Good afternoon. Welcome to the Penske Automotive Group fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay approximately one hour after completion through February 15, 2022 on the company's website under the Investors tab at www.penskeautomotive.com. I will now introduce Anthony Pordon, the company's Executive Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you, Alan. Good afternoon, everyone, thank you for joining us today. A press release detailing Penske Automotive Group's record fourth quarter and record full year 2022 financial results was issued this morning and is posted on our website, along with a presentation designed to assist you in understanding the company's results. As always, I'm available by email or by phone for any follow-up questions you may have. Joining me for today's call are Roger Penske, our Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Shelley Hulgrave, EVP and Chief Financial Officer, and Tony Facione, Vice President and Corporate Controller. Our discussion today may include forward-looking statements about our operations, earnings potential, outlook, future events, growth plans, liquidity, and assessment of business conditions. We may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or EBITDA, our leverage ratio, and free cash flow.
We have prominently presented the comparable GAAP measures and have reconciled the non-GAAP measures in this morning's press release and investor presentation, which are available on our website to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Our actual results may vary because of risks and uncertainties outlined in today's press release, which may cause the actual results to differ materially from expectations. I direct you to our SEC filings, including our Form 10-K and previously filed Form 10-Qs for additional discussion and factors that could cause results to differ materially. At this time, I'll now turn the call over to Roger.
All right, thank you, Tony. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. 2022 was a record year for PAG, and it was driven by our diversification, certainly our premium brand mix and our capital allocation. During 2022, we increased our revenue by 9% to almost $28 billion. We increased our earnings before taxes 16% to $1.9 billion. We increased our income from continuing operations by 16% to $1.4 billion, and we grew our earnings per share by 25% to $18.55. We completed acquisitions representing approximately $1.3 billion in expected annualized revenue. During the year, we repurchased 8.2 million shares or 11% of our shares outstanding at the beginning of the year. We returned $1 billion to shareholders through dividends and stock repurchases.
Now let me turn to the fourth quarter. I'm pleased to report record revenue and earnings per share, which was driven by our diversified business model. Revenue increased 11% to $7 billion. Earnings per share increased 6% to $4.21. Excluding FX, revenue increased 17% to $7.4 billion. Earnings per share increased 8% to $4.30. Again, during the fourth quarter, we repurchased approximately 2.5 million shares of stock for $284 million. Looking at our retail automotive operations, this is on a same store basis, Q4 2022 versus Q4 2021, our new units increased 11%. Demand for new vehicles remains strong and vehicle availability is improving.
However, we do expect supply constraints to remain during 2023 for most of the brands in the premium side that we represent. We continue to take forward orders. In fact, in the U.K., our forward order bank is 23% higher than it was at the same time last year, representing 31,800 units or GBP 100 million of forward gross profit. Used units declined 4%, largely due to the challenges in acquiring affordable inventory to meet our customer expectations. Retail automotive revenue increased 4%. However, when excluding FX, revenue increased 10%. Variable gross profit remains strong and higher than historical levels. When compared to Q4 last year, variable gross profit declined 11% to $740. However, excluding FX, variable gross only declined 7%.
If you really look at that on a sequential basis, excluding FX, variable gross profit per unit only declined $33. Our service and parts revenue increased 6%. When excluding FX, service and parts revenue increased 11%, driven by increases in customer pay, warranty, and our collision repair business. Looking at CarShop during 2022, CarShop unit sales increased 12% to 71,242 units. Revenue increased 16% to $1.7 billion. Our variable gross profit per unit declined 19% to $2,108 as vehicle acquisition prices, reconditioning costs, and logistics continue to impact customer affordability and certainly our profitability. We continue to focus on vehicle sourcing and cost improvement programs to improve CarShop profitability. CarShop self-sourced 73% of its inventory in the US and only 37% in the UK.
Let me now turn to our retail truck business. As you know, our premier truck dealership business represents 39 locations in North America and is a very important part of our diversification. In 2022, this business generated $3.5 billion in revenue and contributed $215 million in earnings before taxes and had a return on sales of 6%. New commercial truck demand remains very solid and is being driven by replacement demand associated with supply constraints over the last several years. During the fourth quarter, our unit sales increased 28% to 5,704. Same-store unit sales increased 22% to 5,287 units. We outperformed the Class A market in the fourth quarter, growing our sales by 36% compared to the market, which increased 30%.
Total revenue increased 40% to $1 billion. Gross profit increased 16% to $138 million. Our same-store revenue increased 33%, including a 16% increase in our service and parts business. Service and parts represented 65% of our total gross profit and covered 128% of our fixed cost. EBT increased 14% in the quarter to $51 million. Approximately 75% of our new unit sales are Class A commercial trucks. In fact, when I look at 2023, our entire allocation is sold out. The Class A truck market remains strong with retail sales of over 309,000 units in 2022.
As we look at the forecast for North American sales for 2023, it's 294,000, and the backlog today sits at 244,000 units, which represents 10 months of sales. Turning to Penske Transportation Solutions, our leasing, rental, and logistics business, PAG owns 28% of PTS, which provides us with equity income, cash distributions, and cash tax savings. PTS currently manages a fleet of over 414,000 units, and the goal is increasing it to 500,000 by 2025. PTS produced a record fourth quarter revenue increase 13% to $3.3 billion on the strength of its long-term contracts and commercial revenue. Profit increased 9% to a record of $344 million.
As a result, our fourth quarter equity earnings increased 9% to $99.4 million. Year to date, we've received $357 million in cash distributions. For the entire year, PTS earnings before taxes were $1.7 billion. We expect the current business environment for lease, our maintenance, our commercial rental, and logistics to remain strong in 2023 as we expect to continue increasing the size of our PTS fleet. Let me turn the call over to Shelley Hulgrave, our Chief Financial Officer. Shelley?
Thank you, Roger. Good afternoon, everyone. As Roger indicated, we had another strong quarter driven by our diversification and our commitment to maintain operational efficiencies achieved through cost reductions beginning in 2020, as well as automation and other efficiencies gained through AI. SG&A to gross profit was 68.9% in the fourth quarter, compared to 67.1% in the fourth quarter last year, and remains 1,020 basis points below the fourth quarter of 2019 prior to the pandemic. As we look to the future, we expect the ratio of SG&A to gross profit to be in the low 70s. Year to date, we generated $2.1 billion in EBITDA, representing an increase of 14% when compared to the same period of last year.
Cash flow from operations was $1.5 billion. Our free cash flow was approximately $1.3 billion after deducting net capital expenditures. In 2022, we completed acquisitions and new open points representing approximately $1.3 billion in annual revenue, consisting of 19 retail automotive franchises, 2 open points, and 4 commercial truck dealerships. For the full year, we repurchased 8.2 million shares of stock for $887 million, which represents 11% of the shares that were outstanding at the beginning of 2022. In addition to share repurchases, we returned $154 million in dividends to our shareholders, and most recently increased the dividend by 7% to $0.61 per share, reflecting our strong fourth quarter performance. In total, we returned $1.04 billion to shareholders, representing 75% of our net income.
In 2022, we spent $228 million on net CapEx and an additional $42 million on land acquisitions for future growth. As you can see, our capital allocation strategy includes disciplined acquisitions, investments for future growth, and shareholder returns. Total inventory was $3.5 billion, which is approximately $400 million higher than December 31, 2021. Floor plan debt increased $442 million and is at $3 billion. We had a 25-day supply of new vehicles, including 18 days in the U.S. and 37 days in the U.K. Day supply of new vehicles for premium was 28 and volume foreign was 13. Used vehicle inventory had a 53-day supply. At the end of December, our long-term debt was $1.6 billion, representing an increase of $148 million when compared to December 31st of last year.
35% of our debt is fixed. The average interest rate on our total fixed-rate debt is 3.8%, which we have secured for an average remaining term of 5.7 years. Debt to total capitalization was 28%. Leverage sits at 0.8x at the end of December. We have the ability to flex our leverage to 4x, leaving us plenty of opportunity to grow our business through acquisitions and to continue returning capital to shareholders. In conclusion, our balance sheet is in great shape. At December 31st, we had $107 million in cash and over $1.1 billion in liquidity. We remain confident in our ability to manage through any macro challenges that may lie ahead. At this time, I will turn the call back over to Roger.
Shelley, thanks. We are committed to implementing operational efficiencies which we believe will lead to lower cost structure as we go forward. One of our key efficiency initiatives is leveraging artificial intelligence. We continue to test and implement AI solutions on both the service and sales side of our business. The AI allows us to automate tasks like answering customer inquiries and setting service and sales appointments. That allows our employees to be more efficient, provide quality support after hours. In the fourth quarter, 37,000 of our online service appointments in the US were created using AI, and total online BDC appointments increased 10% to over 520,000.
We continue to integrate digital solutions to automate and streamline processes to ensure consistency, our compliance and quality control while pursuing digital sales through our Preferred Purchase program, our OEM digital programs and our proprietary websites in the UK. In Q4, digital sales represented 5% of our total unit sales. We also focus on reputation management, and we're proud to congratulate 126 of our dealerships for being recognized as top dealers by CARFAX. I'd like to talk about some management changes that happened just recently. As of effective January 1st of this year, Greg Penske has been named Vice Chairman of the Board. Greg Penske brings extensive automotive retail industry experience, has relationships with the key automotive partners, and has familiarity with all of the company's operations.
Rich Shearing, formerly the President of Premier Truck, will oversee Penske Automotive Group's North American operations, including its automotive and commercial truck dealerships. Randall Seymore, formerly Executive Vice President, global operations for commercial trucks and power systems, will oversee Penske Automotive Group's international operations in the U.K., Europe, Japan and Australia. These new roles will work in tandem with both with me and Rob Kurnick, our President, and our executive leadership team while building further depth to ensure that we have the best leadership in place to remain the leading transportation service company in the world. In closing, our results continue to demonstrate the benefit of our diversification across the retail, automotive, and commercial truck industries, our cost control and a disciplined capital allocation strategy. I continue to remain confident in our business model. Thanks for joining us today, and I'll turn it over to the operator.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do have questions, please press one, then zero on your touchtone phone. You'll hear an indication you've been placed into queue, and you may remove yourself from the queue by repeating the one, then zero command. If you're using a speakerphone, we ask you to please pick up your handset and make certain your phone is unmuted before pressing any buttons. Again, for questions, press one, then zero at this time. We'll first go to the line of Daniel Imbro with Stephens, Inc. Go ahead, please.
Roger, Shelley, and the team, congrats on the quarter and congrats to everybody on the promotions.
Thanks, Dan. Thanks, Daniel.
Roger, I want to start on the demand side. You know, new vehicle demand has clearly hung in there on the automotive side despite price increases, rate increases, you know, and I think a volatile backdrop. Can you discuss what you're seeing from your core customer today? How do you think consumer demand shapes up as you progress through this year, on the automotive side?
Well, let's talk about our business, you know, which obviously is diversified, point number one is on the vehicle side, we're premium luxury. We see the demand on new vehicles consistent and strong, and we're turning our inventory very quickly as we talked about earlier here today. Our pre-sold inventory both in the U.S. is 40%-50%. I mentioned earlier in my remarks that 23% of forward sold orders, that's up from last year of almost over 100 billion, 1 million GBP, is certainly positive for us as we go into this first and second quarter. I think that lease penetration is down significantly, you know, due to certainly when we look at residual support and also some of the support we get from the finance companies.
When you look at it in real numbers. 55% of our premium was leasing prior to maybe the last 12-18 months, and our overall from a Penske perspective was 34%. We're down to 11. We really haven't seen the premium OEMs get back into the market at this point. I think at this, at this time, we're going to have to wait and see. Those customers are stickier. We want those used cars coming back. To me, that's going to be something we'll look at as we go forward. I think the premium customer right now, affordability hasn't hit them, obviously, even with the higher interest rates. What's driving our margins and our success, again, certainly is supply.
When you think about what we're getting, they're building the best cars they have with the highest margins for not only the factory, the OEM, but also for us. I think that gross continues to be strong. I think when you look at our inventory, it's way below our historical levels, which you can see that based on looking at our numbers. When you even think about Toyota and the volume pouring, it's only six days. Again, low inventories, OEMs building the right product for us in the premium side, I think bodes well for us as we look over the next couple of quarters.
Great. Then I wanted to shift over to the SG&A side. You know, if what you just said, you know, new GPU is going to stay stronger, how are you and the team thinking about maybe SG&A margin as a % of gross for 2023? Are there still operational changes? I think at the end of your comments, you talked about AI and some smarter task automation. You know, can you help quantify what the potential cost savings are? Any help kind of thinking about the outlook on expenses there? Thanks.
Let's look at SG&A. When you look at the fourth quarter, you know, our SG&A went up probably 100 basis points from before. Really that was indicated really due from the standpoint that we had more compensation in the UK from the standpoint of our people. We had a one-time benefit for cost of living, which would hurt us. Most likely an impact here in the US was the fact that our loaner car vehicle maintenance was up significantly due to the fact that we have more loaner cars in the fleet, and we can't turn them today as we did in the past because we don't have the availability. I think those are the points that were key for us on SG&A as far as the lift.
Now, when I go forward and we look at it, I think we got to look at two components. Number one, what's the gross from the standpoint of our gross? I think we're looking today, we were $3,200 in 2019, we were $6,700 in 2022. I looked at the numbers for January, and we're at $6,600. I think we've got a nice glide slope on our certainly on our growth. To me, when I look at our SG&A, if we took $2,000 off the gross profit, say, during the year, just as a number, our SG&A would go from roughly 69%-72% from a gross profit standpoint in our SG&A.
I think what we're doing is looking at how we can reduce our labor force in many cases using AI. Many of these people that were taking inbound calls can be put into other jobs within the company, or they can move on. We're seeing the customer satisfaction go up, the ability to schedule work in the way we want to more seasonally and also based on the day's availability has been much better. Plus, we've got the benefit of filling our jobs at times when we wouldn't be able to do before. Again, I think that will help us with automation. It'll all help us in our absorption because we'll get more work through our shop, which maybe will offset lower margins with higher unit sales, but also higher parts and service gross profit.
Great. Appreciate all that color, and best of luck going forward.
Thank you.
For our next question, we'll go to John Murphy with Bank of America. Your line is open. Go ahead.
Good afternoon, Roger and team. Just Roger, just a first question on slide 15. There's a couple slides around it that are also, you know, very helpful. If we focus on this one, you know, you can clearly see that, you know, units, you know, in total are up 13%. They actually trended fairly well through the course of the year. You know, with the short supply, and sort of the lack of availability coming from automakers, can you just maybe just talk about how you were able to, on the new vehicle side, actually get these vehicles to drive that kind of an increase? Because it's far and above what we saw in the industry at large.
I think that, number one, we had the benefit of the U.K. because, you know, they were locked up, probably had less availability in 2021, so we had a bigger lift certainly in the premium luxury side. Over there, you know, where 91% of our mix is premium luxury, I would say that drove quite a bit of it. And again, we're running with a very, very low days supply, and to me, that was probably when you look at the mix between U.S. and international, that probably helped that number.
Okay. That's helpful. Maybe staying over in the U.K. for a second. I mean, the CarShop U.K. self-sourcing at 37% is far lower than what you're doing, you know, in the U.S. I'm just curious, is there an opportunity over there over time, or is there something structurally in that market that's going to keep that, you know, that much lower than what we'd see in the 70%-80% range in the U.S.?
Well, we made a structural change, John. You talk about efficiencies and the businesses talking to each other. In Europe, the OEMs do not like you to have non-OEM vehicles on the lot as you. If I'm a Porsche dealer, they don't want to see a Mercedes-Benz. What we've done is taken all the non-vehicles that are in each dealership, which are not proprietary. And what we're doing there, we're putting them onto Sytner Net and giving those vehicles to CarShop, which has made a big difference. We're looking somewhere between 250 and 400 cars a week, which will help us build that shelf, purchase vehicles from us rather than having to go out into the auctions.
I think that, at the moment, most of the fleets are selling their cars themselves, so we don't have the opportunity to pick those up as we normally would where we have these bigger buys. Basically, when you look at the OEMs, we used to buy 300, 400, 500, maybe even 600 cars at a time from the OEMs, and now they don't have those to buy. We're somewhat restructuring that, which is gonna help our margin, also help our availability. We had a very good month. We did over 5,000 new units in the month of January with at good margin. I think we're starting to see a pickup in margin and also the internal process for giving us the fleet we need to sell.
Okay. That's helpful. Then just lastly, for you or Shelley, I mean, you know, whether you're a bull or bear, you know, on estimates for 2023, you're still gonna have the high class problem of reallocating a significant amount of free cash flow. If we look at, you know, what happened in 2022, it was kind of, you know, spread across, you know, buybacks, acquisitions and obviously the dividend. You know, as we think about, you know, what your priorities are in 2023, could you just kind of remind us or even give us a fresh view of where you think the excess cash will go?
Sure, John, I can take that. We had about $1.5 billion in cash flow from operations. You know, we've talked before, we typically start with about a 50/50 split of return to shareholders versus growth. That was certainly slanted a bit more, 2/3s return to shareholders this year, a third in growth. That was not insignificant by any means. From a growth standpoint, we typically target, you know, 5% growth through acquisitions, 5% growth organically. You know, when you exclude FX, we certainly got there over the year. We're happy from that standpoint. The TD Bank was just a bit larger.
You know, given the prices of our acquisition and the multiples compared to our multiple in the market, you know, we took a very proactive stance on share repurchases and shareholder returns. You know, that was about $1 billion of that $1.5 billion.
Very much.
Shelley, I guess we should assume that it remains kind of dynamic. The target is 50/50, but if it's tilted towards your stock being a lot cheaper than these acquisitions, that will be the direction you'll lean in even in 2023. Is that a fair statement?
I think that's fair. Yep.
Okay. Thank you very much, guys.
Well, John-
Oh, sorry.
John, we've really seen from an acquisition standpoint, the things that we're interested in are certainly high priced at the moment. We're gonna be very selective. The one good thing about our diversification, it's not all retail auto U.S., it's international plus our truck business, and we have opportunities in all those areas. I think what we'll do is pick the ones we think we get the best returns, you know, as we go forward.
Yeah, there's certainly an opportunity in your stock, so that, you know, that gives you, that gives you an avenue, too. Thank you very much, guys. Thanks for the time.
Thanks, John.
Thanks, John.
As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have questions, please take this opportunity now to press one then zero on your telephone keypad. We'll go next to the line of David Whiston with Morningstar. Go ahead.
Morning, David.
Hi, everyone. I guess first, just on continuing on the acquisition topic, I know there's opportunities you said all throughout the business, which is great, but like, what variables would probably make you, or perhaps there aren't really any variables, and it's just how reasonable is the seller? What variables would make you choose to do the deal on the truck side versus the light vehicle side or vice versa?
I think there's no question, as we look at the truck side, the multiples have been less than they are on the auto side, point number one. Point number two, the CapEx requirements, i.e., you know, tile, furniture, et cetera, we don't have that on the truck side. To me, the CapEx requirements are significantly less when you're talking about typically buying a U.S. dealership, so. Also, the-- if it's contiguous. If we can go into a market where we already have scale, we have infrastructure in place, and we can take out certain admin costs, which help us and gives us the returns we want. We typically would stay in the premium luxury side here in the U.S. and volume foreign, which is primarily tilted to our Toyota and Honda business.
Of course, internationally, we think that, the 91% market share we have today or our mix, we would stay in that lane from the standpoint of international. On the truck side, you know, we're committed to Freightliner, across in all markets and even in Australia with Western Star, they want us to grow. We have a framework agreement where we're nowhere near the top of that framework agreement from a standpoint of total market share. I would say we'll continue to look at Freightliner opportunities.
What about another major truck maker? Can you still do that or you have a contractual obligation with Freightliner?
Right now, we're committed to Freightliner.
Okay. Shifting over to light vehicle used, just curious, when you look at, say, at the franchise stores, a used vehicle customer versus a CarShop customer, I think affordability is probably an issue in both channels, are you seeing perhaps the franchise customer is perhaps a bit wealthier and not as hit by the affordability issue? Or is it just really bad across the board?
I guess affordability for sure. In the CarShop model, I think we're $4,000 to $5,000 to $6,000 more than that typical customer was paying 12 to 18 months ago. That's had some limiting factor for us to be able to source vehicles, recondition them, pay for the logistics, and be market share on the price for the customer. Putting that aside, I go to the OEM business, you know, we've been had a luxury over the years, number one, because of the leasing penetration. We've had a lot of lease cars coming back that we bought from the OEMs, which filled our leasing and used car opportunities across the premium brands. Also within that mix is our loaner cars. Today, we have 6,000 loaner cars in our premium luxury fleets today.
If you go back to last year or so, we would turn those probably every 60 or 90 days. Today, we're turning those 6-9 months. You know, basically, when you look at that's limiting us maybe to 10,000-12,000 units for the premium side. We're not going to struggle, but I would say this, that we want that young used car. It's a good lease car. It's a good way to get the people into the brand. Of course, as we grow this, it grows our parts and service business. I think those are dynamics we're looking at today.
Right. Just last question, I know basically you don't have any Ford representation right now, but in the future, would you be interested in one of their Model E EV stores with a direct-to-consumer type approach? No inventory.
We really haven't looked at that. I think that the mix that we have today on the premium luxury side and volume Ford probably is the direction. I wouldn't say that we wouldn't take a look at it. These are going to be opportunities as they have maybe truck dealerships and other things that become separate franchises. You're starting to see that kind of noise in the marketplace. We certainly would look if they're an opportunity for us. We do have a Ford parts distribution business as part of PAG that operates out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is a parts operation, which has been very successful for us with Ford.
Okay. Thank you very much.
We have a question in queue from the line of Rajat Gupta with J.P Morgan. Go ahead.
Hi, Raj.
Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Just first question on PTS. Again, a pretty strong quarter here in the fourth quarter. Can you help us think about 2023, you know, maybe, you know, from a year-over-year standpoint, any parts of the businesses that you expect to get worse or better into 2023? How should we think about your revenue picture there? Then maybe on the expense side, you know, things like wage inflation. I know you mentioned, you know, some of the debt refinancing, and then maybe just gain on sale. How should we think about all those buckets, you know, for 2023 for PTS? Any color or guidance there would be helpful. I have a follow-up.
Okay, let me take a shot at these. I think number one, when you talk about gain on sale, we had $500 million in gain on sale in 2022. That was about 22,000 units. Our forecast for 2023 is 27,000. You know, obviously, because of mix, we'll have a lower gain on sale. The good news is that we did 3,200 units in January, and we had $50 million again. Now, I wouldn't write that down and straight line it, but at least shows that the market is still there for our used vehicles that are coming out.
I think we'll have a deterioration, you know, on the gain on sale, probably somewhere around $100 million if we look at it today, just looking out at pricing and mix as we go into the rest of the year. Looking at interest costs, I think I've talked about that before. We did a bond here, $750 million here in the last 10 days. That was 400 basis points higher than we had two years ago for the same $750 million. We're probably going to see $100 million more of interest costs that we'll have through our financing in our bond portfolio. We are investment grade, but again, we're going with the market at this point.
From an overall standpoint, our maintenance costs will be up for one reason, some because we're growing the business, but also because we have 71,000 units on order, and many of these units are replacement units for customers, and many of those units are running high mileage, and we need to get them out of the fleet. We're going to have the opportunity, hopefully, to get them out here as we go forward. I think it's important that we also look at maintaining our employee and our employee base. There's pressure on mechanics, on wages, certainly, and on hours of working. Those will drive some higher costs. Overall, we've got a very strong business going into next year with the growth in our truck leasing or contract maintenance.
When I look at our utilization of our truck business and rental side in PTS, if you looked at January, we were at 86% on our tractors. Remember, we have 70,000 units on rent every day. 86% of our tractors are on rental and 82% of our mid-range. When you think about that, because of the size of our fleet, the quality of our fleet, I think that we have those customers coming to us. Because of the size of our leasing fleet, 50% of the revenue we get in rental comes from our lease customers. Again, with the number of units on order, the 70,000, we expect those to come in. We'll have more gain on sale opportunity.
On the other hand, it'll help drive some maintenance costs down, but, I still think we'll see some creep on maintenance during the year.
Got it. Got it. That's helpful. And maybe on parts and services, you know, how are you thinking about growth in that segment for this year? You know, strong mid-single digit+ range in the fourth quarter. I believe U.S. was more like 9%, 10%. Do you expect that kind of trend to continue here, you know, into 2023? Maybe if you could help us across, you know, the different buckets like warranty, customer pay or body shop, you know, any color there would be helpful.
I think we're seeing a catch-up by miles driven. Remember, we've had people sitting with their cars and people not working, not going into work. Where GM is asking to come in for three days, we're gonna see more demand. When you look at our parts and service growth, after excluding FX, we were up 11%, certainly, in the fourth quarter. We see that continuing. It's been very strong in the UK also. We expect a nice increase as we go forward in Q1 and Q2, at least as far as we can see right now. Again, it's gonna be labor rate efficiency that we get from the standpoint, our ELR, effective labor rate.
We've been able to increase that across the board in all of our locations, really generally, not only internationally, but also domestically, about $7 last year. We would expect less discounts and hopefully grow that ELR. That's the effective labor rate that we charge the customer, which would drive more gross profit. Body shop business is up. Warranty was down, but now we're starting to see warranty creep back up again. I can't tell you exactly why, but we're seeing some spike in warranty.
Got it. Great. Thanks for all the color.
All right. Thanks, Rajan.
We have no further questions in queue. With that, I'll turn it back over to Mr. Penske.
All right. Thank you, and welcome everybody coming to the call today, and we'll see you at the end of next quarter. All the best. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude your conference call for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Event Teleconferencing. You may now disconnect.