Copart - Q4 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Copart Inc.'s Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2023 earnings call. Just a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. Before turning the call over to management, I will share Copart's statement on Safe Harbor and non-GAAP financial measures. During today's call, the company will discuss certain non-GAAP measures, including discrete income tax items, the effect of extinguished debt, and adjustments to income tax benefits related to stock-based compensation. The company has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures on its investor relations website and in its press release issued at approximately 3:00 P.M. Central Time today. The company believes these non-GAAP measures, together with the corresponding GAAP measures, are relevant in analyzing the company's results and assessing its business trends and performance.

In addition, the company's comments today include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including management's current views with respect to trends, opportunities, and uncertainties in the company's markets. These forward-looking statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. For more details on the risks associated with the company's business, we refer you to the section titled Risk Factors in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ending July 31, 2023, and each of the company's subsequent quarterly results on Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statements are made as of today, and the company has no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. I'll now turn the call over to the company's Co-CEO, Jeff Liaw.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Great. Thank you, and good evening, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We're pleased to report our results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 and the conclusion of a strong fiscal year. We continue our trend of generating excellent results for new and existing customers, of growing our business profitably, and of reinvesting in the future prosperity of our customers and ourselves. Today, I'll keep my comments brief, focusing on some of the recurring themes that are most relevant to our business and to our customers. A year ago, on this same call, we talked about the various dimensions of enterprise sustainability that we consider here at Copart, including environmental sustainability, given our critical role in the circular automotive economy.

Our financial sustainability in the form of our conservative capitalization, operational sustainability through our land stewardship and ownership strategy, and global socioeconomic sustainability in our providing mobility to developing economies around the world. Today, I'll spend just a few minutes elaborating on a fifth dimension, which is the proactive role Copart plays in assisting communities in their recovery from catastrophic weather events. The 2023 hurricane season has been forecast to be, quote, "above normal," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a division of the Department of Commerce. That forecast feels evergreen now year to year. So far in 2023, we've experienced 12 named storms, more than double the number we encountered last year.

Thankfully for our insurance clients and their policyholders, the insurance loss impacts of the first hurricane to make landfall this year, Hurricane Idalia, were relatively modest in comparison to major storms in prior years. The threat of a more substantial event nonetheless remains in 2023, as many of the most significant storms in the past 20 years have occurred late in the season. Hurricane Ian, for example, the largest ever catastrophic event in our history, as measured by unit volume, did not itself make landfall until the 23rd of September last year. For any substantial storm likely to affect our insurance clients and their policyholders, we don't have the luxury of perfect visibility before we deploy resources, both in the moment and in the years prior. Our response to Hurricane Idalia well-illustrates this reality.

Though the landfall of the hurricane's eye was projected to be in the Big Bend area of Florida, prevailing weather models showed a wide range of possible outcomes, including a potential initial landfall in the Tampa area and eastward progression thereafter through Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Well before landfall, we deployed hundreds of team members, Copart-owned and third-party-owned tow trucks and Copart-owned loaders, telecommunications equipment, and generators from around the country to the region. We were prepared to immediately retrieve inventory, store, process titles for, and sell many thousands of vehicles in the affected areas. Of course, our real estate investment and planning had begun years in advance, yielding more than 600 available acres of dedicated CAT storage in Florida alone.

For a given storm, quarter, or year, our investment in catastrophic readiness may appear to be overkill, but we recognize the responsibility we have to our customers and to the communities we serve together to optimize our readiness for such severe weather events. I'll touch on a few additional themes for both our insurance and non-insurance businesses, but first, in the insurance universe. According to CCC, total loss frequency troughed at 17.1% in the second calendar quarter of 2022 and has subsequently rebounded to 18.8% in the second calendar quarter of 2023. This is down a bit sequentially from calendar quarter one into calendar quarter two, though this is the result of-...

observed that same modest reduction in total loss frequency from the first quarter to the second quarter in each of the past eight years of CCC's data. Our our expectation is that new and used vehicle prices are likely to stabilize or decrease in, more swiftly than repair costs will. We believe this, in turn, should lead to a recovery in total loss frequency, eventually surpassing pre-COVID levels as well. In March 2023, Kelley Blue Book data indicated that average retail transaction values for new vehicles were below MSRP for the first time in nearly two years. In April 2023, this average transaction price was nearly $400 below MSRP, compared to being $600 above just one year prior. The long-term drivers of total loss frequency, of course, remain unchanged.

First, repairs are more expensive and less attractive due to increasing accident severity, vehicle complexity, labor costs, and rental car costs. And two, salvage economics are more attractive because the growing economies in Central and South America, Africa, and Eastern Europe depend on our damaged vehicles to provide the mobility they need. Although our insurance - U.S. insurance volumes continue to increase, up some 9% year-over-year, we estimate the total loss volumes continue to be relatively suppressed when compared to historical total loss frequency norms. As this inflationary environment persists, our insurance clients continue to experience hiring and retention challenges, and we therefore believe they'll lean still more heavily on trusted partners like Copart to provide additional services, including virtual inspection, loan payoff, and title procurement services, among many others.

Our Insurance Company clients continue to leverage and incorporate our image recognition tools and machine learning algorithms to enable better decision-making on total losses, and importantly, faster decision-making. As we've noted in the past, for a vehicle that will ultimately be totaled, Insurance Companies often nevertheless incur literally thousands of dollars in towing, storage, estimating, tear down costs and appraiser labor, much of which could have been mitigated with streamlined decision making. Our Insurance Companies continue to benefit from and appreciate the importance of our global marketplace in providing superior salvage returns to the insurance industry and minimizing their claims expense as a result. Finally, a few comments on the non-insurance world as well.

In the fourth quarter, we observed year-over-year growth of 13.8% in our Blue Car division, underscoring the realization of the benefits of our auction platform and our global member base as we serve the bank and finance, fleet, and rental segments as well. We likewise increased our dealer volume year-over-year by 5%. These dealers are unique as they serve, in some cases, as both sellers and buyers on our platform. In both cases, for the Blue Car and dealer sources of vehicles for Copart, we believe we are outperforming other wholesale channels for vehicles. Lastly, in July of 2023, we received approval from the competition authorities in the U.K. to complete the merger of our acquisition of Hills Motors, which we'd completed in financial terms a year ago prior.

Hills Motors is a leading vehicle dismantling business in the U.K. Our insurance customers in the region have made clear to us that they prefer us to be partially vertically integrated in auctioning vehicles on their behalf, while also directly satisfying some of their needs for recycled parts. With that, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Leah Stearns, to provide additional commentary to walk through some key statistics in our fourth quarter financial results before we open it up for questions. Leah?

Leah Stearns (CFO)

Thank you, Jeff. Turning to the quarter, global unit sales increased nearly 10% year-over-year, including an increase of almost 8% in the U.S. and over 22% internationally. For the fiscal year 2023, global unit sales increased over 5%, including an increase of over 4% in the U.S. and over 12% internationally. In the U.S., our fee units grew about 8% for the quarter and 5% for the year, primarily due to growth across insurance units. Our purchase units declined 3% for the quarter and about 14% for the year. Internationally, our unit growth came from a mix of fee and purchased units, with fee units increasing over 22% in the fourth quarter and over 11% for the year, and purchased units increasing nearly 21% for the quarter and 20% for the year.

Our U.S. insurance business grew relative to its one- and two-year comps of 9% and 19% during the quarter, and 7% and 28% for the year, respectively. This was primarily due to the continued recovery in driving activity, increasing frequency, accident frequency and severity, and total loss frequency, and share gain. Our auction returns remain strong as we continue to invest in growing our global buyer base by driving member recruitment, registration, and activation. As a result, our auctions provide insurance customers with best-in-class liquidity and returns, ultimately providing a more cost-effective way to manage growing claims costs by making it more cost-effective to deem damaged vehicles a total loss. Turning to our financial results for the fourth quarter, global revenue increased to $114 million, or nearly 13%, including a 1% or $6 million tailwind due to currency.

For fiscal year 2023, global revenue increased $369 million or over 10%, which includes a 1% or $44 million headwind due to currency. Global service revenue increased $126 million, or nearly 18% for the fourth quarter, and $345 million, or 12% for the year, primarily due to higher average revenue per unit and increased volume. U.S. service revenue grew by nearly 16% for the quarter and over 12% for the year, and international service revenue grew over 36% for the quarter and over 11% for the year. ASPs were up slightly year-over-year for the quarter, with U.S. average sales prices up about 2%, and that's compared to an over 11% decrease in the Manheim Index, which ended July at 211.7.

Purchased vehicle sales for the fourth quarter decreased $12 million, or 7%, with U.S. purchased vehicle revenue for the quarter down 25% and international up 29% for the quarter. For fiscal year 2023, purchased vehicle sales increased $23 million, or about 4%, with the U.S. down 15% and international up about 37%. Purchased vehicle cost of sales decreased $12 million, or 7.5% for the fourth quarter, and purchased vehicle gross profit decreased by about 1%. For the fiscal year, purchased vehicle cost of sales increased $29 million, or 5%, and purchased vehicle gross profit decreased by $6 million, or 9%. Global gross profit for the fourth quarter increased by $76 million, or about 20%, and our gross margin percentage increased by approximately 270 basis points to 45.9%.

U.S. margins increased to 51.2%, and international margins decreased to 21.4%. Global gross profit in fiscal year 2023 increased by about $131 million, or 8%, and our gross margin percentage decreased by approximately 100 basis points to 44.9%. U.S. margins for the year increased to 49.2% and international margins decreased to 24.5%. I'd like to note the decline in our international gross margin reflects approximately $6 million of prior period non-cash expenses, which are primarily depreciation and amortization, and the effect of marking our acquired inventory to fair market value, which was incurred due to our completion of the final purchase price accounting for Hills acquisition in the U.K.

The year-over-year margin increase on a consolidated run rate basis was primarily driven by a mix shift in the U.S., partially offset by inflationary impacts to labor and fuel costs and a slight decline in purchase unit margins internationally. On the cost front, our teams remain focused on optimizing our operational processes by leveraging technology and automation to mitigate the inflationary impacts we've experienced across our labor and transportation costs. In addition, we have recently observed some attenuation in certain expenses, particularly transportation, which was partially driven by reductions in the cost of diesel, which has experienced a 29% decline year-over-year. In addition, we are constantly seeking to optimize our operational processes by leveraging technology and automation, which we continue to expect will drive scalability and efficiency across the organization to continue to help mitigate longer-term cost pressures.

Turning to general and administrative expenditures, excluding stock-based compensation and depreciation expenses, G&A spend in the quarter increased $12 million and $23 million for the fiscal year, and G&A, as a percentage of revenue, was 5.6% in Q4 and 5.1% for the fiscal year 2023. Because of our strong revenue growth and moderate cost increases, GAAP operating income increased by more than 20% to over $390 million for the quarter, and about 8% to nearly $1.5 billion for the year. Fourth quarter income tax expense was nearly $72 million, which reflects an 18% effective tax rate, and for the year, income tax expense was nearly $317 million, which reflects an effective tax rate of 20%.

Finally, fourth quarter GAAP net income increased about 32% to almost $348 million, or $0.36 per diluted common share, while GAAP net income for the year increased 13.5% to over $1.2 billion, or $1.28 per diluted common share. Our global inventory at the end of July increased 9.5% from last year, and when excluding low-value units like wholesalers and cars and charities, global inventory increased 11%. That is comprised of a year-over-year increase of over 8% for U.S. inventory, or over 10% when excluding low-value units, and nearly 16% for international inventory. Turning to our liquidity and financial position.

Liquidity stood at $33.6 billion as of year-end, which is comprised of $1.4 billion in investments in held to maturity securities, $1 billion in cash and cash equivalents, and our capacity under a revolving credit facility of over $1.2 billion. For the year, we have generated operating cash flow of nearly $1.4 billion, which is an increase of almost 16% from the prior year. In addition, during 2023, we invested nearly $517 million in capital expenditures, with over 80% of this amount attributable to our physical infrastructure, and more specifically, capacity expansion, which contributes to our ability to serve our customers while simultaneously reducing our transportation costs and corresponding fuel consumption.

Finally, year-to-date, if you take our operating cash flow less CapEx, we've generated over $847 million of free cash flow. Given this strong financial position, we intend to continue to invest in our business to meet our customers' needs. These investments include yard expansion, new yard acquisition, logistics, and our technology platform. As Jeff outlined in detail, we believe that these types of historical investments have differentiated Copart as a service provider while ensuring that we have the capacity necessary to serve our industry's future growth. With that, we're concluding our prepared remarks, and we're happy to take some questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your questions from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from Bob Labick, with CJS Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Bob Labick (President and Director of Research)

Good afternoon. Congratulations on continued strong performance.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Thanks, Bob.

Bob Labick (President and Director of Research)

First question, I have a related follow-up as well, but I want, could you talk a little bit about the recent announcement of, I guess, a partnership with Hi Marley, you know, tech-enabled services in general to help your insurance customers? Maybe talk about what you'll do with, with that company, and if there's other areas of interest, where you might be partnering to help your insurance customers.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Sure. Happy to address that, Bob. So Hi Marley is a service provider in the insurance ecosystem, broadly speaking. They started in the messaging space in particular, but they're committed to improving workflow efficiency as well as the interface between policyholders and companies within the insurance industry. Well, I think we share that objective to improve insurance outcomes, to streamline processes and to automate them on behalf of all the participants in the industry, so we're delighted to partner with them. We see that they have achieved some traction with some of the leading carriers in the space, and we think that we can develop product offerings together that will achieve those outcomes, reduced cycle times, reduced waste, increased policyholder satisfaction in total loss scenarios.

Bob Labick (President and Director of Research)

Okay, super. And then kind of as the related follow-up, we're increasingly seeing AI-based programs just using smartphones for enhanced inspections or evaluation of autos, either damage or, or evaluation of the car. Do you see this as an area that you're interested in investing in? And is this a buy, build, or potential, you know, partnership opportunity for you?

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

I think it's likely a mix of the above. So we have developed and continue to refine our own image-based tools. And the more precise the exercise, certainly the more, the more difficult the development challenge. But to assess a vehicle as a total loss, I think for a healthy portion of them, the AI required is not that sophisticated, right? A car that has multiple airbags delivered, pardon me, deployed, and that collided at 35 mi an hour, that is five years old, is highly probable to be a total loss, and the image recognition will only enhance the conviction of that call.

Where I think the image recognition becomes a more complicated endeavor is when there's slight damage, and to estimate the actual repair cost, and to try to forecast from deflection in a given panel, how much damage has been done to the underlying drivetrain or computing capabilities of the car. That's harder to do. But for the total loss application, we have a robust product ready to be deployed and deployed, in some cases, with Insurance Companies. But likewise, if there are other service providers that Insurance Companies prefer, we're happy to plug in with them as well. Ultimately, we share the same objective: maximum, maximum efficiency, maximum speed on behalf of our clients. If that happens through our natively developed products, great. If there is a product they prefer instead, that's great, too.

Bob Labick (President and Director of Research)

Okay, super. Thanks for that. And then one last one, I'll jump back in queue. You kind of touched on this already, but just, you mentioned obviously CapEx this year, $500 million, 80% for capacity additions, essentially. Where do you stand in terms of your capacity and your yard efficiency based on the capacity in those yards? Obviously, you've had record volumes. You keep increasing that, that volume, and there's still a lot of room to run with total loss frequency, as you pointed out today as well. So just, I know you're investing $400 million in the last year and tons and tons of capital, but how do you see the yard's current efficiency, and, and where do you stand in terms of capacity that you want slash need?

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Yeah, I think it's a great question and tough to answer in a single paragraph, in part because the answer varies significantly by geography, by region, by city, even by areas in a given city. So as a blanket statement, we are certainly in a good place in terms of capacity and being able to serve our customers as they stand today. But we forecast five and 10 and 20 years at a time, and so very much still have the appetite for significantly more investments as well in land and capacity, in part to support the growth that, Bob, you observed at the outset here. So we are, if you were to look across our system, there's certainly pockets in which we know we need land relatively soon.

There are other areas in which we know we are in good shape for five, six, seven, 10 years even. But I think, we would expect to continue to deploy capital in support of our growth. If we look back now with the benefit of hindsight, after 40-some years, the land we have bought has generally proven to be objectively a good financial investment regardless, which is not to say we would be wasteful or reckless about it, but in general, land itself is not consumption. It's investment in a durable asset that has proven to accumulate value as well over time.

Bob Labick (President and Director of Research)

Okay, super. Thanks so much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Imbro with Stephens. Please proceed with your question.

Daniel Imbro (Research Analyst)

Yep. Good evening, everybody. Thanks for taking our questions. Jeff, I want to start on the demand side, maybe the equation. You know, you mentioned these emerging markets need Copart to provide affordable transportation. I'm curious, where else can those markets supply vehicles from at scale? There have been some headlines around maybe Asian manufacturers, especially China, exporting more cheap cars, but are you seeing any change in, you know, the need for those cars or, or the availability maybe from outside of China?... of your channel that you'd compete with on the buyer side?

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

In a word, no. Which is not to say that that picture can't change in the years ahead. But the international demand and, to be fair, there are countries that are emerging. In the aggregate, international demand for cars from Copart has expanded very significantly on a one, five, 10-year basis. For any individual country, the demand can be subject to economic volatility, inflation, unemployment, et cetera. But in the aggregate, the developing economies have seemingly perpetually growing appetite for our cars. Could that be satisfied by other providers? Perhaps, but it seems that a high-grade U.S. quality vehicle, U.K., Canada, for that matter, that can be repaired, is the better instrument to address that demand. And it has been. At least that's been true for the past 20 years.

I think we don't expect that to change.

Daniel Imbro (Research Analyst)

Great. Then maybe more near term, looking at the quarter. Leah, I think you mentioned U.S. vehicle sales, maybe units were down a few %, but there was a nice pickup sequentially in the service vehicles. Was that just a customer shifting, maybe from principal to agency? And is that still something you see in your new markets? I'm curious, you know, internationally, vehicle sales units were up a lot. Is that just the onboarding of customers that still want you to take principal risk, but the long-term strategy to convert them to agency?

Leah Stearns (CFO)

So in terms of U.S. purchase vehicle sales, we were actually up sequentially, but year-over-year, that was down slightly. So that does appear, and we do believe that the reduction in purchased vehicle sales earlier in 2023 was really a temporary phenomenon for the business. So we would expect to see that continue to grow going forward on a sequential basis as the market becomes more stable from an ASP perspective and more of the whole car space. And then as it relates to the second part of your question, can you repeat that?

Daniel Imbro (Research Analyst)

Just internationally, you know, that continues to grow very quickly. I'm curious if that is more the long-term strategy or if that is a helping onboard new customers remove the risk from the seller, but ultimately shift them to agency is the strategy.

Leah Stearns (CFO)

It's really the latter initially, and to the extent that we find opportunities to continue to expand in international markets, we may use that. But I don't think you'll see us grow significantly on the international side, particularly for the insurance business. We may increase our full car Cash for Cars business internationally, but that is a separate endeavor.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Yeah, the purchasing approach is a necessary enabler. I think that would be what you were hinting at when it comes to our institutional clients. In the U.S., a healthy portion of our purchase volume is our direct-to-consumer business, so to speak. This is Cash for Cars, in which we buy cars from customers, because to date, it hasn't proven to be a scalable solution to create a consumer-branded Copart. So the better solution for an individual vehicle owner is to buy the car, to offer a certain value to them, and to sell the car at a profit ourselves. If we could sell those cars purely on a consignment basis, we'd probably prefer it, and that certainly holds true for institutional clients as well, the U.S. and elsewhere. In the U.K., when we entered in 2007, so that's now almost 16.

It is 16 years ago when we entered the U.K for the first time. The mix there for insurance clients was very heavily principal-oriented. Today, we migrated to be a strong majority of those cars being sold on a consignment basis. That is generally our preferred approach, not necessarily because we make more money doing so, but because it is a better alignment of interest with our customers. When we buy cars from them, they want to sell them for the lowest possible value. We want to sell them for the highest possible value, and we're on opposite sides of the trade. When we instead are selling cars on their behalf, we're both rooting for the highest possible outcome and working collaboratively to do so. So it's a better alignment of interest with our institutional clients.

It's more conducive to a constructive 20-year relationship than a principal trading counterparty arrangement.

Daniel Imbro (Research Analyst)

Yep, that makes a ton of sense. I appreciate all the color, and best of luck, guys.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Craig Kennison with Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Craig Kennison (Senior Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. I wanted to circle back on ASPs. I think the surprise for me this year is how strong your ASP has been, despite, you know, the drop in used car prices as measured by the Manheim Index or other sources. I think you've explained that in part, as a function of mix, and I'm wondering if you can help us understand how wide the gap is between your insurance ASPs and your non-insurance ASPs, and whether that's the fundamental driver to that outperformance.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

In this case, Craig, it's not the fundamental driver of the performance in the quarter. I would... And I think it's fair to acknowledge that if you tracked Copart ASPs versus Manheim every quarter and go back a lot of years, they are certainly positively correlated, and there are certainly some leads and lags. You would have seen our prices jump well before Manheim in the pandemic. After the initial declines in the spring of 2020, our prices increased far earlier than Manheim's ever did. And then in late 2021, if I have my dates straight, we would have seen the wholesale market, as reflected in that Manheim Index, increase rapidly. Then, we continued to grow as well, but not-...

Today, with Manheim declining somewhat meaningfully year-over-year, our prices have held steady or grown, both for insurance units and non-insurance units. So that outperformance is not principally a shift from insurance to non-insurance. What I would observe, I think is fair, is that with used vehicle prices softening, we see total loss frequency rebounding. When total loss frequency increases and Copart earns the right to sell the marginal vehicle, those marginal vehicles will generally sell for more than the average vehicle before it. So I think that partially explains the strong performance on price on the insurance side, as well as, of course, the auction performance itself. We see more bidders, more bids per vehicle, et cetera, et cetera.

All the traditional metrics we used to talk about quarter to quarter, we're seeing still better auction liquidity, even per unit sold than we did a year ago, than we did five years ago, and so on. So that explains part of it as well.

Craig Kennison (Senior Analyst)

As a follow-up, within your, let's say, dealer service cars or Copart Blue, are you continuing to mix up, in other words, earn the right to sell a more expensive car? And is that in any way a driver to ASP?

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Less so in this. Yes, but less so in this case. In terms of the pure arithmetic for the quarter, that's not the principal driver of our outperformance relative to the Manheim Used Vehicle Index.

Craig Kennison (Senior Analyst)

Got it. Hey, thank you.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Thanks, Brad.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, press star one to ask a question at this time. Our next question comes from Brett Jordan with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Brett Jordan (Managing Director)

Hey, good afternoon, guys.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Hey, Brett.

Brett Jordan (Managing Director)

When you look at the blue car and the dealer cars that you're selling, is the mix of foreign buyers higher in that space, or do they prefer the salvage cars because they have the arbitrage of low repair costs?

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

I think it's similar, Brett. So yes, they like the arbitrage of repair costs, but and we're going to pull this up and double-check it real-time, but I think it's in the—it's directionally similar.

Brett Jordan (Managing Director)

Okay.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

They also like these cars once brought to the marketplace. That's the point we've made in the past about the flywheel of liquidity. We bring buyers, we bring vehicles to the buyers and therefore buyers to the vehicles, and those buyers, in turn, develop an interest for the cars we incrementally bring to the auction as well.

Brett Jordan (Managing Director)

Okay. And then you called out Hurricane Idalia in the prepared remarks. I guess that was a Q1 event. Was that the cost associated with prepping for that versus the limited cars delivered by that a negative in the quarter, or is that just sort of a wash?

Leah Stearns (CFO)

That, Idalia happened in the first quarter of 2024, and so that's-

Brett Jordan (Managing Director)

Right.

Leah Stearns (CFO)

Not reflected in these numbers.

Brett Jordan (Managing Director)

No, no, I was asking whether that's an impact in the quarter that we are currently in or?

Leah Stearns (CFO)

Yes, any cost associated with servicing the hurricanes that occur in this quarter would impact this quarter.

Brett Jordan (Managing Director)

Okay. My question was more like, was that a very high-cost prep event that didn't generate the return? I guess, is it a negative for the first quarter?

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

It is, but also to what extent that's just the cost of doing business in 2023 and beyond, right? So we'll talk about next quarter, next quarter. We definitely incurred some mobilization costs in preparation for a storm that didn't ultimately materialize. Now, I think to be fair, if you look back to major storms like Harvey, let's go all the way back to 2017, a lot of the massive expenses would be towing costs, temporary leases, short-term leases of racetracks and so forth. In this case, we haven't incurred those kinds of costs, in part because we deployed the capital to own the land, to be ready for it. So we would likely not have entered into meaningful emergency leases in this case, even had the storm arrived.

As for the towing, the towing largely never materialized at all because the cars weren't there.

Brett Jordan (Managing Director)

Mm-hmm. Okay, and then a quick question on sort of thoughts around the cash balance. Obviously, you guys are still piling it up despite buying a fair amount of real estate every year. Do you have any... I guess, is it just interest income off of that, or are there longer-term strategies around what you do with $2+ billion?

Leah Stearns (CFO)

Sure. With respect to the current investment strategy, given the fact that we are earning in excess of 5.25 on government T-bills that are short duration and tenure, we are currently comfortable using that until we find a higher and better use, and we continue to look at opportunities to invest everything across the spectrum of additional technology, land, logistics opportunities to bring down costs, and obviously looking at ways to enhance the broader business that we have. So, I don't know, Jeff, do you want to add to that?

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Yeah. Brett, over the very long haul, as you know, we've returned capital to shareholders via stock buybacks, and no doubt we will, we'll do that again. It's a question of when and how, and historically, we've done so both via open market purchases as well as through more structured Dutch tender offerings and so forth. So that is the long-term answer. In the near term, yes, we are investing that cash in treasuries, which is certainly yielding better returns than they would have historically. And we think the fortress balance sheet is of value to ourselves and to our clients. I think it positions us to act very aggressively when we see land purchase opportunities, for example. It equips us to respond to a pandemic in a way that a lesser capitalized company could not. Right? The pandemic arrived.

I know it feels like a distant memory now, but there was a moment in which we wondered if we'd be able to sell a car or if every DMV would shut down. Knowing that we have the capitalization we do, we're able to operate without furloughing employees, without suspending CapEx. We can continue our business as is, and we will bend so that our Insurance Companies can rely upon us. That balance sheet is part of what enables us to be that resilient in that environment.

Operator (participant)

Great. Thank you.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Thanks, Brett.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Brinkman with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Ryan Brinkman (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I thought to ask on the Hills Motors acquisition that's gone through with the regulatory approval now. I heard you say that it was, you know, driven by customer preferences in that region. But just curious about, you know, maybe gauge your interest in as we think about, you know, what you could potentially do with your cash hoard, et cetera, your desire or inclination to participate in these other sort of adjacencies, which might, in some cases, maybe be, I think, competing with, you know, buyers of vehicles at your auctions, although not sellers.

Is it somehow more restricted to the U.K., or is there maybe opportunity in the U.S., or are there other potential vertical integrations or adjacencies that maybe we're not thinking of, that could potentially be attractive to expand into inorganically?

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Yeah, I think that's an appropriate question. And when we consider areas in which we would expand strategically, we certainly always start with the question: What are we good at, and where can we deploy those capabilities most profitably? And I think what we know we're good at is managing a high volume digital auction platform, which we've done now for literally 20 years. So we started that in 2003 and have refined our approach repeatedly over the years and think we have a best-in-class online digital real-time auction platform, part one. Part two, I think we're good at managing the complex physical logistics of moving cars around literally millions of vehicles that we retrieve from various places, including homeowner premises, dealers, repair shops, and the like, and deploying all of the employees and subcontractors to retrieve them.

We think we're good at managing complex regulatory environments as well. So we have 50 different DMVs, a multitude of different countries that we serve that have different title processes and so forth, and we can navigate those universes as well. So knowing all of that, we consider strategically, how do we deploy those capabilities? You know, having followed us for years, that we are careful about that. We acquired National Powersport Auctions in 2017, which sells wholesale motorcycles, and we have not expanded beyond the perimeter of Copart, except to expand ourselves into new countries very meaningfully since then. So all of those investment opportunities would face a very high bar for us to pursue. In the specific question you raised, there are markets in which we participate today.

For example, the U.S., in which the dismantling industry and the use of alternative parts is a well-trodden path already. The insurance industry, the repair industry here, is well accustomed to that. And so there are many companies, including public companies, that are in that business today. I think it's unlikely we would ever ourselves enter that space, in part for the reasons you articulated, which is that we are the neutral intermediary that is optimizing auction proceeds for our customers, and if the best possible economic outcome is that that car is dismantled, the dismantler will buy it. If the best possible outcome for that car is that it is driven again in the U.S. or in Poland or in Nigeria, then our auction will find that buyer as well.

As you noted in this case, in the U.K., perhaps elsewhere in Europe, there has been less penetration in alternative parts utilization. So to help turbocharge that, some of our customers have made that specific request that they would like us to assist them in that. They don't. I don't believe they expect us ultimately to dismantle a majority or anywhere close to a majority of the vehicles. The point is that having that capability as well, at their request, right? We are very happy, as you know, to be the auction intermediary and to sell the car first and foremost to a third party, wherever that third party may be, whether it's in the U.K. or elsewhere.

But in this case, we'll meet our customers where they are, and where they were is specifically asking us to take this on, and we're happy to do it.

Ryan Brinkman (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

That's very helpful. Thank you. And then just lastly, I'd be interested to get any updated thoughts that you might have on the whole car market. I'm not sure, you know, what percentage of the Copart Blue is, you know, sort of the, you know, represented by the traditional whole car market. If you have any thoughts on... Because you still participate there via, I think, you know, in, you know, physical auctions, right? Although you're selling them virtually. Does that meet the requirements for selling, you know, repossession vehicles, which I think can't be sold, like, just purely online?

And, you know, just get your thoughts on the kind of, you know, online-only, you know, whole car space, and if that's, you know, anything you might ever desire to, you know, expand into.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

It's possible I'm misunderstanding your question, but we certainly have expanded into and are-

Ryan Brinkman (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Well, like what OPENLANE and ACV might do, for example, online-only whole cars.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

We do, I mean, in some respects, compete with them as it stands today. We are trying to earn the right to sell those cars from financial institutions, from corporate fleets, rental car fleets, and the like. So we compete with many industry participants, including the traditional physical auction houses you have in mind. So that's a reality and has been for a long time. Call it three-quarters of our business or thereabout is insurance, and the balance is not... And so if somehow the insurance, if somehow we were to separate the businesses, which for all the reasons you've heard on this call today, we never would. But our non-insurance business itself would be a large-scale auction house without insurance whatsoever. Now, so it turns out that having the two combined massively enhances the value proposition for both sides of it as well.

Ryan Brinkman (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Very helpful. Thank you.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Craig Kennison with Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Craig Kennison (Senior Analyst)

Hey, thanks for letting me back in the queue. I just wanted to follow up on the U.K. business. You mentioned, Jeff, that insurers want you to be more vertically integrated there, and you're going to meet them where they're at, which I understand. But is there some future state of the world where you could divest that dismantling business piece, or is there a fundamental need for that to be connected in the U.K.? And I just don't understand it.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Well, there's no expectation that we're going to divest, and we don't generally take on initiatives like that, intending for them to be temporary. But intellectually, I think the reason you struggle with it, Craig, is you are natively a U.S. analyst, and you are accustomed to decades of an industry in which the auction houses and the dismantlers and the repair shops are altogether separate pieces of the value chain, right? You've never seen them intermingled, and that's how we've operated now for forty years and change. We've always preferred the notion of pure neutrality, and we'll sell the car to whomever values it, to whoever, pardon me, values the car the most, whatever they're going to do with it. In the U.K., we've heard loud and clear, and it's not, it's not a one-off request, right?

It is a near consensus view among the industry that there is value in their salvage auction provider, likewise providing access to dismantled parts, and so we want to address that head on. Ultimately, the customer's preferences prevail. We can certainly articulate to them why we think the circular economy can be equally supported with third parties doing the dismantling, but we are also happy to do it if that's what they would like us to do.

Craig Kennison (Senior Analyst)

Is that unique to the U.K., or are there other markets in Europe, for example, that have that same request?

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

I think it remains to be seen. There are a lot of different forces at work here, including divergent views about alternative parts utilization. So there are some countries you can imagine in which the OEMs are very influential, and they're able to preference Insurance Companies and repair shops to use first-fit parts. There are other countries in which the carbon reduction initiative is more critical, and therefore, the use of recycled parts is more important. So I don't think it's the U.K. alone, but it was certainly the U.K. most acutely. But this is also a dynamic game, right? There's no question that preferences will change over the course of the next year, three and five in many of the countries we, in which we do business.

Craig Kennison (Senior Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Great. Thanks, Craig.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Jeff for closing comments.

Jeff Liaw (Co-CEO)

Great. Thanks, everybody, for joining us, for the fourth quarter, and we'll talk to you after Q1. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.