Monro Muffler at BofA Conference: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities

On Tuesday, 11 March 2025, Monro Muffler Brake Inc (NASDAQ: MNRO) presented at the BofA Securities Consumer and Retail Conference 2025, outlining its strategic initiatives amidst economic challenges and competitive pressures. While the company faces margin pressures, it is focusing on growth through digital innovations and market expansion.

Key Takeaways

• Monro is targeting dual-income households earning under $100,000 by emphasizing value through competitive pricing and quality service.
• The company is leveraging its Comfort Drive digital inspection process to enhance customer trust and drive sales.
• Monro is addressing gross margin pressures, particularly in the tire segment, with plans to improve margins and stabilize operations.
• Competition from retailers like Walmart and Costco is acknowledged, but Monro differentiates through full-service offerings.
• Vehicle electrification is seen as an opportunity, with Monro preparing for its impact on various service categories.

Financial Results

• Gross margin declined by 120 basis points year-over-year, primarily due to a 150 basis point pressure in the tire segment.
• Productivity gains in technician labor helped offset some margin pressures.
• The company aims to return to a low double-digit operating margin by leveraging fixed costs and improving variable margins.

Operational Updates

• The Comfort Drive digital inspection process is being scaled up, moving from paper to a tablet-driven system to improve customer communication and trust.
• Monro is focusing on promotions and quality work to attract value-conscious consumers.
• The company is planning to expand its market presence through mergers and acquisitions and by filling white spaces in attractive markets.

Future Outlook

• Monro is optimistic about the potential benefits of vehicle electrification, particularly in the tire category due to heavier vehicle weight.
• The company is preparing its technicians to handle electric vehicles and sees opportunities in battery components and other services.
• Weather impacts are seen as short-term challenges but long-term opportunities, with potholes and snow driving service demand.

Q&A Highlights

• CEO Mike Broderick emphasized the importance of communicating value to consumers and highlighted the success of the Comfort Drive process.
• CFO Brian D’Ambrosia discussed the ongoing industry consolidation and its importance for Monro’s growth strategy.
• Both leaders expressed confidence in navigating the competitive landscape and leveraging Monro’s strengths to drive future growth.

For more details, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - BofA Securities Consumer and Retail Conference 2025:

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Pleased to have management from Monroe here with us today, including Mike Broderick, President and CEO and Brian D’Ambrosia, Executive VP and CFO. So, I’m going to just to maybe start off, Mike, I’d love to get a kind of walk through of Monroe’s consumer demographics and how you guys are seeing the health of the consumer because that’s been a big focus today.

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Yes, sure. Just to be really clear, our consumer is dual income under $100,000 I would say. That consumer right now has been very value conscious and that’s what we’ve been driving is how to bring value to life at Monroe and it starts with how we communicate it. So not only is it just lower prices or better value or promotions, it’s also better quality of work. And that’s why we’re so focused on some of the big initiatives when I talk about promotions, but also the inspection process.

We need to communicate great value, but great work at the same time. That’s what our customers demand.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: And the auto aftermarket in general is pretty fragmented. What do you think is going to happen from here from a consolidation standpoint?

Brian D’Ambrosia, Executive VP and CFO, Monroe: Yes, I can take that. I think as we look at the more recent activity, it has slowed down a little bit over the last year, two years. And I think some of that has had to do with expectations of buyers and sellers being a little bit of a gap between the two. But that doesn’t change the overall dynamic, as you mentioned, of a highly fragmented industry. There’s over 100,000 auto service aftermarket locations.

The top tier really only the top 10 only have about 15%. So we think the consolidation is going to continue in the industry. And over the longer term, we believe it’s going to be a big part of Monroe’s growth as well.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: And aside from this consolidation trend, how has the competitive landscape for tires changed over the past few years? And what do you think differentiates Monroe from the other players in the space?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Coming out of COVID, I would say that there was a shortage of availability. So the whole industry literally went to whatever you had put on my car. Then so brands didn’t matter, new product was introduced. And for the last four to five years, I would say, there’s been a significant shift to what we call Tier four private label.

And it used to be in the teens with regards to overall market share and there’s generally four tiers of tires. It’s shifting down and I would say the macroeconomics is contributing to it. The value that those Tier four tires are providing the customer is pretty good. So the customers are okay choosing it. And I would say it’s putting a lot of pressure on the marketplace for sure.

How do we navigate, a shifting, I would say a consumer is looking for value just like I talked about and also they’re not seeing a discernible difference between tier one and tier four. At the same time, I think, and this is where I’m very vocal about the accountability of our manufacturers at the same time. They’ve been putting costs into the marketplace, so they’ve been driving up Tier one and Tier two prices in the marketplace. And at the same time, tier three and tier four were lowering their prices. So the gap between tier one and two was even greater, with regards to tier three and four.

So I think that that’s coming out of COVID. That’s not natural. It’s not the best thing for our consumer. I would say that it’s going to shift more back to normal where tier four private label entry level is going to go back to, I would say, back to 20% of the consumer preference from where it is now at 30%. And I would say Tier one and Tier two would start getting back some of the market share because the manufacturers are going to have to address their costs and they’re going to have to invest in people like ourselves making sure that those brands are represented in the screen.

A lot of change over the last five years, put a lot of pressure on distribution, retail, put a lot of pressure across the board and that needs to be addressed very quickly.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: And for each of the four tiers of tires with regards to tariffs, how do you think Monroe and the different tire tiers are going to be impacted?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Yes. Just so that it was complicated, now it even got more complicated. There’s only one North American manufacturer and that’s Goodyear. We have a really strong relationship with Goodyear. Although they don’t manufacture all their tires in The U.

S, they do use most of North America to produce their tires. Everything else is actually a low cost country, not necessarily China, but other countries where they are tariff driven or they’ll be affected by tariffs or not. I would say at this point in time, I see it for Monroe and that’s probably the only thing I can comment. It’s a positive. I have a great relationship with the North American supplier, especially in The U.

S. The Tier four tires, which are mostly manufactured in low cost country, including China, are going to get more expensive. So now all of a sudden there could be that value gap, which I just talked about, Tier one through two, through three, four, that might close. And I think then the customer will see, hey, look, I’m going to choose a better tire. It’s better for the ride.

It’s quieter. It lasts longer. I’m going to make that investment. Oh, and by the way, the gap isn’t as large.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: All right. I’m going to shift over to batteries, which I think were pretty strong in the third quarter. Can you remind us what you guys have been doing there and how sustainable that kind of growth is?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Better be sustainable, Ravi. This is all goes back to the compidrive process. That’s our inspection process. Just to remind everybody, every retailer in the service business has an inspection process. You bring in your car, there’s a minimum expectation.

Valvoline has an 18 step inspection process. Go to the dealer, they have an inspection process. What we have done over the last three years is we’ve built, I believe, a best in class scalable inspection process moving from paper or the dark ages into the new world which is all tablet driven, all electronic, all managed centrally. As a result of that, I now know how well our team right down to the individual are properly inspecting that vehicle. As a result of that categories like batteries, ride control, they’re all going positive because now I can actually see whether or not that person’s doing that proper inspection, whether or not they’re communicating to the customer that, hey, look, your car needs breaks, your battery is failing.

These are all things that in the past, I didn’t have oversight. Now I have everyday oversight and I’m getting rewarded with not only am I getting rewarded, but most importantly the customers getting rewarded with a better more trusted experience. And it’s all brought to them digitally where I can email it to them, I can text it to them, I can show them pictures, I can show them videos of why they need to take action on their vehicle. I’m really excited about it. Batteries has been a breakout.

I would say we still have more work to do on brakes. I called back in our November. I said we’re going to get our brake business back all through the Comfort Drive process.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: I think another thing you talked about was I think there were roughly 300 or so small or underperforming stores that had started to improve. Can you remind us what you guys were doing there and where that can go? Can you get the double digit comps there?

Brian D’Ambrosia, Executive VP and CFO, Monroe: Yes, absolutely. We had called these stores out a few quarters back as opportunities for outsized comp growth. And we were up about two fifty basis points relative to the chain in this past quarter. But still, we believe that we’ve got opportunities for much more significant outperformance. What drove it in the current quarter is that these are smaller sales stores, so their sales levels are lower.

So as tires entire units picked up in the quarter, they had outsized disproportionate benefit to that higher ticket category, but that needs to continue and should continue. We still expect those stores to be double digit growers and supportive of our overall comp store sales moving forward.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Given that consumers are pressured, we’ve been hearing about different maintenance a lot. How much of what Monroe does would you consider being discretionary versus their required maintenance? And then as it relates to tires, how long can consumers actually do for a tire placement?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Yeah. Really good question. Can I go back and I’m gonna answer it with the battery? When batteries fail, it’s catastrophic. They just stop.

Your car doesn’t move forward. We have testing equipment. Part of the inspection process is to give them and give our customers an understanding of the state of the battery. Now let’s talk about tires. Tires, you have visible wear.

You have we have there’s industry standards to be able to communicate. It’s all about communicating to the customer, all about doing a proper courtesy inspection, making sure the customer understands that their tires are in a state of repair, whether it’s good, bad or indifferent. They’re a state of repair. On the service categories, and it’s easy to see if tires, they have wear bars that you can have like the metal could be sticking out. These are all easy ways to communicate to a consumer that they need tires and generally customers take action on it.

Now let’s talk about going inside the tire, meaning inside when you’re looking at brakes. These are all items that customers including everybody in this room including myself do not look at every day checking out their brake pads. That all goes back to the inspection process. That’s industry standards. We have micrometers.

We actually measure the brakes. We have to communicate that to the customers of how long those wear patterns generally take before their car no longer is as safe as it is today. It all goes back to the inspection process. And then last but not least, when I talk about how excited I am about the inspection process and the courtesy inspection, which we call Comfort Drive, I can take pictures and I can show customers. Here’s the state of your disrepair or repair of your vehicle or your car is in completely, you know, it’s green across the board and thanks for keeping your car maintained so well.

I would say that is where the industry is going. Just to remind everybody, that is what is the breakdown in the trust of the automotive aftermarket. Everybody thinks they’re being sold something. And I would say starting with the OE now moving into the original equipment manufacturers and moving into the aftermarket, The process, having a sales process, this was a massive undertaking over the last three years. We just put it in place in April.

We’re really starting to say, hey, look, we can see it. We can see the attachment, that goes along with it. And it’s good for the consumer also because we’re driving trust. We’re driving a better experience with our customer, which I think overall helps us when you look at share of voice. I want that share of voice that you can come to a Monroe brand and they’re going to do a great job.

Oh, and by the way, they give you the information to make a great decision about the vehicle their vehicle your vehicle.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: In your fiscal third quarter, you had some gross margin pressure. Could you walk us through the rationale of why you chose to increase self funded promotions for tires? And if you’ve seen the results that has been meeting expectations? And then also maybe you could touch on how vendor funded promotions are trending?

Brian D’Ambrosia, Executive VP and CFO, Monroe: Yes, absolutely. So we did see pressure in the quarter. We saw about 120 basis points of gross margin decline year over year. That was driven by 150 basis points of material margin pressure offset by some productivity gains on the technician labor side. But that 150 basis points was entirely due to tires.

And within tires, we did talk about increasing our self funded promotions. That was really in response to the demand environment and for us to continue to attract consumers into our stores for tires, as well as to make sure that we were holding our screen. We’ve been very committed to tier one through three as Mike talked about the tiers earlier, as we deliver higher ASP and higher margins in those tiers even with the promotions than we would in the Tier four. So it was been important to make sure that those were, the consumer was supported to be able to buy Tier one through three tires. And we saw it in units in the quarter, so we did get what we wanted from it.

We went positive in entire units for the quarter. And ultimately, we’re going to continue to make the price and promotions investments that we need to be able to continue to grow tire units. And we think that ultimately benefits all of our service categories is that’s more cars for us to witness and provide a digital courtesy inspection to and look to offer the consumer other services their vehicle might need.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: I’m going to switch to a topic that’s in other areas has been touched. Can you remind us weather and how weather impacts Monroe’s business? And maybe when we think about there was some weather things in February, colder weather coming back in January. Can you sort of walk us through how that affects you guys?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Although we yes, I’ll be glad to take this one. We’ve not had weather for the last three years. You probably heard that from every other retailer. It’s weather is short term pain, long term gain. I would say that there’s potholes that’s in a very sick way.

It’s great for our business. Tires get blown up. Sick. Yeah. I just cut my tires.

Did you? So I would say that, you get the pothole meter, somebody starts producing that, right, they don’t fill it in. It’s, it’s good for the business. Now I don’t like snow in Florida. I guess that’s what we had, snow in the Carolinas.

I didn’t like that. That was very disruptive during January and February, but long term, that’s good. Those customers stop buying, so there’s a lot of volatility. When that happens, they just hole up rather than in the Northeast and the Midwest where they’re used to it, they still shop. So that volatility, I absolutely recognized in January where we had some weather.

But overall, it’s good for trend. It’s good for the business. It just gives them another reason to come back and get their car serviced. And when we’ve been talking for many years right now or at least the last two years, the deferral cycle in tires and, you know, just customers are just waiting till our customers are at least just waiting to a point where they need to change their tires. I would say that that’s another reason to come into a shop like ours to get their car tires replaced and at the same time we take a look at their vehicle.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: And then you’ve touched on, on for drive the digital courtesy inspection. Can you sort of walk us through the how long that this could be a driver for? And maybe start at the beginning of it and then how it’s performing versus your expectations developing this? How does it compare to the competition’s versions of this? Maybe just paint a broader picture with a timeline would be fantastic.

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Yes. Both of us can have this presentation, but I’m going to take advantage of it because I just love it. First of all, the aftermarket was slow to adopt. OE, I would say, went digital. It’s really important.

We’ve always had an inspection process, it was all on paper. You couldn’t read the writing. You weren’t proud of actually communicating to a customer that this is what your inspection looks like. And I would say most good retailers have an inspection process. Most retailers have it in on a paper form.

Only I would say, some OEs have invested in moving everything digital and some aftermarket competitors have moved it to digital. I would say ours is scaled. Everything is, you can see everything across our organization. We have one point of sale system. Everything is easily accessible no matter what your store you go to.

It ties to CARFAX. These are all things that we’ve really developed, I would say, a connected environment, all on behalf of our customers, so that they understand we’re a really reputable shop. I would say I underestimated the change management that goes along with this. We put the customer first, we put the teammate probably second and they definitely voiced their opinion about that. We took control of the back shop when we rolled out this Confidrive, the digital courtesy inspection process.

And it was a lot of change management that we had to put in place along with it. I underestimated that. I would say without question six months minimum. We tested it. We rolled it out slowly.

We deployed it. We did all I believe best in class project management, but yet when we fully deployed and then we started setting expectations in April of twenty twenty four, we had a lot of pushback. It took us six months to really start getting, I would tell you, material gains in our business across more categories than just batteries. And now I’m starting to talk about everything is starting to come positive as a result of it. And it’s all about taking control and working with the team, training with them.

But I would say, I’m extremely proud of where we are right now, but we had a lot of disruption in the first two quarters as a result of probably the largest change management system that I’ve ever been part of. But I like where we are now.

Brian D’Ambrosia, Executive VP and CFO, Monroe: I would just add to that too that as far as the continuing benefits not only in FY twenty six where we really didn’t start to see the ultimate benefit in that year until the back half once Mike said we got through the change management. So there’s still time to lap all of that in ’26 but then continuing on, we continue to optimize the tool, optimize the process, certainly continue to to bring everybody along with it. And then the real benefit then kicks in where there’s decline work that happens that doesn’t always get done that day. You find something that a guest may need, but they may decline it. And so it starts to build into, a little bit of a loyalty program, not not so much from a financial incentive, but we’re sending you screenshots of your courtesy inspection, on a postcard or an email saying, hey, remember this finding we had, it may be giving you trouble right now, why don’t you come back in and here’s an offer for us to be able to help you with that.

So leveraging it in in CRM as well after the fact.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: And following up on the COMFI drive digital inspection process, could you talk about what kind of labor investments you’ve made for COMFI drive? And overall, how do you think about the supply of labor, specifically as it relates to skilled technicians?

Brian D’Ambrosia, Executive VP and CFO, Monroe: Yeah. I think that, you know, during the the burn in period of it, certainly, I’m you know, there was, the learning curve and the productivity impact that I would expect both in our front and in our back shops. But as you can we talked about earlier with gross margin, we still were able to leverage our back shop to 30 basis points of leverage. In the front shop on our last earnings call, we talked about adding some additional resources on the front to support that educational selling process. It is a little bit different with the tablet, and we wanted to make sure that there was adequate front shop support for them to not only do everything else they do, but also give their full attention to the inspection education process with the guest, whether that’s happening on the phone, with the guest having an email in front of them, or whether it’s happening in person off the tablet.

So we added that labor. What we expect is to keep that support at the front shop intact, but we’ll optimize and expect that a learning curve also exists on the front shop that we’ll be able to, at some point start to maybe pull back on the level of investment that we saw in Q3.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: I believe you have a target of returning to a low double digit operating margin. Could you walk us through what kind of margin expansion opportunities you have from the current level?

Brian D’Ambrosia, Executive VP and CFO, Monroe: Yeah, absolutely. So, the biggest piece for us is going to be fixed cost leverage, right? So we want and our goals are to deliver a mid single digit top line growth to really leverage not only the occupancy costs that reside and are fixed in our cost of goods, but ultimately to leverage our G and A as well. Our G and A we’ve been able to hold relatively flat over the next well, last few years. We’ve put in place back office optimization, some offshoring, some outsourcing that’s allowed us to hold those flat.

But we’ve still seen with some negative comp pressure, our G and A as a percent of sales tick up. So we can reverse that and move our way back towards the double digit with first with leverage off of a growing top line against those fixed costs. Second is variable margins. We’ve talked a lot about our compidrive and that’s really there to support our courtesy inspections, driving our oil traffic and our tire traffic into those other higher margin services. So variable margins is another opportunity for us.

And then finally, I think if you look at tires, the pressure has come from tires and ultimately we need to see the pressure subside from tires to ultimately reach our operating margin goals. And that’s gonna require, we believe, continued focus by us to make sure that we have the right promotions on, but aren’t also over promoting and that we’re walking that balance between volume and price. And also we likely would need the benefit of a consumer environment where the consumer is moving back to more traditional buying across the screens like Mike had talked about earlier.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Okay. I cover Walmart and Costco, so I have to ask this question. So Walmart specifically, I think, has been offering through their 3P marketplace, but also coordinating, I think, ship to the store, offering brands like Firestone, a Goodyear and Michelin, where I don’t think they trafficked in very much in the past. And then Costco seems to be trying to grab share and everything these days also. So just how do you guys answer this question, these questions?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: So I feel like we’re very competitive and we’ll stay very competitive with our promotions. I think Costco and Walmart do a good job. So I would say we’re full service and that’s a differentiation. So they go to Costco, then they come to us for an alignment and they go to Costco and then they come to us for other services that may or may not be identified. And so I look at them as potentially feeder opportunities rather than competitors because of just our marketplace.

That’s what I’m most excited about is the fact that we fix cars. Like when a car comes in, we have the skills, knowledge and ability in our back shop to fix cars properly. And I think that’s something that we can compete with. And by the way, we do sell tires. We’re extremely competitive on those brands.

And we’re going to stay competitive in order to keep that value proposition alive and well, regardless of the competitor.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: That’s helpful. And then I know you guys have a partnership with Valvoline, I think, with an automatic rebate coupon. And can you just walk us through your partnership with Valvoline? Is that the only thing you have? And what you guys are doing there?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Yes. So we sell millions of gallons of Valvoline. So I would say that they are invested in us, especially with the divestiture. They are now singly focused on companies like ourselves, and they’ve invested a lot to make sure that we bring better value. In the past, we talked about 10 coupon in order to incentivize the customer to come in.

Now it’s up to $20 coupon, all funded by the vendor. And these are the things that I would say scale. Scale still matters in this industry. These are the things that we’re able to bring to our consumer. So we like the partnership without questions quality product and it’s our job to continue to start growing that category and reversing, I would say, multi year trends.

And that’s with promotion, that’s with just better service, doing the proper things for our consumers. And I would say Valvoline is helping us.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: How are you preparing for the longer term impact of electrification of vehicles? I’m sure you get this question pretty often, for both the tire and service segments.

Brian D’Ambrosia, Executive VP and CFO, Monroe: Yes, I can take that. I mean, as we think about electrification, one of the primary category that obviously you think about as being in jeopardy is kind of what we just talked about, that oil category, the fluid exchange. But remember, there are over 300,000,000 vehicles in the auto aftermarket and they are not going to change overnight. So there will be a large market for continued fluid exchange as electric vehicles start to make their way into the aftermarket. And moving into kind of offset some of that maybe sales pressure or risk is really the tire category.

And the tire category because these vehicles are heavier and they also have more torque and they tend to be harder on tires and wear them out in a materially faster way. And so we are going to be seeing those vehicles more often for tire and tire services. And then at the same time, there are other opportunities in electric vehicles that can provide additional categories for us. We may not be doing battery replacement, but there are certainly battery components, coolant, hoses, clamps that get worn as a lot of the the battery coolant is is provided to the battery compartment to keep those batteries cool, and we’ll be able to move into those services as well. But at this point in time, we are seeing, electric vehicles across our service base, a lot out in California.

If you drive in any one of our California stores right now, I’m sure there’ll be an EV on the lift. And all of our technicians nationwide are trained on how to properly lift a Tesla, lift an electric vehicle and perform the needed services that we can provide on that vehicle.

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: I think if you were a customer in this room and you had an EV, they’re brutal on tires. So I mean, I think that’s all upside. The cooling system on it too is all upside. So I would say we’re agnostic as long as people are driving, if it’s an internal combustion engine or it’s EV, we’re okay.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Monroe has a portfolio of many different tire and auto services brands. So I’m curious if you could speak to the benefits and challenges of operating so many brands within your Monroe portfolio?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Yeah. I’ll take that. From a brand perspective, it’s really important to understand all the work that we’ve done, all the customer feedback that they are loyal to the local, tire choice in the marketplace. So we have a tire choice right down the road. They’re loyal to tire choice.

They don’t know about Monroe. Although now I’m starting to say, hey, tire choice by Monroe on the invoice. That’s as far as we’re going with it. Until we probably will get down to two or three brands, but I’m in no rush to do that. What I’m in a rush to do is continue really focusing on a better guest experience, better teammate experience, making sure I have the best people working for me, because regardless of the brand on the outside of the door, that’s who they’re gonna buy from are those people and how do I give them tools to do their job.

And we can do and I would say this is not something that I take lightly. I can do a lot of tests by brands and I learn a ton when I have these brands that I can activate separate and I can really start engaging the customer in a different way. So I’m learning a lot even with the multiple brands. So there’s a lot of reasons why we’re not moving fast to really move into fewer brands. We’re really focused on the in store experience for sure.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: And then can you remind us your sort of unit growth outlook for the portfolio brands and what makes you choose building and what the M and A environment looks like?

Brian D’Ambrosia, Executive VP and CFO, Monroe: Yes, I can take that. I think that if you look we’ll start with the longer term. If you look over the longer term to my comment earlier, you know, unit growth will be a continued big part of Monroe’s growth algorithm. It has been historically. We’ve taken a little bit of a pause over the last couple of years, to put tools in place like Confidence Drive and others for a platform that we feel like we can go on Monroe’s next journey of unit growth from.

So we’ve taken the time to kind of consolidate some of the gains that we’ve had in the past and really focused on a scalable operational platform, that will benefit us as we fill in a lot of white space in a map that has a lot of attractive markets that we’re not in, as well as opportunities to fill in markets that we are in, that just don’t have the density that we would like to have. So the good thing is over the last couple of years, as I’ve said, the M and A market has slowed down in the aftermarket, and we really haven’t missed out on anything that we would have wanted to participate in for having been, a little participating less than that. And we feel that the amount of fragmentation in the industry and ultimately our balance sheet that we’ll be able to put to work will reward us with the ability to grow units going forward.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: And then I wanted to go back towards the beginning of this conversation. I think Vicky had asked this question about tire pricing and tiering. Yes. And you talked it got very wide, but I’m just I’d love to just understand why the vendor partners, how did this happen? Were there were they pushing price on the luxury or the higher price point end of the market because they had to?

Or were they pushing price because they could? Or what kind of happened there? And then I love the continuation because I think you mentioned that you expect sort of somewhat of a reset. Is there a historical reason that that’s happened? I’d love to just get more insight into this.

I thought it was very interesting.

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Yes. I think coming out of COVID, there was a scarcity of supply. So when people have a scarcity of supply, they are more courageous to take price up, right? And then they never reset. And they left the door open for them to really, I would say, lose significant market share from lower cost providers that are aggressive trying to get North American get into the North American market.

And the gap between and they were very aggressive putting price in the marketplace and then the gap, the value proposition was not that far and the price proposition was significant. And I would say that going back to May, I called that out to say we’re going to go get our tire business back with promotions, with our vendors funding it. If not, then we’re going to make choices. But I would say coming out of COVID, multiple years of cost increases, price increases, and then we have our consumer that is looking for better value. I would say that that gap, that was a significant mess.

And I would and we waited too long. Monroe waited too long. And when we inflect it is when we put price in, when we started getting aggressive, we were starting to get our customers back. And just to remind you, coming, I mean, coming out of this quarter, the first quarter, we were down 10%. And it, I would say, I was embarrassed by 10%, all driven by Tire.

But it is a gateway for other customers, other services too. So we declared we were going to get our business back in May. We started seeing the trend improve. When we announced our earnings in August, we say, look, the trajectory is improving. We’re going to continue focusing on that.

We’re also going to focus on our service categories that go along with it. And the last quarterly earnings call we talked about is how do we get our customers back? So when I look at our year, we’ve had 500 basis points improvement quarter over quarter over quarter. But I have to look myself in the mirror to say, how do we get in a position where we’re down 10%? And without question, I’m holding myself accountable to it and also my manufacturer partners because they need to now set step up, they need to reset, they need to get their market share back and they need to help us obviously get those customers back into our stores selling their product.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: That was very helpful. Let me just pause for a second. Any questions in the audience out there?

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Thank you. Actually, I have two quick ones. A follow-up on what Robbie was asking about the weather piece. So I know you mentioned there was some disruption in the South, which make which makes sense, but does the winter weather have a large impact on your business and the, you know, like, regions that have winter given, like, winter tire sales, or snow tire sales, I should say? Like, does that have any, meaningful impact on your business?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Yes. Very much so. When you have less or, they are on the fringe, they don’t work well in snow regardless. They’re not winter tires, they’re all weather right now. But if you don’t have the necessarily the rubber that available, then a snow event will cause you to drive.

I would say it would be tough to drive in it for sure. So it will force a consumer even in the North to come in and get new tires.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Okay.

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: That is a good event. One to three inches of snow wherever it is, especially in the North is a great event for us.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Got it. Thank you so much. And then, you know, again, following up on a question that was asked about the different tier penetrations of tires. Do you find at the lower tiers, are you seeing much quicker replacement cycles on those tires as I assume they would wear out faster? So is that maybe an opportunity that those customers may reenter the market quicker?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: I don’t have enough industry data, but this is what we do know. They’re louder and they don’t perform as well with syndicated data supporting it on wet traction. So, they’re less safe as compared to some of the Tier one and Tier two tires that do the necessary testing, the engineering that stands behind it. So the newer technology, I would say, these are generally the tier four are lower miles warranty. They’re generally anywhere between 90,000 miles compared to a tier one and tier two more all season is anywhere between 140,000 mile tire.

So with that being said, they should wear out more, they should wear out quicker.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Got it. And that makes sense. Maybe if I could sneak one more in. For EVs, are there any specialty tires that I I think I may be completely wrong on this, but I think Tesla may have foam in their tires or something like do you, carry those types of specialty tires to service that market?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Yes, we do. And the foam is noise suppression.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Oh, okay.

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: So that’s the reason why. EVs, they want decent tires on it because you don’t want to hear a lot of tire noise. Oh, and by the way, if you sell them a bad tire, even though it’s a good tire and it’s going to work fine on it, they don’t like you and they don’t come back for other services. So we have to be really mindful of how do we educate the consumer to say, you’re probably not going to like that. And the reason why it’s going to perform fine, it’s just going to be louder.

Right.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Got it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: Of course.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Aside from so we’ve talked about your ConfiDrive strategy and also the Valvoline rebate. Aside from those two, do you have any other marketing initiatives that you have or will be considered implementing to drive both ticket and traffic?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: I’ll take it and take it out. Those 300 underperforming stores, we’re going to fix those things. Double digit comps year over year over year, they used to be good stores. That’s a growth vector for our organization. I would say that’s a number one focus.

Number one focus there, number two focus is CompaDrive, number three focus is on my teammates. I need great technicians in order to do great work. And the last thing I want to have is, since we’re inspecting the car better, I want to be able to fix it the first time. And I think that’s what I get those type of services that I get rewarded with loyalty. And that’s what we’re trying to do in twelve fifty plus stores across 32 states.

Brian D’Ambrosia, Executive VP and CFO, Monroe: And I think that’s an important part to really recognize about our business model is it is about oil and tires, and those are traffic drivers. So the promotions on oil, the partnership and the promotion on with the valvoline that we talked about, those are key traffic drivers for us to convert into those other services. So when we tend to do is we tend to market for new customers against those two categories. And then with the other categories, like I talked about earlier, it’s more customer relationship marketing for services you might have declined on past visits for those other categories.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: And with one minute remaining, I guess, could you share your thoughts on how the industry outlook could play out for the next one or two quarters and maybe next year or so?

Mike Broderick, President and CEO, Monroe: I don’t have a crystal ball over the next one or two quarters. It’s a great industry. I’ve been in it for thirty five years. This is a great industry. We have its ups and downs, but for the most part, it grows nicely mid single digit low single digits.

I mean, it’s a great business. We fix things, which creates value for our consumers, and also we employ people who love cars. So it’s an industry that I would say is going to be here with two eighty million plus cars that are driving, I would say, back to pre COVID vehicle miles traveled. So everything is looking better. I would say I would like a little healthier consumer, but if I don’t, I’m going to still go get the business, because it’s that’s what it’s going to require going forward for the next, I would say, foreseeable future.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: We’re out of time. That’s a great way to finish. I wanna thank Monroe management for attending the conference today.

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