in any given month currently. Again, we expect those volumes to grow over time. Another unique thing about our business is we've got this roughly 50/50 split between commercial and dealer volumes. We're very... You know, I consider that deep strength with both commercial sellers and dealer sellers. Commercial sellers would represent, you know, off-lease sellers, captive finance companies, automotive finance companies, rental car companies, and so forth. Dealers would represent everybody from the smallest independent dealer to, you know, our largest dealer buyer, which would be CarMax.
Significant penetration with both of those customer groups. I mentioned briefly the finance business. To give you some quick stats on that, approximately $1.6 million loan transaction units. Those are unique financing transactions annually, typically fairly short term, about a 60-day turn on those transactions. It's offered exclusively to independent dealers. We don't service the franchise dealer market with this product, but about 15,000 independent dealer customers. We allow them to purchase vehicles in any marketplace, our marketplace or any other marketplace, so it's approved to use at about over 1,000 different inventory sources. We operate that business through a mix of, I'll say, a digital model, where the dealers interact with us digitally from a transaction sort of processing perspective.
We also have a local branch network of about 100 local branches. What that enables us to do is stay very close to those customers, which is important from a customer relationship building perspective, but also important from a risk management perspective. We can visit the dealership, see how they're doing, and make sure that their business is what they have represented it to be. I won't spend too long on this slide. We've done a lot of evolution over the last number of years of this business. We've committed to a fully digital model. We divested of physical assets and reduced our debt, reduced our leverage to below 1 times EBITDA at this point. We're focused on integrating digital platforms, consolidating all this inventory into 1 branded marketplace, that's OPENLANE. We rebranded the company earlier in Q2.
We're going to market with a one-branded strategy in both US, Canada, and Europe, and that will enable us to focus our investments and innovation into those unique marketplaces, increasing our differentiation, but also reducing our costs, consolidating systems at the back end and increasing the efficiency of our business. We're excited about that as well. Brad, I'm going to allow Brad, our Brad Herring here, our Chief Financial Officer, to just give an update on our Q2 and our investment highlights looking forward.
Yeah, thanks, Peter, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for being here. A few highlights here. I, I won't go too, too far into the weeds on Q2. We announced last week, and so there's a lot of information out there. You know, Peter highlighted, we sold about 1.3 million vehicles last year. We're on pace for that this year, and then hopefully some a little bit higher than that, despite still a tough industry environment, as Peter described it. Really, really pleased with our financial results in the first half of the year, particularly coming out of our marketplace business, our marketplace segment. You know, year-over-year, on a year-to-date basis, we're about $45 million ahead of where we were last year. Again, that's in a flat industry environment.
Some of the initiatives that we took on in the late part of 2022 and into 2023 around cost, those are starting to materialize in those results. Furthermore, I would say the, the actual delivery of those results and the strong cash flow characteristics of our business that Peter described early, earlier are also materializing. Peter mentioned our leverage now being below net, net leverage being below 1 time. We reduced debt in the first half by over $100 million, generated operating cash flow of over $140 million in the first half. The digital asset-light business model that we have constructed, that we've now transformed ourselves to be, is starting to bear some significant fruits, and particularly in the marketplace side of the business.
I'll turn to the next page. Just summarize here some of the things that Peter highlighted. We are a digital marketplace leader, right? 1.3 million vehicles, you can benchmark it however you'd like, but I think that clearly indicates, by any standards, that we are the marketplace leader on a digital basis. Large total addressable market, and meaningful opportunities for growth, described, as Peter said it, cyclically and secularly, the secular shift to digital. The innovation, the one marketplace strategy, bringing all of our digital marketplaces and all of our liquidity for buyers and sellers into one marketplace, will position us to continue to lead in this space. I talked about our cash flow.
Finally, I would end on, you know, 15%-20% CAGR growth over the next 3 years off of our 2023 guidance. Our 2023 guidance is still $250 million-$270 million. I would emphasize, I believe, like we said in our prepared remarks at the Q2 earnings release, probably on the higher end of that $250-$270 this year, and still confirming the 15%-20% CAGR growth for the next several years. Believe we have a strong investment thesis, and confident in our business model and the investments that we're making.
With that, I think, Rajat, we'll turn it over to questions.
No, thanks. Thanks, Peter and Brad. That was, that was very helpful overview. Maybe, you know, we'll just start with, like, the 15%-20% EBITDA CAGR. If you could help us break apart, you know, what the drivers are gonna be to get to that number. Maybe, you know, we could start with, like, how depressed are volumes actually today versus, you know, normal levels or what you might perceive as a new normal. Maybe break it apart, like between D2D and the off-lease segments, and how do you see the recovery part looking like? Then within that industry, like, how do you think the share gains are gonna come? Then how you leverage that to the bottom line to get to that 15%-20%.
Yeah, thanks, Rajat. Let me speak to that. You know, obviously, we've got the two segments. Most of the growth we see is being driven by the marketplace segment, so let me start there. Again, as I mentioned, industry volumes, I believe are, you know, kind of at an all-time historical low at the present moment. We see, you know, our current volumes of, you know, between 1.3 million-1.4 million units this year, we see an opportunity to grow that to something closer to 2 million units in a sort of 2026 kind of time frame, Rajat. You know, obviously, volume growth is an important component of that. We don't have to get all the way to 2 million, by the way, but we see it growing directionally much closer to that number.
To give you some context on that, I will say openly, in our digital off-lease business, in 2019 sold 1.3 million vehicles. This year will sell north of 600,000. Again, that gives you a sense of the sort of opportunity for a cyclical recovery in that component of the business. We don't expect it's gonna get all the way back to 2019 levels by 2026 either, for that matter. We see an opportunity to grow volumes to closer to 2 million units. We see strong growth profits given our digital model. Gross profits in the Q2 as a percentage of what we call net revenue, for the business on a consolidated basis, we're in the, the mid-fifties, I think 56% or something like that, mid-fifties.
We see gross profits remaining in the mid to upper 50s in that volume scenario. Gross profits will be strong. The business is very scalable and will scale really, really well given its digital model. We also think as volumes grow, our SG&A cost structure doesn't grow at the same rate. SG&A, I think, as a percent of net revenue, was just 30%. Yeah, maybe, let's say 30%. We see that trending downwards closer to 25% over that time frame as well, but not all the way to 25%. And again, you know, what are the opportunities to drive that? We don't think SG&A needs to grow at the same rate because of the inherent scalability of the business.
We also have a significant amount of opportunity to improve our SG&A efficiency by consolidating platforms, consolidating business processes, and so forth. Rajat, that would give you a sort of, some of the key parameters around, you know, volume, revenue, gross profit and SG&A, and, that, that translates into, we believe, and Adjusted EBITDA CAGR over that period of about 15%-20%. If you were to break it into the two segments, our finance business, we see growing at probably a mid-single digit kind of CAGR, and the marketplace, probably more like a 20% EBITDA CAGR.
Got it.
That'll get you the same result.
Got it. That's, that, that's, that's helpful color. I think one of the aspects of the story, which I think, in my experience, investors are struggling with, is. You know, I, I think people appreciate the D2D side of things and what you've achieved there, and the opportunity on that side of the market. It's the off-lease portion of the market where I think there is the most concern around the shape of recovery.
Mm-hmm.
You know, help us understand what that recovery shape is gonna look like. You know, I, I, I've heard, like, different views, and, you know, we're also still trying to come up with, like, a firm view, given the fact that there are gonna be fewer lease returns. I think you're dependent more on, like, how many leases actually get returned and how many the dealers are passing on to the auction. Help us understand, like, how that will play out or how you expect to play out in order to achieve these targets.
Thanks, Rajat. Well, to give the audience some perspective, first, in terms of our, our market share with, you know, the off-lease customers, the principally captive finance companies, GM Financial, Honda Finance, people like that in US and Canada, we are certainly the leader by far. We estimate that our, our sort of market share that we have with those customers is of the order of 75% or 80% of total leases written and maturing. Those customers are still very much part of our customer set. We have deep integrations with those customers. We run their off-lease programs. It just happens that their volumes are you know, very depressed at the current moment. One of the reasons...
The principal reason the volumes are so low right now is we've seen a significant appreciation in used vehicle values over the last number of years, whereas the residual values on these, these vehicles were set three years ago before that appreciation happened. You've got this equity gap, where the equity value of that maturing off-lease vehicle is substantially higher than the residual value of the vehicle, and that would result in most consumers deciding: I'm not gonna return that lease. Why would I return a $30,000 vehicle to get a $20,000 residual value check? That's kind of a historical anomaly.
Most normal times in the industry, leases are designed, so at the end of the lease, the customer is actually incented to return the vehicle and acquire a new vehicle because leasing is really geared towards building customer loyalty at the retail level and keeping customers in that OEM brand. Rajat, as we look to the future over the, really, I'd say, the, the fairly near term, like next year and the year beyond, I'd say two important things we expect to happen. One is... I think continued downward pressure on used vehicle pricing, given some of the supply, you know, new vehicle production, et cetera. Now, I don't expect used vehicle prices to drop back to where they were pre-COVID, but I do think the preponderance of pressure is gonna be downward in terms of used vehicle values.
They had a significant run-up. They've been depreciating over the last year, you could say. I think that pressure remains generally downward. The second thing is, as we get into 2024 and 2025, those leases were written in 2021 and 2022. Those vehicles were retailed at kind of all-time high in MSRPs. The residual values are generally set based on MSRP. We're gonna get into a cohort of vehicles where the residual values are much higher and the used vehicle value pressure is downward. I think this equity gap is really gonna narrow here in the next year or two, really starting next year, and that's gonna result in more flow-through of those vehicles into our marketplace, and that's really the key driver, Rajat.
Then over the longer term, I expect this to look much more like the leasing market of the past. I think leasing will remain a very important part of the way new vehicles are brought to market. We're seeing lease origination starting to increase again as OEMs are starting to incentivize retail sales again. I think leasing will have a high penetration rate. There will be a lot of off-lease cars. Granted, it's gonna take a number of years for that to play out. I think as with most times pre-pandemic, the majority of those leases are gonna get returned. They're gonna enter our marketing cycle, and we're gonna be really well positioned to to help our customers with that, obviously, but to generate revenues and profits as we do that.
Got it. That's, that's great color. Is there a way for us to better understand the difference in profitability of the off-lease, the, the, the commercial-to-dealer versus the dealer-to-dealer? When you see the recovery in volumes, does one lever better than the other, or is the incremental EBITDA $ per unit going to be similar across both? You know, as you're watching cycles and making our own assumptions on what recovers first versus the other, is there a way to think about operating leverage?
Well, first of all, Rajat, the good news is both of them, both of those categories are profitable in our marketplace today. Brad spoke to, you know, the results we had in the first half of the year. We've seen a $45 million year-on-year improvement in the profitability of our marketplace business, first half of this year compared to first half of last year, and both our commercial and dealer-to-dealer categories made a important contributor, contribution to that. I, I look at the profitability of our marketplace business probably on three legs, Rajat. One, I don't have the exact numbers here with me today, they, in my mind, would break down roughly sort of equal. Right now, we've got commercial seller volumes profitable.
I would say, Rajat, those tend to have maybe a little bit lower revenue per unit, but a higher growth profit per unit because we have less direct costs attached to those vehicles and good bottom-line profitability. Our dealer-to-dealer business would probably have a little more revenue per unit, but we have a bit more direct cost 'cause we're out inspecting vehicles at dealers' lots, et cetera. But that business is, is profitable, profitable year to date, and I believe that profitability will grow in the future. Then we have a services portfolio of, you know, logistics services, repossession services, inspection services, and a number of other services that, that all contribute to the overall profitability as well. I expect all of these have significant growth opportunities as we look to the future.
Got it. On the D2D side, it's interesting that you mentioned that the D2D aspect is also independently profitable. Today, you know, the only public peer we can compare you to is ACV Auctions. I believe, you know, if, if we take out Canada and Europe, you know, you're probably a little smaller in size than them, but you are profitable, and the growth rates look pretty similar. You know, as we, as we get into this upcycle of volumes coming back, do you think your market share gains can persist? Or do you think there's more investment probably needed to, you know, get that incremental market share? How should we think about, you know, just maybe just tie the competitive landscape?
Yeah
... to, on the D2D side as well?
I guess just to, as points of comparison, I think our dealer-to-dealer volumes in Q2 were bigger than theirs. Obviously, ours are North American. For the most part, theirs are US only, so there is that distinction. Obviously, US is still the majority of our dealer-to-dealer volume. Rajat, I'm pleased with our growth rates. We grew sequentially from Q1 to Q2. We grew our total, this is total volume, is 4%. I think that, that exceeded that competitor's sequential growth. I, I would say, Rajat, it's a growth business, but our view is that it is a profitable growth business. We want to grow this business profitably. We have been through a number of years of investment in this business. We've done acquisitions in this space.
These businesses are profitable. We're focused on finding that balance of profitability and growth, but we have to get both, is the way I would view that. I also think we have some unique advantages. You know, we have just deployed in Canada our one-branded marketplace, OPENLANE Canada. 3 months ago, we had an ADESA marketplace and a TradeRev marketplace. Those have been merged into an OPENLANE Canada marketplace. In the US, we will have OPENLANE US deployed by the end of this year. What that does is that's gonna integrate our commercial volume and our dealer volume into one marketplace, okay? That has not been the case historically. We had those sort of separate venues for, for separate types of vehicles.
I think that's gonna create a unique differentiation for us in the business because we'll have this unique inventory set of, first of all, a significant volume of dealer-to-dealer cars, which tend to be a little bit older, a little bit higher mileage, a little bit lower price. Balancing that, this very, very attractive and growing portfolio of off-lease vehicles, which probably are the most desirable vehicles in this industry. 3-year-old, one owner, low mileage, high-value vehicles. We're gonna be addressing the entire sort of demand spectrum in a way that I don't think any of or that particular competitor can, and that's gonna be unique, a unique advantage for us as we, as we move forward.
Do your targets take into account any volume synergies or cost synergies that you might get with this rebranding and integration? Maybe, like, to ask another way, like, how much incremental growth or market share opportunity does this unlock for you by doing this integration and rebranding on either side of the business?
Well, we think it, it... We think it offers both. We think a combined marketplace with a unique and differentiated set of inventory, increases the appeal of our offering to our customers, and that, we believe, can, can translate into market share growth. That's, that's one component. In addition to that, when we look at the efficiency of our operations, I think there's a real opportunity as well.
Because we've grown by acquisition, we have different platforms, different systems existing in this business, but when we get all of our customers and all of our transactions taking place on one marketplace, which, again, we're there in Canada now, we'll be there in the US by the end of this year, that enables us to go in behind the scenes and start to retire redundant and duplicate systems without really impacting the customer experience anymore. So, you know, without going into too much detail, we've probably got three or four user authentication systems, you know, in this company, the way, you know, the system that dealers log in to get authenticated through. We, we don't need three or four, we need one. We're gonna consolidate those into one, and that's an efficiency benefit.
That's a customer benefit because it's, it's a better customer experience, but it's also an efficiency benefit. We're not supporting 4 different pieces of technology, we're supporting 1, and that's just the start. You know, you go through our platform piece by piece, and there's a lot of duplication there. That's 1 of our initiatives to really address costs in the coming years. I guess what I'd say, Rajat, we have, I'd say, a significant, you know, opportunity there as well, that is, certainly part of our plan and reflected to some degree in the projections we've put out.
Got it. That's, that's helpful. I do have a few more, but just wanted to open it to the audience to ask any questions. We have one here. You have the mic.
Now that you're moving into a sort of a tech consolidation effort, those efforts usually don't come for free. Is there gonna be an upscale in, some sort of, estimated cost in technology that you're gonna have to incur? Can you give us some sense of what the run rate for that will look like?
Yeah, so the question was regarding our technology spend as we work to consolidate our platforms to support, support our digital marketplaces. I would say there, there'll be some modest and incremental investment that we're gonna make. You know, if we look at our capital allocation today and out over the next 2 or 3 years, we don't expect there to be significant increases overall in the, you know, the funding that we would have to deploy to make that happen. We're gonna reprioritize, you know, a lot of the resources that we have today that are working on supporting those, those different, you know, different stacks, those different platforms, and, you know, kind of realign them to actually work on a more integrated platform. The actual incremental investment is gonna be fairly modest.
Yeah. I would, I would just maybe add to what Brad said. You know, our integration of one marketplace in Canada and one marketplace in the US, that's built into our current year cost structure and current year CapEx. It's really a repurposing of those resources. It's not any material incremental above what's currently in the business. It's more putting those resources on the next step of the project. Thank you.
Is it fair to assume that, just to follow up on that question, that as volumes recover, your EBITDA per unit is not gonna take a step back during that trajectory, right? Like, you should continue to get incremental EBITDA dollars per unit as that happens.
Mm-hmm.
I believe so, yes. Certainly, the, the numbers I look at I, I look at more, gross profit as a % of net revenue, SG&A as a % of net revenue, EBITDA as a % of net revenue.
Mm-hmm.
I think viewed through that lens, absolutely, those numbers should move in a positive direction. I believe the same is true on a per unit basis. Again, there's a little bit of a mix thing-
Right
... on commercial versus dealer, but I, I believe the same is true there, Rajat.
Got it.
Yeah.
Yeah, within the marketplace, Rajat, I would say if you look at our EBITDA margins, you know, over the, the next few years and, you know, kind of line those up with our CAGR estimate that we put out there, you could see us moving to EBITDA margins in the marketplace segment, high teens.
Got it.
And maybe even, maybe even clipping, you know, the twenty-
20%.
Yeah.
Okay, got it. One of the areas which I think does not get a lot of attention, you know, on, on the earnings calls and in conversations, the ancillary products that you also offer outside of just, you know, the buy and sell portion of the transaction. Could you talk a bit more about the kind of services you offer? You know, how lucrative they are, you know, to the bottom line? And are there, like, more services, you know, that you're working on that you could offer, like, from a data perspective, you know, from a condition report perspective, and maybe, like, at some stage, involving the consumer as well?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thanks, Rajat. You know, we offer a number of services. I think our services portfolio is a differentiation as well for the company. It's a robust services portfolio that makes incremental profitability for the business. Again, I'd say volumes in that category overall, generally depressed because of where the industry has been. Real opportunity for growth as we look forward to there as well. I'd say the services break down into two principal buckets. There's, I'll say services that require some level of, you know, headcount to execute. Then we've got more, what I'll call technology services. Logistics is a big one. When we sell a vehicle, we offer the buyer transportation on that vehicle, and we get for, in many of our marketplace, very high attach rates on that.
Moving the vehicle is 1 area of service. That's probably about half of our services revenue, and that's, I would say, a mid-teens kind of, you know, margin business. We do inspection services for off-lease vehicles. We have a small key cutting business. And then we have some, I'll call, very high-margin technology services. We offer. We have a technology platform that serves the repossession space. It's the market leader in North America in terms of the way repossessions are managed between finance companies and their service providers. That's a high gross margin, high EBITDA margin, SaaS business. We have a technology service that enables other industry players, independent auctions, and some large dealer groups to run simulcast auctions.
We have probably the industry-leading technology when it comes to simulcast auctions, and that's a high-margin service for us as well. See, you know, a robust services portfolio with plenty of room for growth, and I'd say generally strong margins today that hopefully will improve over time.
Got it. Got it. Then, there's a question from Ryan.
Thanks. You mentioned the very interesting repossession services business that you have. When it comes to the actual auctioning of the repossession vehicles themselves, I believe there are some regulatory hurdles to doing that in an online-only way, which is the way that's available to you at this point. It seems very outdated, right? Like, maybe hasn't kept pace with the industry technological change. Is there any opportunity for that to be updated? How would that process proceed? Could you influence it? What kind of opportunity could that potentially represent now to OPENLANE?
Yeah. Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate that. You know, repossession volume typically is about 1.5 million-2 million units a year. It's been below normal a couple of years ago, but it's back at around normal levels now at this point. As Ryan mentioned, most of those vehicles continue to be sold at physical auction for, I'll say, logistical and regulatory reasons. Ryan, I would agree with you that I think that becomes a little more ac-- anachronistic, particularly as the buyer audience moves more and more online. I would... I'm fairly, I'll say, conservative on the pace of what I think that change will be. I will say that we are experimenting, piloting at this moment, with offering, I'd say, a small number of repossession vehicles in our digital marketplaces. We have sold some. We're working through the process.
It is quite highly regulated. If you think, one of the benefits of an off-lease car or a dealer car, Ryan, is when you as soon as the vehicle is returned, you can sell it, right? The lessee returns a vehicle, you can sell that car immediately, literally that next minute. Likewise, if a dealer takes a car in on trade, and they don't and they deem it a wholesale unit, we can sell it straight away. With the repossession, it's a little different because there may be personal property in that vehicle belonging to the consumer. In many states, the consumer will have a right to make good on their default and perhaps get the vehicle back, and that has to play out over a period of, you know, a week or two. There are those factors that we have to be mindful of.
Obviously, the piloting we're doing enables us to address those issues while leveraging, some physical properties that we're getting through, you know, partner relationships, let's just say that. I do think that over time, there is an opportunity. It is, it is a significant one, and one of the benefits we have, given the business we own, is we probably know about every... I won't say every, but 80%+ of the repossessions in the United States, the fact that it's happened, who the seller is, where the vehicle is, the condition of the vehicle, before anybody else, simply because of the digital platform that we have.
Thanks for the caller. Any other questions from the audience? I have one there.
Yes. Looking at used vehicle values, they're still maybe 30%-40% above what we saw in 2019. Do you have any thoughts on, do those have to come down a bit to get that volume back to 2 million, I think the number that you mentioned? Then also, you had talked about some friction between the seller and the buyer at auction before, and just if you have any updates.
Right.
if that's improved.
Yeah. I don't think they have to come all the way down. I don't expect them to come all the way down. I think there'll be downward pressure, but I do not foresee used vehicle values getting back to pre-pandemic levels. Frankly, there's been a deficit of, you know, one to three-year-old vehicles produced over the last two years. I think, While there will be downward pressure, I don't expect it to go all the way back. I don't think it has to, because of the dynamic I mentioned with residual values. Residual values will be going up. The exact shape of that intersection, will take time to play out, and we'll have to see it.
I think the trend lines, you know, we, we can see that there's evidence for both trend lines to play out directionally, like I've said. I'd say that's that factor. Don't have to come down all the way. In terms of the friction between seller and buyer. That probably goes to what I call conversion rate in the moment. What we generally find in our industry is when used vehicle prices are depreciating, that tends to put a little bit downward pressure on conversion rates or selling percentage. The reason for that is the seller is kind of anchored on the price they were getting last week or last month for this type of vehicle, and the buyer is more in tune with what are my retail consumers willing to pay right now?
That can put pre- negative pressure on conversion rate. We obviously have tools to sort of address that. We try to educate our sellers on what the vehicles are actually worth in the moment, not what they were worth, you know, three weeks ago. I'm actually very pleased how our conversion rates are holding up, despite what is a downward pressure environment over the last four months. I think that's just, that's just part and parcel of the business. There will be ebbs and flows on conversion rate from time to time.
Great. I think, we've run out of time here, but just if we can spend 1 minute on just capital allocation. You have a very enviable leverage position. How should we think about capital deployment, M&A, buyback, CapEx?
Yeah, Rajat, thanks for the question. I think, listen, we're, we're very pleased with where our balance sheet's at. Very pleased with, as we said earlier, with our cash flow generation. We're going to continue to be focused on, you know, funding our internal growth plan. That, that'll be our first and foremost priority. As we look out at our maturities, we don't have a major maturity now until 2025, We feel like the capital structure gives us room to, you know, make those investments. We'll continue to evaluate strategic opportunities. As we've said, they have to be high hurdle rates, high returns, complementary to our existing kind of, business portfolio.
Those, those will continue to be evaluated, and then beyond that, we will, you know, we'll kind of deploy, you know, our cash or capital allocation for shareholder returns. Yeah.
Great. Great. Awesome. Thanks, Peter, and Brad.
Thanks, Rajat. Thank you, everybody.