Earnings call transcript: Asbury Automotive Q4 2024 beats expectations

Asbury Automotive Group Inc . (NYSE:ABG) reported a stronger-than-expected performance for the fourth quarter of 2024, with earnings per share (EPS) reaching $7.26, surpassing the forecasted $6.08. The company’s revenue also exceeded expectations, totaling $4.5 billion against a forecast of $4.18 billion. This earnings beat led to an 8.16% increase in the company’s stock price, reaching $296.68 in pre-market trading. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains a P/E ratio of 13.8x and has demonstrated strong profitability with a return on equity of 13%.

Key Takeaways

• Asbury Automotive’s Q4 EPS of $7.26 exceeded forecasts by 19.4%.
• Revenue for the quarter was $4.5 billion, beating expectations by $320 million.
• The stock surged 8.16% in pre-market trading following the earnings announcement.
• The company plans to expand private banking operations and enhance its debt capital markets business.

Company Performance

Asbury Automotive’s performance in the fourth quarter of 2024 reflects a robust financial position, with significant improvements across various metrics. The company reported a 15% year-over-year increase in revenue, driven by its core operations and strategic investments. Asbury Automotive’s operating margin improved from 19% to 21%, highlighting operational efficiency and cost management.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $4.5 billion, up 15% year-over-year
• Earnings per share: $7.26, a 27% increase from the previous year
• Operating margin: Improved to 21% from 19%
• Investment in new business initiatives: NOK 50 million

Earnings vs. Forecast

Asbury Automotive’s EPS of $7.26 significantly outpaced the forecast of $6.08, marking a 19.4% surprise. This positive deviation underscores the company’s strong operational execution and strategic investments. The revenue of $4.5 billion also surpassed the expected $4.18 billion, reflecting a solid demand environment and successful market strategies.

Market Reaction

The company’s stock experienced a notable rise of 8.16% in pre-market trading, reaching $296.68. This increase aligns with investor optimism following the earnings beat. Asbury Automotive’s stock is currently trading near its 52-week high of $312.56, indicating strong market confidence. However, a slight dip of 0.7% was observed in premarket trading on February 12, with the stock priced at $298.93.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Asbury Automotive is optimistic about its growth prospects. The company has projected an EPS of $27.06 for FY2025, with a revenue forecast of $17.39 billion. Key strategic initiatives include the expansion of private banking services and a stronger focus on the debt capital markets, particularly in Sweden. The company also plans to increase share buybacks in 2025.

Executive Commentary

CEO Jonas emphasized the company’s commitment to future growth, stating, "We are investing for the future and future revenues in a way we have never done before." He also highlighted the strong interest from potential clients in the new private banking services, adding, "The interest from new potential clients has surpassed our own high expectations."

Risks and Challenges

• Market volatility: Fluctuations in equity markets could impact the company’s financial performance.
• Competition: Increased competition in the private banking sector may pose challenges.
• Economic conditions: Macroeconomic pressures could affect consumer spending and investment activities.
• Regulatory changes: Potential changes in financial regulations could impact operations.
• Currency fluctuations: As a global player, Asbury Automotive is exposed to currency exchange risks.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the impact of the private banking expansion. The company acknowledged the high interest from potential clients but noted the challenges in converting this interest into paying clients. Additionally, questions were raised about the company’s strategic focus on the debt capital markets and its potential to drive future revenue growth.

Full transcript - Asbury Automotive Group Inc (ABG) Q4 2024:

Jonas, CEO, ABG Sundal Collier: Okay. Good morning, all, and a warm welcome to ABG Sundal Collier’s Q4 Results Presentation. Before we kick off the presentation, I would like to mention that we will as usual have a Q and A session at the end of the presentation. And should you want to raise a question, please use the Q and A function in Teams and we will answer all questions in turn. I would also like to mention that I’m joined by my CFO, Gerd Olsson, here today.

I’d like to start with some general comments and reflections. As you all know, we operate in a rather cyclical industry. But those of you who have listened to previous results presentations might recall that I usually talk about the strength of our business model from a diversification perspective. In our quest to always provide our customers with the best possible advice and execution, we need to be leaders in all relevant product areas and have in-depth knowledge of the environment in which our clients operate in, I. E.

Sector expertise. Then and only then we can be credible in stating that we always deliver the best advice for our clients and their needs, not the advice that best suits our own capabilities or other activities such as investment banks within lending banks. One of the positive side effects of that is that our ability to deliver decent stability in our group revenues derived from segments, products and niches that, of course, are way more volatile than the heading. And we deliver that without basically any recurring revenues up until now at least. I dare to say even that many of our peers, not many of our peers, have been able to show the same rock solid stability in M and A and brokerage revenues, two of our three main revenue streams, being basically flat compared to the peak year 2021.

And in the absence of a broad return of the IPO market last year, where admittedly we now see signs of increased activity, not least in Sweden. We’ve had a very strong growth, not least in our debt capital markets business. I’ll revert to that later on. We are also investing for the future and future revenues in a way we have never done before. In 2024 alone, we invested some NOK 50,000,000 in new business initiatives, the lion share within private banking, obviously not yet yielding revenues.

Of course, this is having a negative impact on our reported profitability, which I’ll revert to later on. So with that, let’s look deeper into the numbers and flip to that slide, please. Yes. We grew our top line by 15% to NOK 6,800,000.0 in the quarter and by 13% to just north of NOK 1,900,000,000.0 in the full year 2024. And that was just a touch above 2020, which was a very strong year for us as well as the industry.

The contribution to top line growth was broad based, but debt capital market as the main driver for the improvement, not least in Sweden. The top line growth combined with our efforts to mitigate the negative effects of still weakening Norwegian krona and cost inflation elsewhere contributed to increase of in our operating margin from 19% to 21%. But bear in mind, as I previously mentioned, that we are investing for future revenues as we speak. And adjusting for those investments looking at core ABG operations, our margin should have been 24% and earnings per share should have been 6% or higher should we just look at core ABG. So the improvement in reported diluted earnings per share from ZAR44 to ZAR56 yields on an increase of 27% or 32% taking those investment costs into consideration.

Next (LON:NXT) slide, please. Looking at the market backdrop. And I think the most interesting of these three graphs is the one on the right hand side of this chart. The buy U. S.

Equities, sell rest of world and not least European equities trade. That was further fueled by the fact that Mr. Trump was elected president in The U. S. A few weeks in November.

In the quarter alone, U. S. Equities outperformed Nordic equities with 12% and the valuation spread between U. S. Stocks and Nordic stocks, for instance, is close to a record high.

However, we have now started to see a bit of a reversal of that trade in the beginning of this year. And should risk appetite increase and capital flow start to revert back to Europe and The Nordics, this could be a supportive factor for activity in our region. Meanwhile, we are, as always, focused on growing our business in a profitable way and gain market share where we can. Well, I think we could flip to the next slide and take a look at how our markets that we operate in have developed. And starting off with the Nordic equity capital markets, the headline activity in the quarter year on year looks very healthy indeed, but it has been heavily inflated by the DSV, the Danish mega deal of DKK37.7 billion.

Excluding that single giant, Nordic ECM would actually have been flat or even down in the quarter. And on the full year, as you can see, we’re still on muted levels, especially when it comes to IPOs. The debt capital markets is by no means inflated by any single deal or any extraordinary activities. It is a very strong market. The market is driven by spreads going down, of course, but also by the fact that investor appetite has increased over the last couple of quarters in the wake of companies performing well, delivering as they should, I.

E, returning capital to investors combined with inflows, creates a very strong setting for issuers wanting to approach the Nordic bond market. That in itself is unique in a global context when it comes to flexibility and possibility to be swift. And thus, it also attracts interest from international issues as we’ve seen as of late. Finally, looking at the M and A market. As usual, that continues to be the most kind of stable one of our three main markets within investment banking.

Increased activity overall towards the end of the year. We believe activity will continue to increase even though activity for any given advisor such as ourselves can be a bit lumpy quarter over quarter. We are well positioned to grow within this area. Companies in general are overcapitalized, performing well and that should bode well for increased M and A activity going forward. So let’s flip to next slide, please, looking at our performance in these markets, starting off with corporate financing.

I’d say we did pretty well in the last quarter with revenues up by 80% from NOK 144,000,000 to NOK $258,000,000 and an increase by 36% to NOK $789,000,000 for the full year. The main driver, as alluded to previously, but not the only one, is debt capital markets where we took our fair share of a strong market. The team has done tremendous effort in reestablishing our strong position, not least in Sweden, and we still have upside further to improve our Nordic overall business here. As you can see on the right hand side of this slide, we have been able to close a pretty wide range of different transactions during the quarter, both in ECM, including having 100% participation in main listings in The Nordics in Q4 on IPOs and DCM across geographies as well as sectors. Moving on to the next slide and our M and A business, please.

Well, the long term trend rock solid. As always, there is an element of lumpiness looking at single quarters. For instance, one big transaction in Q4 twenty twenty three and one or two transactions in Q4 not materializing, having a slight impact on the Q4 over Q4 result, of course. Having said that, higher quality in the pipeline with more transactions rather than a few big ones and lots of ongoing transactions and activity as well bodes well for continued strong performance from our M and A operations. Let’s have a look at our brokerage and research operations on the next slide, please.

Yeah. This is traditionally looking a few years back has been one of actually one of our more cyclical operations. But looking at the last three years, it has been anything than cyclical, as you can see, with revenues very stable, plusminus $5,000,000 to $6,000,000 over the last three years. And just a touch below the very strong performance in 2021, of course. Coming back to 2024 and the performance during last year, our overall brokerage operations returned to growth in the second half of the year with improvement in all geographies.

And especially our Oslo equity desk contributed to strong growth and we have to get back to pre MiFID and pre financial crisis to see anything close to what that team now has achieved. And on the research side, we are yet again above 400 companies under coverage from our highly ranked research team being on the podium in 27 secondtors. Okay. With that, I’d like to hand over the word to Ger, who’ll talk a bit about the cost development and capitalization of ABG. Please, Gergo, ahead.

Gerd Olsson, CFO, ABG Sundal Collier: Thank you, Jonas. Quickly on the costs. Full year costs as you can see are up 10%. This is mainly as you know, by design as variable remuneration costs are up to the top line and profitability. So also as Jonas mentioned, relative to 2023, we have incurred some more costs related to our new business initiatives that are yet to be launched.

These costs are a combination of us ramping up the team and preparing for the launch as well as some more, I would say, one off type of costs related to setting up the required infrastructure. Also, as you can see, the Norwegian and you know, the Norwegian krona remains weak. However, the marginal impact is this year less than it has been over the last couple of years before this. So with that, if you can flip to the next slide, I’ll talk a little bit about dividends. So the board proposed a dividend of €50 per share.

This is maintained very high dividend ratio while we also have the capacity of buying back shares in the market. So, as you can see the capitalization ratio of 15.6% is higher than recent years. So, we have a very solid buffer to the minimum capital requirements. So, over the year of 2025 we can be a little bit more active in the market buying back shares. So with that Jonas, I’ll leave the word back to you to wrap it up.

Jonas, CEO, ABG Sundal Collier: Perfect. Thank you, Geor. So let’s summarize the key what we think are the key takeaways here today. We delivered a strong finish to the year with Q4 revenues up by 15%. Our core operational earnings per share before costs for our new business initiatives not yet yielding revenues increased by 32% from SEK47 million to SEK62 million.

The improvement is a result of broad contribution from all business areas with DCM as the main growth driver, both in the quarter and for the full year. We are optimistic when it comes to our ability to further improve our top line, backed by solid activity coming into the new year as well as our pipeline building well. And in line with our distribution policy, as Gerd just alluded to, we will propose a dividend of NOK 50 per share, which gives us room for being more active in terms of buying back shares. And finally, of course, we are excited and looking forward to our upcoming launch of our private banking operations within short. So with that, I would like to leave the floor open for any questions.

Moderator/Operator: We have received one question. I know that the private banking expansion has had a negative effect on this year’s result. What are your expectations ahead of the upcoming launch?

Jonas, CEO, ABG Sundal Collier: Sure. Yeah. We’ve as we haven’t launched, we have not any clients obviously yet. But you have to start somewhere and it starts with interest building a pipeline, etcetera, in terms of upcoming meetings and potential new clients being on different type of events, etcetera. Summarizing all these events, the interest from new potential clients has surpassed our own high expectations.

We have to be humble that showing interest and turning into a paying client is somewhat of a process. But it’s a good start at least to have a big crowd of potential and highly interested clients. And we have also noticed that the interest for our services has increased even further as of late, not least when it becomes clear to many potential clients that we are becoming basically the only independent investment bank offering private banking services without any other agenda than providing the best solution and products for our clients. So hopefully, we get to a flying start. We’re humble for starting off with zero clients might take some time before we have converted all of these interested ones into paying clients.

Moderator/Operator: No additional questions from the audience.

Jonas, CEO, ABG Sundal Collier: Okay. You know where to reach yours truly or Geir or reach out to Anna should you have any further questions. Thanks for tuning in.

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