Austin Ligon Quotes

With an estimated television viewing audience of approximately 185,000, Charlottesville, Va., represents our first entry into a small market. We will be adjusting our store footprint, inventory, and our staffing model in this store, as a result of the smaller overall sales opportunities provided by this market. This store's performance over the next few years will help us better understand our longer-term opportunities in small markets. - Austin Ligon

We have revolutionized the way consumers buy cars. This will be the first time northeastern area residents will have an opportunity to experience a no- hassle, no-haggle, fun and easy car shopping experience. As we continue to grow our store base by 15 to 20 percent each year, we are looking forward to introducing ourselves to more and more consumers in the Northeast. - Austin Ligon

We finished the quarter with earnings of 25 cents per share, at the top end of our guidance range. Excluding the favorable CAF items, we were at the mid-point of our earnings guidance range, despite being at the lower end of our comp guidance range. As already discussed, we benefited from the unusually strong wholesale margins. - Austin Ligon

We expect we will recover nearly all of the resulting lost sales during the next few months. - Austin Ligon

We expect modest improvement in used vehicle profits per unit as wholesale pricing moderates. - Austin Ligon

We believe that this recognition is an acknowledgement of how we're revolutionizing our industry. We're giving customers what they want in a car-buying experience by creating a company culture that is focused on being ethical, trustworthy, and respectful of our customers. - Austin Ligon

Selling, general, and administrative expenses as a percent of net sales and operating revenues increased slightly to 11.4% in this year's third quarter from 11.3% in last year's quarter. As expected, the moderate rate of increase in unit comps was not sufficient to provide SG&A leverage. Having a larger percentage of our store base comprised of stores not yet at basic maturity and last year's lower-than-normal corporate bonuses were also contributing factors. At the end of this year's third quarter, 49% of our stores were less than four years old, compared with 40% at the end of last year's third quarter. - Austin Ligon

Our wholesale sales continued to be exceptionally strong. Unit sales were up sharply as we benefited from a strong increase in appraisal traffic. - Austin Ligon

Our third quarter used car sales growth reflected increased traffic compared with last year's third quarter, as well as continuing strong execution. We were able to sustain positive momentum even as the cross-shopping benefit from this summer's new car employee pricing programs waned. Subsequently, new car sales and traffic levels dropped significantly, reflecting the limited model year close-out vehicle availability that resulted from the success of the employee pricing programs. - Austin Ligon

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