Genuine Parts at UBS Conference: Strategic Resilience Amid Challenges

On Wednesday, 12 March 2025, Genuine Parts Company (NYSE: GPC) participated in the UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference, highlighting its strategic resilience amid economic challenges. Led by President and CEO Will Stengel, the discussion addressed both opportunities and hurdles, such as tariff impacts and inflation, with a focus on leveraging global scale and disciplined cost management.

Key Takeaways

• Genuine Parts Company is navigating economic challenges by focusing on controllable factors like pricing and cost management.
• The company is optimistic about future recovery, driven by declining interest rates and clarity on tariffs.
• Strategic acquisitions and technology investments are central to transforming the NAPA business.
• The "one percent rule" remains a key strategy for maintaining operating leverage.

Financial Results

• Tariffs have impacted pricing and demand, but GPC is negotiating with suppliers to mitigate these effects.
• Currency fluctuations have posed a challenge, while acquisitions have increased SG&A expenses but also improved gross margins.
• In 2024, SG&A deleveraged by over 100 basis points, with a forecast of 20 to 30 points of deleverage in 2025.

Operational Updates

• GPC is enhancing customer service and business improvement, with similar consumer behaviors seen globally.
• The European market is facing tougher conditions, while the industrial sector struggles with negative PMI.
• The NAPA business is progressing in parts availability and supply chain improvements, with an increase in company-owned stores.

Future Outlook

• Declining interest rates are expected to boost deferred maintenance spending in the automotive sector.
• Clarity on tariffs is anticipated to reduce consumer uncertainty and encourage spending.
• Nearshoring trends could provide long-term benefits for the industrial business, with a focus on managing working capital and delivering ROIC.

Q&A Highlights

• GPC leverages global expertise to benefit from reshoring and nearshoring trends.
• There is cautious optimism for the industrial sector, despite not meeting all 2025 targets due to market conditions.
• The company remains committed to long-term value creation and a double-digit EBITDA margin.

For a detailed analysis, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference:

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: thank you everybody. I’m Michael Lasser, the Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst at UBS. We could not be more excited to have the team from Genuine Parts with us today. On my immediate left is Will Stengel, the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer. To his left is Bert Napier, the Chief Financial Officer.

Over to our left is Navin Krishna, the company’s Chief Digital and Information Officer. And it goes without saying, we have Tim Walsh, who runs the Investor Relations team, who is fantastic. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to get a state of the state, holy cow, we’re living in a very dynamic environment and we are fortunate to have two very astute and professional leaders with us to kind of help frame what’s going on. Genuine Parts is a more than 100 year old company. Will is the sixth CEO throughout the one hundred years of this company.

They both have incredible pedigrees. Will spent some time at the Home Depot, Bert at Federal Express. So they are doing a fabulous job of taking what has been a very stable steady business which continues to be and really transforming it in a way for the twenty first century. Now with that being said, we were just talking a minute ago and I just want to start with, we are living in a very dynamic world. You gave me a little insight into your mindset of how you operate in this type of environment.

If you could share that, because as we all know, no one has the answers here, but you can at least give folks a sense of how you guys are approaching this very dynamic environment.

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: Yes, happy to. First and foremost, Michael, thanks for having us and thanks for the hard work and all the support that you offer the company. It’s a pleasure to be here. I think you’ve set the bar appropriately right. Nobody has the answers in this market, but what we talk a lot about at Genuine Parts Company is focusing on what we can control.

As you said, we’ve had a long, long history over the last five years. We’ve had for better, for worse an experience with lots of shocks to the system. And one of the beautiful things about Genuine Parts Company is the culture. And in these types of moments when you have a group of professionals that work well together and hustle and do the right thing by customers and all your stakeholders, that’s what matters most. So I would say that we have lived through kind of a tariff and a same SKU inflation world over the last two or three years and have been reflective on all the things that worked and didn’t work.

So we’re as ready as we could be as we navigate this. I think if you look at our company relative to some others, our global scale and our diversification across the business, not just by profit pool, but also by geography, we think that that insulates us probably a little bit relative to others. For example, if you look at our exposure to China in the aggregate at the GPC level, roughly 7% of our purchases have exposure to Chinese tariffs and less than 5% Mexico, Canada. Where we have our outsized exposure is in our U. S.

Automotive business. About 20% of their purchases are from China, about 15% from Mexico and a little bit less from Canada. So in the aggregate, I think our diversification helps and our recent experience over the last couple of years, I think has given us a very thoughtful playbook to manage the tariff world in our U. S. Automotive business.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: Darnell, strong. So it’s going to be hard to live up

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: to that good answer. Holy cow. But with that being said, you did mention that you’ve learned a lot over the last few years what’s worked and what’s not worked in

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: a tariff environment. So So if you could elaborate on that, what were those lessons and how are you applying them?

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: Yes. Look, I think you have to be incredibly granular as you think about pricing strategies and we call it category management. And you’ve heard from us over the last couple of years our investments into constantly being agile on prices up and down. And so, constantly being agile on prices up and down. And I think we’ve created a lot of good muscle memory around strategies to do that work and tools for that matter to allow you to do that work.

The thing that I would say is also an advantage as we think about our merchandising teams is, one of the things that we do better today than we did probably two, three years ago is work together as global merchants. So we have a perspective on the brakes category globally. And so that Australian brakes expert is working with the European brake expert, who’s working with The U. S. Brake Expert in Canada.

And so I think that kind of connectedness creates a better appreciation for the global trends and what we’re seeing around the world. So those are just a couple of thoughts. The other thing I would tell you is, we like in distribution structured steady, controlled inflation. I think that’s healthy for the profit pool. And the beautiful thing about our industries is they’re rational, they are structured.

And so when you have those two things put together and you’re delivering great service to your customers, you can actually benefit from an environment like this. The trick is making sure that you’re managing the rest of your P and L thoughtfully, starting with your gross margin strategies, making sure that you’re managing costs to the X price levels, so that when that same SKU price inflation comes out of your P and L on the top line, which it will inevitably do just mathematically that you’re not having to do on natural things. So a lot of reflection and I think it’s positioned the business to be successful as we move forward.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: So in a weird perverse sense, this challenging environment almost makes you become a little bit more disciplined, a little bit more focused because you don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. Is that it?

Bert Napier, Chief Financial Officer, Genuine Parts Company: I think that’s fair. Yes, I think that’s totally fair, Michael. And I think the topic du jour is tariffs and we can sit here and I’ll open our ex feeds and see what’s going on in the next three minutes and react to that and react to that. But I think that really the way to think about what’s happening in this environment is to think about to Will’s point the totality of your P and L. Tariffs could impact the ability to increase prices on the revenue line.

It could also dent the revenue line if it has an impact on demand levels. And so there’s two dimensions there to think through. Obviously, cost of goods sold, we’re going to be dealing with individual conversations with individual suppliers over the next ninety, one hundred and eighty days as the reality of this environment comes to light. Those conversations will be individual negotiations and they’ll go on for some period of time. And then we also have to think about what tariffs might do to the rest of the P and L.

So does it bring inflation back? And to Will’s point, we need to be really disciplined, which is why we’ve taken some of the cost actions we’ve taken, being really disciplined about thinking where we’ll get impacted. Will wages have some impact from inflation? Will rent? Will freight?

Those are our big three expenses. And then beyond that, we have to really think through some of the things we’re already seeing in the currency markets and some of the FX headwinds we’ve seen coming out of the fourth quarter with the threat of tariffs and now currency movement with the reality of tariffs has been a headwind for us so far, which we talked about in our guidance a few weeks ago. So I think it’s really if you think about it through a financial prism beyond the operational impacts, it’s staying vigilant around all the elements so that we can be nimble and react to whatever comes.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: And speaking of this, it sounds like you’re taking elements of your playbook from last time and applying it this time, especially those elements that work really well. How are suppliers reacting differently this time around? Because the application of tariffs is distinct this time around from last time. Are you hearing anything different from them?

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: We’re really not. This is the time of year where you’re kind of in the ordinary course talking to vendors about the year forward and price increases. And so I would say those discussions are largely normal. Obviously, there are increased levels of conversations around well, specifically in China. These tariffs are having an impact and to Wirth’s point that kind of starts a 100 discussion back and forth.

But I think we’re smarter to have a more informed discussion with our vendor partners. And they’re constructive and but I wouldn’t say there’s anything atypical that we’re seeing now relative to the last time we had the discussion.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: And it is important to note that given the nature of the products that you sell that they do have longer lead times, they turn a little bit more slowly than other areas within the economy that does provide an opportunity to have a bit more of a longer term view.

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: It will take time even if you were to say yes to a price increase. Yes. It will take time for that to flow through to Bert’s point, the totality of the income statement. And so it will take your points right.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: And GBC is in a very interesting position because of its global nature. It’s not a purely domestic business. There’s a very sizable presence in Europe, very sizable presence in the ASEAN region, mostly in Australia. How does that broad purview inform what how you’re operating? Is there a different playbook that you’re operating in The United States from what’s happening in Europe from what’s happening in Australia?

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: No, I think it’s actually quite the opposite, which is that is the benefit of this closeness of the team that we’ve built where the playbook is the same no matter what geography you’re talking about, point number one. And so whether it’s pricing analytics that we did in The U. S. Two Years ago that we then recently did in Europe over the last six months and translating that, That’s a good example of kind of how we’re leveraging the playbook for a very similar the timing might be different in the geographies. We saw that this year as probably two years ago same SKU inflation started to come out.

It came out maybe a year later in Europe. But the fundamental dynamics of our markets, which is why the global diversification actually works. Everyone’s running the same initiatives. Everyone’s got the same demand function as it relates to do it for me customer. And so we can really benefit from our global expertise when we work together.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: Yes. And I’m sure you’re getting a lot of questions from your operators around the world of what’s happening in The United States. With that being said, are you seeing different customer behaviors in global markets or it’s while there might be different economic cycles that are happening, most of the operators are saying we’re seeing behaviors that are similar to

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: what we do. I think

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: that thematics are all the same, which is cautious consumer, which obviously is not our customer given we’re a B2B business, but that impacts our customers’ activity

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: level. In Europe?

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: Globally. I mean these are global themes. Yes. And I would say they’re consistent around the world. You’ve got a cautious consumer.

You’ve got people that are watching interest rates and kind of how that’s informing capital decisions and purchasing behavior. In Europe in particular, you’ve got kind of real wage pressure, you’ve got some geopolitical activity. So everyone’s feeling around the world and I think you’ve seen that actually in our financials over the last year or so, which is all of our global business units have felt the same thematics and the same business trends for really the first time in one hundred years. And I think that’s just a reflection of the commonality of all the things that everybody is dealing with around the world, driven by interest rates, politics, etcetera. Got it.

And is there any market leading or lagging? Europe seem to have maybe started to experience some of the headwinds at

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: a different time than The U. S? Yes.

Bert Napier, Chief Financial Officer, Genuine Parts Company: I would say that Europe lagged. So what we saw in The U. S. As the record levels of price benefit as we exited 2022 started to play through 2023 in The U. S.

I think that lagged Europe at about six months and we started to feel that at the beginning of 2024 there. Look, we exited and we were really clear about this when we released earnings a couple of weeks ago that the way we exited 2024 and the way we’re starting 2025, our two most pronounced, I think, pockets of softness are Europe and industrial. Yes. And so Europe market conditions got pretty tough the second half of the year for a lot of the reasons that we talked about. Interest rates, real wage compression for the ability to spend.

The political environment hasn’t been very stable, particularly when you look at some of the bigger countries like The UK, like France, like Germany, some of that’s improving and could be a backdrop for a better foundation as we look ahead. And then the industrial, I I mean, we closed out the year with PMI negative for twenty five or twenty seven months. Yes. And outlook, I mean, we’ve got some green shoots as we start 2025 with the January and February PMI readings turning back above 50. And I think that builds on Will’s point about cautious optimism.

But when we think about the markets and how they look, I think I would point to Europe and industrial first. And then The U. S. Obviously has got its challenges. But quite frankly, each market that we operate in has its own uniqueness.

Right. Canada is failing its own pressure as is the Australian and New Zealand markets, particularly on the manufacturing side in New Zealand.

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: I was just going to say, I mean, as I started with focusing on what we can control to take care of our customers and make our business better is our guiding principles. And as we’ve talked about internally, there’s only so much our customers can defer. And so it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. And if we use the moment to be super disciplined and super thoughtful about doing the right body of work at pace with urgency as a team, we’re going to be positioned well when our markets become more constructive.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: And Will, on the North American auto business, particularly The U. S. Auto business, Last year was a year that was characterized in part by deferred maintenance. How long can consumers defer maintenance? How are you thinking about that cycle?

If your air conditioner broke at the end of the summer, maybe you would defer to this year, but at some point you got to fix that AC.

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: You do. I think interest rates really matter. I mean that was the big kind of wasn’t a profound reflection, but I think we really felt it and saw it in the business. And so as we have as we move down the interest rate curve there, I think that’s going to be a bit of an unlock assuming we do. So to your point though, I don’t know how long they can wait, but the average age of the car is as extended as it’s ever been.

And I think the fundamentals for The U. S. And North America, all of our markets, they’re there. Yes. And it’s just as I said, it’s a matter of

Bert Napier, Chief Financial Officer, Genuine Parts Company: when. My apologies to add to that. I think the consumer, so the customer of our customer that’s creating the demand for a mechanic in the automotive business to make a repair. This is getting clarity and getting certainty. These are the tariffs and this is what’s going to happen.

But having that certainty and me as an individual knowing that all the moving pieces have settled in and this is my new normal might actually be the unlock too to help some spending. Right now I think it’s held off by simply not knowing. And so I’m just not going to spend because perhaps there’s an issue with my employer and my job because of these tariffs and so I’m just going to sit and wait. To see all that and I know what the environment is going to be, then I can be more confident about making a spend and maybe it is time to fix the AC or change the tires or whatever the case may be.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: Hopefully, we get that clarity soon. I hope so. But in the meantime, to both of your points, you are controlling what you can seek to control. The NAPA business in North America has been on this journey over the last few years to make some investments in areas like parts availability, supply chain, people. Can you provide a sense of where the Napa business is on this journey?

And then I want to talk a little bit about some of the capital deployment policies on how you’re trying to reframe the independent operator structure?

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: Yes. We’re really pleased with the progress of the Napa team in The U. S. We run our Canadian business and our U. S.

Business differently. They have their own teams, obviously closely connected. So we’ve been spending a lot of time with the U. S. Team.

And we’ve made really, really good progress. I mean, this is it’s not a complicated business. You got to have the part, you’ve got to have the part. And we’ve talked about it in our calls in terms of some of the internal metrics, whether it’s service levels, inventory fill rates. We’ve added talent to the team.

So we’re on the right path. We know what we need to do to make progress. Part of our journey has been this appreciation that maybe having more company owned stores would be more helpful as we think about how we compete in the local markets. And so as a reminder, we have about 6,000 stores in The United States. Remember when we use the term stores, we’re a B2B business.

So think about these as little small distribution nodes that 80% of the activity that’s happening in that store is actually moving product from our shelves to the repair tech. So we’re not a retailer. We don’t have people coming in and largely having kind of a retail experience with a store experience like that. So part of the vision has been to mix up of the 6,000. Today, we’ve got 4,000 independent owners, two thousand company owned scores, and that’s up probably 10% in the last three or four years.

We think that just allows us the opportunity to leverage a very powerful independent owner model in our rural markets as well as be more aggressive and in control in some of our other markets where we think it’s helpful to be able to really inform inventory pricing at a faster pace.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: And it’s been interesting because both of you have come into your roles in the last couple of years and you guys have, as I mentioned before, great pedigrees, been at very successful organizations. You’ve come in and you’ve tried to transform GPC in some ways, this long standing company with a great proud culture and legacy. What have you seen changing in the industry over the last five years that has informed the strategy that requires a little bit more company ownership, a little bit more influence over the directives, some of the supply chain investments that GPCs are making. It seems like those are some of the hallmarks of the tenure that you guys have been establishing. What has been changing about the industry that’s been driving this decision?

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: Well, I would obviously start with, we are kind of standing on the shoulder of some very impressive history, great leaders. As you said, the consistent leadership at the top of Genuine Parts Company over the years is a unique advantage.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: They had such good answers, they broke their minds. So, it’s unbelievable. We’re just getting started by the way.

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: So, look, I think while we bring a fresh perspective to the business, there’s a lot to love about the long success of Genuine Parts Company in all of our businesses. I would argue if a business is not continuously evolving, it’s probably not doing the right body of work. And so it’s less about what we’re seeing in the industries themselves and more I think a self reflection on where do we have opportunities as a business to be better. I’m a firm believer in the role of technology in a company and the way in which that helps us serve our customers better and be more productive. And I think there’s a reason that we brought Naveen to New York with us.

Naveen is an incredible talent, brings a ton of relevant experience based on his background and it’s a very different approach to technology at Genuine Parts Company, but we think it’s the right thing to do. So it’s less about what we’re seeing structurally in the market and more about how we want to run the business to capture opportunities and what we think kind of a modern next one hundred years looks like for Genuine Parts Company.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: And the process of bringing in some of the independently operated stores, that’s very visible to us. You can see through some of your acquisitions. What might be less visible is the supply chain transformation, the IT transformation, if you had to use the baseball analogy not to become a brace, but if you had to use the baseball analogy, where is the Napa North American business in

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: We’re in inning three, inning three or four, and it depends on the topic. So we talked about category management, we’ve been working on that. The body of the work there is medium to near term kind of impact. And so we’ve made great progress. So that’s a ending seven, eight.

Supply chain is in these distribution business. It’s a never ending journey. So I don’t think you kind of ever get past four or five because it’s always evolving technology I put in the same category. We’ve made more progress in our technology execution in the last couple of years than we probably have over the last four or five. So thanks to Navin and the team that he’s built at Genuine Parts Company.

We’ve got 300 engineers in Poland that support all of our global technology initiatives and they’ve really helped us to kind of build it once and use it many places at pace. And so, we’re making great progress, but part of our job is to run the marathon and make the company better over the long term.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: And speaking of the long term, one of the talking points about the investment case and maybe Bert you can chime in here is that there has been an increase in the SG and A dollars over the last couple of quarters. A lot of that has been due to the acquisitions and the changing composition of the P and L given the contribution there. How should the market and shareholders look at how this is going to transform the P and L over the long term? Does it mean that the expense base is a little higher, you do have a higher gross margin rate that offsets that? And then as the sales improve, there’s good leverage or are there other factors that should be considered?

Bert Napier, Chief Financial Officer, Genuine Parts Company: Yes. No, I think the way to think about that is just as you outlined that there is gross margin benefit from the acquisitions that’s offsetting the SG and A. So when you look at the SG and A in isolation, of course, you’re going to see headwind because we added to the cost of the acquired business. The good news is that the net of that last year for NASPA was a positive to the operating income line with the gross margin that we pick up in those transactions. Now having said that, we’re not happy with just being a net benefit.

We want to continue to create value and that’s where we see the opportunity in these acquisitions. And so we’ll be looking to streamline that SG and A over time just like you would in any acquisition. And the value creation from the acquisition when we see it in terms of synergy comes through many of the things that you would expect us to find that there’s a level of back office not only functionality, but back office support personnel that when we make an acquisition we don’t need that anymore. We have our own capabilities, we have our own leaders and so we can get some lift on the payroll side and just the cost of the back office. Many of these acquisitions of independent owners, they have their own redundant supply chains, maybe a small warehouse for overstock or some of those things that we also don’t need and so we can take those out.

With the larger acquisitions that takes a little time. We’re also putting in our own technology. And so Navin has a lot of work to do to put in the good strong GPC technology into these locations. And that obviously takes time too as you look through like an MPEC acquisition in 180 stores. We’ve got to chop that wood pretty methodically to make sure that we protect the customer experience as well.

So we’re excited about the opportunity. Last year, we had a lot of deleverage in SG and A. I think well over 100 basis points of full year deleverage. This year, we’re calling for 20 to 30. And the 20 to 30 is actually a net of some pretty big headwinds that we were dealing with in the business.

And so absent some of the actions we’ve taken with our

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: restructuring in 2024, the cost actions we’re taking in 2025

Bert Napier, Chief Financial Officer, Genuine Parts Company: that we just ’25 that we just announced, we would have had a much higher level of deleverage of 20 to 30 basis points than you’re actually going to see in our P and L. We had to restore some incentive compensation versus what we paid in 2024 with target being modeled for 2025. And so I think you’re seeing us get back to that really good discipline that you’ve seen in the business. Now are we happy with 20 to 30 basis points of deleverage? No, we’re going to keep driving the business to get back to that level of leverage and get past some of the things that we’re dealing with that we’ve already talked about.

Some of the headwinds I’ve got this year will be continued headwind with wages, continued headwind with some costs in rent and freight that we hope will cool off as monetary policy continues to work and brings inflation down. But that’s a long answer to we really think this operating leverage concept is one in which we’re getting our way back to and it’s a clear focus for the whole management team in terms of getting back to that kind of we want to drive a bit of leverage against that top line and get the earnings back up. Up over one?

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: There’s a long standing GPC rule that we call the one percent rule that I’ve inherited from my predecessors. And that’s gross margin profit dollars growing 1% faster than sales and costs growing 1% slower than gross profit dollars. Like that formula. And it’s a good formula and it’s basically operating leverage. And so as we think about our success metrics and how we rally around internally, it’s growth in excess of the market, getting operating leverage, managing working capital and delivering ROIC.

Yes. And those are the value drivers for distribution businesses. And when you have all those

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: things working, it’s a good algorithm. And there are two things. One, it should not be lost in the market, but these acquisitions you’re doing are very attractive, come at attractive multiples. There’s opportunity for synergies because these independent operators are not buying 100% naphtha products. So there’s some sales benefit as well as the redundant cost that Bert mentioned.

You have done a couple of the larger ones, so they may be more modest, but how do you think about the pace of continuing to do these deals? Yes.

Bert Napier, Chief Financial Officer, Genuine Parts Company: No, I think the pace will slow down. Yes. And you saw that in the guide we gave in some of the M and A forecast for 2025. The reality of what we did was that when we made this decision to change the mix and really control some of these larger markets and control our destiny there, the opportunities that came to us pretty quickly with these two large independents that fit the profile of what we were looking for. These were win now markets.

The Hansberry MPEC business was the Midwest Of The United States, 1 Hundred And 80 stores, well run, the Walker business, North Carolina, great market. But those are our two largest by a wide margin. So 181 stores for MPAC, eighty some odd stores for the Walker business. And then the next level of store opportunity group to buy will be much, much smaller. So the pace from here naturally pulls back because the ability to buy anything in scale isn’t going to come in the more twenty fifteen onesie twosie kind of category.

When you think about the 4,000 independently owned stores that remain in our network, there’s 2,000 owners. And so that just gives you some quick math on it’s one or two per owner. Now that’s not the reality of it. There are some nice sized groups in there. But there are also some of our largest right now that are strongholds in areas in which we’ll probably never own.

Yes. Fifty, sixty store groups in Idaho, in Missouri that still lean into this rural market in which they are super well run, and they have no intention to want to do something different. They’re running great stores. They love their business and we love them. And that’s why the model will continue to exist in a hybrid state, because this can be very successful.

One of my favorite new stats is that 17% of the ZIP codes in The United States, the only flag that flies is the Napa flag.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: At the post office. So it may be the Napa is the only one that’s we’ll see what happens in a year.

Bert Napier, Chief Financial Officer, Genuine Parts Company: So it’s a great model for the rural market and one in which it’s a stronghold for Napa.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: That’s

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: awesome. I want to put some of these pieces together. So Napa is in this third inning of a transformation. There are changes in the market to think that this transformation is going to pick up speed at the same time that there’s these disruptions in the markets and that these pieces will come together to enable Napa to outperform the market like the goal? And is there a reasonable time frame to that the outsider should hold the company to?

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: Look, I think absolutely. I mean, that’s the vision. That’s what we’re working on. And we like the fundamentals of the market. We like how we’re positioned in the market with our strengths and advantages.

We like the body of work that we’re doing. We’re cautious about the market backdrop in terms of calling the ball on the timing recovery in particular as it relates to the independent owner and their psyche and their behavior. But absolutely, we feel really good about how Napa is positioned and there’s no reason that this business shouldn’t and can and won’t win. And that’s how we’re running the business each and every day.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: And are you seeing more opportunities given the changes in the competitive landscape, the store closures out there?

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: We are. There’s it’s a big market. And so not one player kind of controls all of the dynamics of the market. Obviously, when there’s disruption, it creates opportunities. And we’re going to be super thoughtful about how we seize those opportunities.

We’ve got a great book of business that’s our major accounts business that we feel like we’re being super thoughtful on in terms of dealing with national customers to the extent that you have players in the market that don’t have that reach. That’s one less person to have a discussion with our customers. Anytime there’s disruption in the market, if you’re an employer of choice that creates opportunities. And then obviously our uniqueness with our independent owners, there are other independently managed stores out there and if they’ve got an affinity to the Napa brand and want to continue to be in the auto parts industry like we’re a great home for that. So there’s lots of opportunities.

And as I said, we’re going to stay focused on what we can control to seize the right ones.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: Got you. Let’s pivot to the industrial business for a little bit. It’s part of the story is like we operate in these very stable verticals, but there’s also a cyclical recovery. Bert mentioned that Europe and industrial were the areas that there was the most uncertainty. I think there’s a misunderstanding of how GPC’s industrial business is positioned.

It doesn’t just sell ball bearings and to replace parts. It’s a very much a consultative partnership with big industrial diversified end markets. If you could give a sense for what the motion business actually looks like and then we’ll dive into it.

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: Yes. It’s a wonderful industry and it’s a wonderful business. It’s about $8,000,000,000 top line business, very strong operating margins. The customer in our industrial business is the maintenanceengineereprocurement expert that works on or around the factory floor. And it’s a break fix business model where our role is to support that customer with solutions not just parts solutions to keep the factory running.

And so it has has all the same principles of our genuine parts company model which is you’ve got to compete on service, you’ve got to have the right parts, you’ve got to have the expertise to help that factory know what to do. And so it’s highly technical and highly consultative in terms of the selling experience. It’s a diversified business, so it’s got 14 to 15 different end market exposures. It’s diversified in the sense that our product portfolio is broad ranging from a part to a solution to repair services to automation to conveyance. So it’s not just moving a widget from point A to point B.

In fact, it’s quite the opposite. And as you said, the fundamental cycle that we’re in has never been lower for longer. And if you study the math, empirically when you get on the other side of the expansion line with PMI as an example, it starts a two to three year run. You drop that on top of the megatrend that we are seeing and feeling and believe in which is the near shoring, reshoring here in North America. And so as more factories are built, more business comes back to The States, that’s a massive opportunity for Motion.

Our opportunity in the business is to sell super effectively, so cover all of our customers both national accounts down to the small local guy and cover those customers the way that they want to be covered. So in many instances, you don’t need a salesperson to show up for a small customer. And so aligning our selling resources to cover the model, cover the market effectively, Gross margin strategies around category management are real and effective. We’ve had great success there. And it’s a very lean well managed cost structure.

And as a result when you get that top line you get amazing operating leverage and amazing cash flow characteristics with low capital needs. So there’s a lot to like and the business is very well positioned with a bright future.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: And is there should we as outsiders think 80% of the business is MRO, 20% is levered to expansions of production facilities, capital investment?

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: That’s the right way to think about it. Yes. Yes. So the beauty of the business actually is you have in all cycles a mix of kind of demand where you’ve got break fix in the 80% of MRO. Now these are not consumable purchases.

These are they’re not planned purchases. These are break fix purchases. So it’s a little bit different some of the other players in the market where you know you’re going to need six widgets in thirty two days. This is it’s an MRO purchase, but it’s in the moment solve a problem. And then the 20% and that happens as things happen regardless of cycle.

Then you have 20% of the business that’s a little bit more forward looking, bigger ticket items, capital planning for creating a new line in a factory, reimagining kind of the flow of goods in side of a factory. And so we come in and consult on conveyance as an example. So that part of the business is a little bit more exposed to this idea of, geez, this is a big decision. I want to feel good about what’s happening in the market. I want to feel good about interest rates.

I want to feel good about reshoring. And so, we felt some stickiness in that part of the business over the

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: last couple of years. And are you hearing from your customers that given all the volatility out there, reshoring could make more sense. It’s just having a little bit more clarity on the environment is something that was necessary before making that ultimate decision.

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: Yes, I think that’s 100% right. I mean, uncertainty is not a friend of business. Yes, nor that’s what’s saying about any investment decision. So, yes, absolutely. I think if people knew that rates were coming down in the second half of the year, tariffs were fine.

They’re in place, but they’re stable and not changing. That can inform investment decisions. I will say though that as it’s usually the case, but we felt it this year that the turn of the calendar as people think about some of these projects, the election noise here in The U. S. Was kind of put aside that was settled.

And so we were having very constructive discussions and continue to have constructive discussions with our customers about the year ahead. But like all of us in this room and it’s just an uncertain world. And so the best thing you can do is stay close to these customers and offer them solutions and be a creative thought partner to them as they’re solving their problems and that’s what we’re doing.

Bert Napier, Chief Financial Officer, Genuine Parts Company: And Michael to your point about near shoring, that is one in which as the shovels get in the ground and they continue to make these decisions and we see more activity. The great thing about the motion business is they’re already doing business with all of these customers that are looking to expand. That’s the stickiness of the motion relationship with these large customers. And so as as they grow, we grow because we’ve been such a great partner and we bring such a great solution and value add to them. They want us to grow with them because we’ve been able to deliver with what they have in their existing footprint.

So now it’s time to expand and grow and continue to look at near shoring or reshoring, but really well positioned to take advantage of that cycle.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: So it sounds like the pieces are in place for a really handsome recovery whenever that happens. There’s never been this length of a decline in industrial production. The reshoring and tariff conversation probably motivates some of your customers to say it makes more sense to have these production facilities domestically rather than abroad. The uncertainty may prolong the period from when that inflection hits, but you are having a bit more confidence that when that inflection hits, it’s going to be nice about that. Yes, I think that’s

Bert Napier, Chief Financial Officer, Genuine Parts Company: a very fair summary. You just wrote your write up in that.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: Well, here’s what we’ve got people to do that at your will. So, but I appreciate that.

Bert Napier, Chief Financial Officer, Genuine Parts Company: No, I think it’s a very fair summary. And look, I mean, Will said this on our earnings release and we’ve said it a little bit here in the last few weeks. It’s a wait and see, but with some cautious optimism. And you look at January, you have a PMI reading that’s above 50 for the first time in some time February as well. And the reality and you guys can do this work and I know you have the correlation of PMI and IP to industrial businesses is pretty tight.

It does come with a lag. And so there could be about ninety to one hundred and twenty day lag in which we start to see this inflection and then actually translate through to a more robust top line promotion. And if you put all that math together, that’s why we guided to a better second half for the industrial business because that timing if January and February data points hold and stay consistent then that timing would put us right in the middle of the summer when you build in the lag for which we would see a rebound into something more robust than what we’re seeing today.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: Where I want to conclude our conversation is long term in nature. Tim’s taken all the credit for that twenty twenty three analyst meeting that was exceptionally executed, but we’ll put that aside for a second. At that time, you did provide some longer term targets, it feels like forever ago. How should the market think about the long term and financial objectives? What are the messages at that time was we want to give the market a little bit more clarity on how to model and hold, genuine parts company accountable.

So what should the market think about from a present day perspective?

Bert Napier, Chief Financial Officer, Genuine Parts Company: Look, I’ll echo You do that one. I’ll echo what Will said earlier, from a financial principle perspective, it’s growing in excess of our market. It’s getting that operating leverage, generating good cash flow and strong cash flows and delivering on our OIC. Now to make that more specific, we did set out 2025 targets. And that was the first time that GPC has had that ambition to set a long term target.

You guys know with our guide for 2025, we’re not going to hit the EPS component of that outlook that we set back a few years ago. And look, I mean, with any long term target, you’re going to find your way to the reality of the timing through different paths and through different journeys. And that’s certainly been the case for us. A lot of how we built the outlook that we gave was predicated on very strong market conditions, low single digit market growth for industrial, low single digit market growth for automotive globally and the reality has been those are flat. Yeah.

And then a flat market growth that was the material headwind to the outlook that we gave. Now there’s been cost inflation and other things. We’ve made our own structural changes like terminating our pension plan and transitioning it over to a third party insurance carrier, which changed the earnings profile as well. So look, I think the good thing is, is we have hit some of the things we set out. We set out a 12% operating margin for Motion and we’ve already exceeded that.

And so some of the good ambition pushing is there. And the reality of the situation is that this entire team believes that there’s even more to go get. We still believe in the double digit EBITDA margin for GPC and that will continue to be our focus. Now when we come back to everyone and tell you more specifically, I think we need to get through this cycle and get past some of this noise and then come back and reset. Right now, we’re staying focused on what we set out for 2025 guidance, but don’t think that any of us are satisfied with where we are and that we still believe in some of the principles we did set out, which would to be a GPC business that’s at a double digit EBITDA margin.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: Did you guys have as much fun as I did?

Will Stengel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Genuine Parts Company: This is great. This is the best.

Michael Lasser, Hardline Broadline and Food Retail Analyst, UBS: The best. Well, please join me in thanking both Will, Bert and the team for a wonderful discussion.

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