O’Reilly Automotive at 49th Annual Automotive Symposium: Strategic Growth and Resilience

On Tuesday, 04 November 2025, O’Reilly Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ:ORLY) shared insights at the 49th Annual Automotive Symposium. The company underscored its robust performance in the automotive aftermarket industry, highlighting strategic growth in North America and addressing challenges such as cost pressures. O’Reilly remains optimistic about its expansion plans despite some consumer caution.

Key Takeaways

• O’Reilly plans to open 225-235 stores next year, focusing on organic growth.
• The company is expanding in Mexico and Canada following recent acquisitions.
• Inflation and labor costs are being managed with proactive pricing strategies.
• A potential pullback in larger DIY purchases is noted, but vehicle maintenance remains essential.
• O’Reilly holds approximately 10% of the North American market, with significant growth potential.

Company Overview and Strategy

• History and Market Approach:

- Founded in 1957 in Springfield, Missouri, O’Reilly transitioned from a family-owned distributor to a dual market strategy, serving both retail and wholesale sectors. The company went public in 1993.

• International Expansion:

- O’Reilly acquired a company in Mexico in 2019 and has over 100 stores there. Additionally, the acquisition of Vast Auto in Canada has bolstered its presence in North America.

• Strategic Advantages:

- The company leverages a team of professional parts people and extensive parts availability to maintain a competitive edge.

Distribution Network and Logistics

• Distribution Centers and Replenishment:

- O’Reilly operates 31 regional distribution centers across the US, each tailored to local vehicle needs. Stores are replenished frequently to ensure timely delivery.

• Inventory Management:

- The company adjusts SKU levels based on demand, optimizing inventory across its hub and spoke store network.

Market Share and Competition

• Market Position:

- With a 10% share of the North American market, O’Reilly sees ample room for growth. The fragmented industry landscape offers opportunities despite competition from both large and regional warehouse distributors.

Store Growth and Return on Investment

• Expansion Plans:

- O’Reilly plans to open 200-210 stores this year and 225-235 next year, emphasizing organic growth and return on investment at the store level. The Mid-Atlantic expansion is supported by a new distribution center in Virginia.

Inflation and Pricing

• Cost Management:

- The company believes it has seen the bulk of anticipated cost increases and is navigating a stable tariff environment. O’Reilly’s pricing strategy is both proactive and responsive to market conditions.

Consumer Behavior and Demand

• Industry Resilience:

- Despite a potential pullback in larger DIY purchases, vehicle maintenance remains a priority for consumers. The industry is considered resilient with a strong customer base.

Q&A Highlights

• Professional Business and Tax Refunds:

- O’Reilly’s professional business remains robust, and tax refunds typically benefit the company’s performance.

• DIY Purchase Trends:

- A modest decline in larger ticket DIY purchases is being monitored, but the essential nature of vehicle maintenance supports long-term demand.

In conclusion, O’Reilly Automotive’s strategic initiatives and market positioning underscore its resilience and growth potential. For further details, please refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - 49th Annual Automotive Symposium:

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Moving along, another absolutely terrific company, and one that has been an amazing investment for investors who have entered almost at any point over the course of the last 20 years. O’Reilly Automotive, one of the leading aftermarket parts retailer and distributors that are out there, just an absolute rocket ship from a stock perspective, just under 850 million, actually less than that now. I’ll use the numbers when the book went to print, but about an $86 billion equity cap company, about a $92 billion total enterprise value. We’re delighted to have Brent Kirby, the company’s president, and then Jeremy Fletcher, the company’s CFO here. And I’ll let their numbers and their words speak for them as opposed to me. But thank you, gentlemen, very much for being here.

Brent Kirby, President, O’Reilly Automotive: Thank you.

Jeremy Fletcher, CFO, O’Reilly Automotive: Thank you.

Unidentified speaker: I guess just to start. I think your story is well enough known in this room, but maybe to just take a couple of minutes about what you’ve seen over the course of the last six months to a year and where you see O’Reilly progressing for the next couple.

Jeremy Fletcher, CFO, O’Reilly Automotive: Sure. Yeah. I can start. Good afternoon. Yeah. O’Reilly, just quick background on the company. I think most everybody knows, but the company started in 1957, Springfield, Missouri. The O’Reilly family started as a family business. Warehouse distributor on the automotive parts side to begin with. As the company continued to grow kind of from the center part of the country out, really kind of shifted that strategy to a dual market strategy to pursue retail as well as wholesale and. Continued to grow through acquisitions, West Coast, South, and really all over the country. A lot of growth over the last. Went public in 1993, and I’ve had a lot of growth over the years subsequent to that. Big opportunities for us. We see internationally as well. In Mexico, we purchased a company down there in 2019.

We’ve got over 100 stores there now, have a DC there, and purchased. I feel like a great company, made a great acquisition about a year and a half ago, 18 months ago in Canada as well, Vast Auto. So we’re just super excited about the growth opportunities in North America. So. To kind of catch up to your question in terms of last six months and kind of going forward, this is just a resilient industry. And we feel like we’re well positioned within this industry. When you think about our dual market strategy, we feel like we have two strategic strengths and advantages in terms of how we go to market. Number one, it’s our team, professional parts people. We have a fantastic team. We have a fantastic farm system where we grow our own leaders from the field.

And then we also go to market with parts availability, and parts availability in our industry wins. And so depth, breadth. Late model coverage, all those different things. So obviously, the industry has been some challenges through the COVID years. We saw a lot of share gain there. And then coming out of that, the subsequent years, what we’ve seen is the supplier base continuing to get very healthy, healthier than it was pre-pandemic. Probably the first time, this is the first year that I feel like we could say that. Since the pandemic. Even in light of the tariffs and some of the noise we’ve had there, some of the uncertainty that was created earlier this year, I feel like a lot of that is beginning to settle. Certainly, there’s been some. Cost pressure. Both on the manufacturer side when you think about raw materials, labor.

We’ve experienced some cost pressure in our business with labor and some other expenses as well. But we still see a very resilient industry, 289 million. Light-duty, medium-duty vehicles on the road in the U.S. Have to be maintained. So demand has continued to be constant. Consumer has been under pressure on the lower end. Probably in the last. Little bit, 6 to 12 months, we’ve seen. Just a little bit of that, not a ton of that, but we have seen, we’ve actually, believe it or not, seen more trade up than we’ve seen trade down. We have seen trade down in some very isolated categories, wipers being one of those that we’ve talked about. But we see some stabilization. We continue to see rationalization across our industry in terms of passing costs through as they come through to the consumer.

But we’re very bullish long term on, number one, our growth opportunities across North America. We’re super excited about opportunities in Mexico, Canada, as well as domestically. We still think we have a lot of opportunity to backfill markets. We have a new distribution center opening in the Mid-Atlantic. We have a lot of untapped opportunity geographically on the East Coast and the I-95 Corridor. So long term, we feel very good about the next 6 to 12 months and where things are going to go. And I know there’s a lot of question around the consumer and the pullback right now. But I think history would tell you in our industry, when you do see a pullback, it lasts for a quarter or two, maybe three. But customers have to maintain their vehicles.

Unidentified speaker: I’ll tell you, I had to turn your microphone off.

Jeremy Fletcher, CFO, O’Reilly Automotive: Starting off, you mentioned how important it is to get the product to the customer at the ideal amount of time. Can you just talk to us about your distribution network and the logistics of being a top automotive aftermarket distributor?

Brent Kirby, President, O’Reilly Automotive: Sure. Yeah. Great question. And again, I give the O’Reilly family a ton of credit. Really, as the company was growing, really our strategy has always been to have our distribution centers where the populations are and where the vehicle populations are because we recognize the importance of immediacy of need in a very non-discretionary business. So our DCs, 31 regional DCs, they’re located in the major DMAs across the US where the people are, where the vehicle count is. Every one of our distribution centers has a different SKU count and a different SKU profile based on the vehicles and operation. Data for that geographic area. And one of our regional DCs is going to carry 150-160,000 SKUs. And we serve. Every store in our chain is replenished five nights a week and multiple times during the day. Those distribution centers have what we call city counter service.

So within a 250-mile radius of that DC, we’re making multiple runs, touching every store multiple times a day. So what that means is if I’m a customer and I need an alternator for a 2003 Chevy Cavalier. And it’s not in that store, that team member behind the counter can say, "I don’t have it in stock right now, but I’ll have it at 1:00 P.M. today." So we have. Very time-definite promises around each of those touches to those stores. That give us, we feel like, an advantage when you think about the immediacy of need for, especially for hard part categories that you have to have to have your vehicle back on the road. And people talk about Amazon Prime and. Half day, 24 hours, 12 hours. That’s not fast enough in our industry.

So the other thing really is our hub store network as we continue to build out those regional distribution centers that I spoke about. We have over 300 hub stores where we have additional. Pools of inventory where we know we’re going to have demand. And those hub stores can have anywhere from 60,000-110,000 SKUs in them, depending on the market opportunity that we see. A typical spoke store would have 22-25,000 SKUs in it, just to give you an example. So that tiered. Network of hub stores, and we’re constantly adjusting that because if you think about the demand curve for late model coverage, early. Coverage, we’re managing demand curves very discreetly for. Literally hundreds of thousands of parts across all of those locations. So. As we do that, we have. SKUs going into those hubs, coming out based on demand.

As that demand curve hits the top of the bell curve, we’ll push those SKUs down into those spoke stores as well. And then as we see the demand for that particular part receding on the backside of the bell curve, we’ll pull that. Inventory back up into hubs and then ultimately back into our regional DCs for those longest tail SKUs. So. It’s definitely a competitive advantage for us. Our team does a fantastic job managing that. But really, how we go to market distribution is the backbone of making that time-definite promise that our professional parts people are able to make every day.

Jeremy Fletcher, CFO, O’Reilly Automotive: The large part of your competition are these local, maybe regional warehouse distributors. Are they able to keep up with kind of your distribution network and technological investments, or is this a source of share gains in the future?

Brent Kirby, President, O’Reilly Automotive: We’re blessed to be in a very fragmented industry. We say all the time internally, as successful as we’ve been, as much share as we’ve gained, we got 10% of the total addressable market in North America. So that is just what that screams to us is opportunity. That means there’s 90% more out there for us to go get and compete to win. The WDs and smaller regional players, to your point, and we compete against a lot of great competitors in this industry, both the majors as well as some of the smaller ones that you’re talking about. What I would tell you is we feel like our scale gives us a decisive advantage in terms of buying and cost of goods and opportunity versus a lot of the regional players. Scale is our friend, but we do compete against a lot of great WDs.

I will tell you, some of those smaller players, the ones that are really good coming out of COVID, got better and still compete well. There were a lot that didn’t survive that. That was a little bit of a thinning of the herd in some respects. We still feel like we’ve got a lot of opportunity to take share from a lot of different sized competitors across the country.

Jeremy Fletcher, CFO, O’Reilly Automotive: You plan on opening 200 to 210 stores this year, and then next year, you plan to open 225 to 235 stores. Can you just talk about the return on investment here and the decision to continue growing the opening?

Unidentified speaker: Yeah, I can probably jump in there and give Brent a little bit of a break. We’ve obviously been a company over the course of time that I think has demonstrated a real commitment to growing organically. It’s really been the primary use of capital. Beyond that has always been, I think, a pretty disciplined process for us in how we think about returns. And I think it’s important from the sense of how we view it in kind of the traditional sense, how do we think that that investment produces in the store and the stores being able to generate a return, and how do you think about that and calculate that?

But for us, it’s also pretty important just from a broader brand value and customer impact that we’re able to open stores that not only can perform well at the gate, but can execute on a value proposition and a service proposition for our customers that validates, I think, what the long-term strength of a brand is. And it’s for that reason that as I think strong as our performance from a new store perspective has been, we’re also pretty cautious in how we pace that performance out. Probably the single most important factor in new store growth and the performance is how well we can assemble a team of professionals to be able to take care of our customers and establish, really, from the first day the stores open, a great customer experience, a great value proposition for our customers. And so that’s been more of a gating item.

And we’ve been pretty cautious in how we’ve thought about how we can scale those teams. You did reference that we’re moving that target up with our expectations for next year and feel comfortable in doing that. I think in large part because from where we sit today, our opportunities to leverage the development of those new store teams are as strong as they’ve ever been. Certainly, we’ve got new markets within Canada and Mexico that are still early stages, but are starting to become platforms for us. But then especially, I think, domestically here in the U.S. Our ability to grow both in parts of the Mid-Atlantic where we’re not at today or under-penetrated. And Brent mentioned the addition of our distribution center in Virginia.

That’ll give us the ability to continue to expand in those markets and to support new teams really out of a lot of different existing footprint where we can grow and support. But then really, when you look at the rest of the map, there’s a lot of assembled talent really across the country. And we’ve shown our ability to spread that growth out and develop really great store teams. And I think that’s allowed us to approach different levels of density than maybe 10 years ago we would have thought we would have seen. So it’s a very important part of how we think about. How we think about capital and where we want to deploy it. We think it’s been and will continue to be a primary use of capital for the company.

Jeremy Fletcher, CFO, O’Reilly Automotive: Michael.

Brent Kirby, President, O’Reilly Automotive: Thank you very much. It’s Michael Lasser from UBS. Probably won’t surprise you to know I have a two-part question or one question and a follow-up. Around inflation. One is there’s been some controversy and debate around how the industry is looking at inflation. We’ve heard different things from different players. If you could outline how you see the inflation contribution to your comp unfolding over the next couple of quarters, that would be very helpful. And two, one of the points of debate on O’Reilly has been that its growth in SG&A per store has been elevated over the last few years. If this is just a reflection of the cost of doing business going up, is there a reason that you wouldn’t pass along those increased costs to the consumer in the form of higher inflation moving forward, even after you experience this spike from tariff-induced inflation?

Thank you.

Unidentified speaker: Thanks, Michael. I can probably get started there. And Brent may want to chime in with some more. Starting on the inflation question, absolutely good question. As you’d expect, it’s, I think, the primary question that people are asking this week, maybe that and the consumer. I think important from a perspective of how to think about this moving forward. But I would also tell you, frankly, it’s exactly kind of what we would expect at this point in time. At any given point in time, when you see a cost environment, a pricing environment kind of in flux like we’re seeing, if you measure at any individual point in time, you’re just going to have some timing-related items as it impacts the different participants. And we talked a couple of weeks ago when we released our third quarter and how we’re just looking at moving forward.

And we can give you our perspective on what we’re saying, but also understanding that. We’re not in control of the market and we’ll ultimately see where others land. From our perspective, what we’ve spoken to is we feel like we’ve got pretty good visibility and have seen the lion’s share of what we would anticipate seeing from a cost perspective. We’ve obviously worked pretty closely with our suppliers throughout this whole process of navigating the tariff landscape. And as much as some of the headlines have kind of changed here and there, I think the actual broader tariff environment has been stable, I think, for a little while now. And it’s put us in a position where we could work through that manufacturer base to understand what we’ve seen and feel comfortable that we’ve both had the ability to pass through that in pricing.

But then also we’ve been able to think through and to move through most of what we would expect to see. From that standpoint, and we are very proactive in how we view the response to those cost pressures and want to make sure that we have some leadership position in where we think the pricing should go from a marketplace perspective. Because of that, we’ve said kind of where we sit today and knowing that fourth quarter will end up a little bit higher, but also expect as we exit the year that we would have seen a lot of what we might expect to see. Now, in terms of how to assess where the broader market is at, we’ll have to watch a little bit there as well.

We know others, I think, have had different points of insight into where they may think they need to go or the broader market might go. We’re certainly not the final price setter in the market, and it’s not been our practice or experience to try to take a different strategic approach to pricing if everyone else moves up. So if we see same SKU that continues to persist into. 2026, we would anticipate that we would follow the market, and there might be some other benefits that we would see there. But from where we sit, from our perspective at this point, that’s kind of where we’ve landed.

Brent Kirby, President, O’Reilly Automotive: Yeah. Michael, the only thing I would add to when you think about what has passed through to this point. Obviously, there’s the headline of this percent or that percent for this country or that country. What I would tell you is, honestly, the pricing and how it flows through is there’s art and science to it. To Jeremy’s point, there’s going to be varying degrees at any time checkpoint in time. As this moves through the industry. Our merchandise team has done a fantastic job working with our supplier base, looking at it by line, by category, and by line to negotiate what that new cost may be on a certain item versus peanut butter spread. There’s been just a lot of great work there. Coming back from the science to the art, our pricing team does a fantastic job monitoring the market as well.

While we’re in a very rational industry, it’s moving through our competitors. It’s moving through the entire supply chain to the consumer at a different pace, and it’s very dynamic. We look at that weekly. We are always going to be in a space of being competitive, but we also are going to be in a space of knowing that there’s a premium for what we offer in terms of our supply chain, our availability, our parts knowledge. We position ourselves there on a continuous basis, literally week by week. When we talk about a quarter, or we talk about a month, or we talk about what quarter is it going to the bell curve going to peak, we’re working our way through the curve with every quarter we go through. Just want to call that out.

I know that’s the million-dollar question everybody wants the answer to, but it’s a very dynamic cadence as those things move through.

Unidentified speaker: I think maybe just even beyond kind of that point in time and where we at and all of those things, I think it’s important to note we don’t think that we exit this in any way, shape, and form where the broader pricing dynamic changes. Ultimately, this is a short period of time of adjustment, and we’ll land where we land, and we would expect that, I think, from an industry perspective, everybody lands in the same place. From an SG&A perspective to the other part of your question, absolutely, we’ve been on an investment cycle there, and we’ve had some other pressures as we’ve seen this year. Again, don’t want to get caught up in too myopic a view of how you think about that from a short-term perspective.

But broadly speaking, we’ve shown as a business that we’re able to get strong productivity out of our operating cost spend and expect that our focus will still be to generate operating profit dollars and deposit in the bank. And ultimately, over time, we think that that gives us the ability to leverage and that the industry largely treats those cost dynamics in a similar way to what you see on the product acquisition side that I think you would be comfortable. Now, what that looks like, we’d have to wait and see how the broader cost environment plays out moving forward.

Jeremy Fletcher, CFO, O’Reilly Automotive: Brent, you mentioned that the pandemic’s thinned the herd a bit. Do you see the current price environment doing that, setting that up again for 2026? Some of the smaller players seeing a higher cost of inventory might destock and sort of allow the bigger players to take more share next year. Or is the herd generally healthy and sort of status quo for 2026?

Brent Kirby, President, O’Reilly Automotive: That’s a great question, Brent. I think there’ll be some of that. There’s going to be. The supplier base is very diverse. I mean, we deal with over 400 supplier partners and we’re by no means touching all of the supplier capacity that’s out there globally when you. That will be a challenge for some of the smaller players. But again, I think the better ones will adapt and they’ll rationalize their base accordingly to continue to do what they do.

Jeremy Fletcher, CFO, O’Reilly Automotive: Guys, thanks a lot. Maksim Rakhlenko, TD Cowen. Two quick ones. First one on DIFM. You guys service a lot of different channels. So just curious if you’re seeing any sort of differences in trends across verticals, maybe a little bit softer and tighter or anything else. And then separately on DIY, there’s a lot of excitement around what refunds could look like next year. So just any sort of times in history could point us to when refunds have been a little bit bigger, how the aftermarket was able to capture its fair share of that.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. On the professional side of the business. I think it’s been strong for us across really all the different channels. Others might have a little bit more of a nuanced view. We’re not very intensely concentrated in any of those. We feel like we serve the entire market pretty well. So, we’re not as cognizant. I think more often than not, it’s not the specific channel that we see variability in. It’s the providers within each channel. The stronger people are going to do better, but we see that from a more broad-based perspective. First quarter, we’ll see what tax refunds do. It’s important for the business. It’s a good thing to see. But also, you have to think about it in the context of what’s happening more broadly, and we’ll just have to wait to see.

In terms of what our experience has been in the past, more tax refund money is better. Less is not as good.

Jeremy Fletcher, CFO, O’Reilly Automotive: Thanks. Greg Henslee with Evercore ISI. One of the big debates has been the DIY big ticket deferral that you guys talked about a few weeks ago. Just unpack that a little bit more as to where you saw it, what you think might be causing it. Do you think deportations or immigration changes may have something to do with it? Just sort of help us understand where that comment came from and what you’re watching for to go forward to see the deferral sort of ends.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah, happy to start there, and Brent might chime in. I’d love to give you a lot more really in-depth color about it. But candidly, I think we’re at early stages of what that might look like. And I think the timing of our comments and the period that we’re in is exactly kind of what we’ve seen historically, if there’s been some shock to the consumer. And the types of things that we can see pull back. What we’ve seen and how we would characterize it is still pretty modest at this point. And so it’s a little bit more challenging to parse some of the specifics around how it would look, knowing that there are lots of factors at play.

I think more broadly, it’s likely more reflective of consumer caution or confidence than it is the real health of the consumer at this stage and how we would view it. That’s some of what we would see from a larger ticket perspective. But it’s also of the type of things that we might have seen in previous historical cycles where you see just a little bit of a pressure there. Ultimately, we’ll see to whatever extent it persists and builds. We’re cautious for that. But we also feel like some of the types of categories that we’re paying close attention to, some of those bigger ticket items have also been pretty favorable categories for us. And our comparisons are tough. Our share gains have been, I think, pretty robust. Our performance earlier in the year was strong as well.

So I think it’s important for us to want to continue to be cautious about it. Candidly, that’s sort of been our message all year long, that this is something that I think we have to pay attention to. The more important factor from our perspective is that this is an incredibly resilient industry. It’s a very resilient customer. And we can all go crazy in short periods of time trying to think about what’s the push-pull and what’s the next month, quarter, week going to look like. Ultimately, the driving factor behind demand in our industry is people absolutely need their vehicles. They want to maintain them. And over the course of time, if a consumer gets really stressed, then it’s the thing that they’re going to prioritize because they can’t afford a car payment. All of those things are still in place. We feel confident in that.

We won’t likely be talking about this stuff at this time next year. But obviously, there’s a lot of focus on it now.

Jeremy Fletcher, CFO, O’Reilly Automotive: Next year will be number 50 for us. So we hope we’re not talking about it, but we will be talking. So thank you both for being here. We always greatly appreciate the support.

Brent Kirby, President, O’Reilly Automotive: Yeah, absolutely.

Jeremy Fletcher, CFO, O’Reilly Automotive: Thank you.

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