OPENLANE, Inc 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Please go ahead. Thank you, operator.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to OPENLANE's second quarter 2026 earnings call. With me today are Peter Kelly, CEO of OPENLANE, and Brad Herring, CFO of OPENLANE. Our remarks today include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results or performance to differ materially from such statements. Factors that could cause such differences include those discussed in our press release issued today and in our SEC filings. Certain non-GAAP financial measures, as defined under the SEC rules, will be discussed on this call. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures are provided in our earnings materials and are available in the investor relations section of our website. Please note that all financial and operational metrics presented during this call are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise specifically noted.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Peter.

Thank you, Bill, thank you everyone for joining the call today. I'm very pleased to report on OPENLANE's strong second quarter results. I'll begin with a few highlights from the quarter and an update on our strategy and outlook, and then Brad will walk you through our financial and operational performance and provide you with more detail around our updated guidance for 2026. OPENLANE's performance in the second quarter represents meaningful contributions from all parts of our organization and clearly demonstrates the powerful growth engine the company has built. Our strategy remains sound. Our execution remains focused. Our investments are generating the expected outcomes, and the unique characteristics of our digital model are resonating with customers and further differentiating OPENLANE in the market. During the second quarter, OPENLANE's positive momentum continued to accelerate, growing consolidated revenue by 15% and delivering Adjusted EBITDA of $103 million, an increase of 19%.

These results were led by strong marketplace performance in both dealer and commercial and another solid quarter from our finance business, AFC. In the marketplace segment, we grew overall vehicles sold by 27%, increased GMV by 41% to $10.5 billion, and delivered $57 million in Adjusted EBITDA, representing a 27% increase. In our dealer-to-dealer business, we grew vehicles sold by 13% overall. Volume contracted in Canada but grew by approximately 31% in the United States. The U.S. growth was the result of our go-to-market investments, our expanding customer base, our technology advantage, and the unique combination of inventory offered across our marketplace. In the commercial business, we saw a 39% increase in vehicles sold. Again, a good portion of this was driven by the addition of our latest private label customer earlier this year.

Excluding that step function increase, we still saw commercial vehicle sales grow by 14% during the quarter. I want to emphasize that we remain in the very early days of the off-lease inflection, and we expect to see year-on-year growth in off-lease volumes throughout the remainder of 2026 and beyond. Moving to our finance segment, AFC also had another good quarter across the board, growing loan transactions, active dealers, and average receivables managed while holding the loan loss rate to 1.2% and generating $46 million in Adjusted EBITDA, an increase of 10%. I would like to point out that while I consider these to be strong results, they would in fact have been even stronger had it not been for the significant increases in diesel prices that negatively impacted our transport margins.

That said, I'm very pleased that in spite of that headwind, OPENLANE delivered record growth in multiple areas, outperformed the industry, captured additional market share, expanded our dealer base, and demonstrated the strength, resilience, and adaptability of our team and our digital operating models. All of this gives me confidence in raising our 2026 consolidated Adjusted EBITDA guidance to the range of $385 million-$400 million. Let me turn to our outlook and strategy. As I mentioned at the start of the call, our strategy and investments are delivering results, and we remain committed to advancing our three strategic priorities. First, delivering the best marketplace, expanding our depth and breadth with more buyers and more sellers, and offering the most diverse commercial and dealer inventory available. Second, delivering the best technology, innovative products and services that help our customers make informed decisions and help achieve better outcomes.

Third, delivering the best customer experience, keeping our marketplace fast, fair, and transparent, making it easy for customers to transact, and making OPENLANE the most preferred marketplace. I'll touch on each of these in a little more detail. First, in terms of offering the best marketplace, we continue to make significant gains across all core metrics. On the dealer side, we delivered the sixth straight quarter of double-digit increases in new buyers, sellers, and unique vehicles listed, each of which were up over 20% in the United States and reached all-time OPENLANE highs. We continue to onboard new rooftops for many of the nation's largest dealer groups, while increasing transactions with our existing major dealer accounts. We also increased volumes purchased and sold among some of the largest independent dealer groups in the country.

AFC's registration of independent dealers onto the OPENLANE marketplace also grew significantly during the quarter, bringing the total AFC dealer base enrollment on OPENLANE to over 60%. On the commercial side, our commercial customers continue to seek strategies to sell more vehicles through OPENLANE's digital channels. Buyers on our private label programs grew 20% during the quarter, a positive signal of sustained demand for the off-lease inventory only available on OPENLANE. Additionally, more than two-thirds of our private label franchise dealers have now been activated as buyers or sellers in OPENLANE's open marketplace. This helped drive a 75% increase in the number of commercial vehicles sold in that most valuable U.S. open sale channel during the quarter. One note on commercial, used vehicle values remained elevated in Q2, which is generally a positive for both the dealer business and for AFC.

It also drove an increase in lease equity values, which slowed the rate of vehicles flowing down to the more valuable channels of the off-lease waterfall. Our expectation remains, however, that consumer payoffs should generally decline over time as off-lease maturities increase and end-of-lease equity contracts. From a best technology perspective, we continue to expand the utility and application of OPENLANE Intelligence, our human and AI-enhanced capabilities that are aimed at delivering actionable insights that improve customer decision-making. In Canada, more than 800 dealers have enrolled in MyLot, our subscription-based SaaS inventory management tool that we launched in Q1. Our Absolute Sales feature remains a customer favorite, now accounting for over 60% of all open sale transactions in the U.S., and now generates over $900 in additional price realization per vehicle for sellers using this feature.

While not a new product, we're rolling out a fully redesigned auction management system in Canada. This replaces legacy physical auction technology with a highly integrated, highly efficient system that significantly modernizes our digital marketplace and customer experience in Canada. Finally, speaking of customer experience, we continue to advance human and AI capabilities aimed at improving customer interactions with OPENLANE. During the second quarter, we released a new feature in the U.S. that gives dealers a clear dashboard view of their entire portfolio of vehicles purchased, sold, listed, and active bids on OPENLANE. We also launched a new mobile arbitrations option where dealers can submit photos and video evidence directly from their phones. We began installing a new phone system that enables a more accurate routing and resolution of customer calls, while helping us monitor less tangible metrics such as dealer sentiment.

At the end of Q2, our transactional NPS scores across all geographies remained in the great to excellent range. Once again, our U.S. seller NPS achieved the highest scores, indicating exceptional customer loyalty and brand satisfaction. Our brand awareness and preference scores on internal and third-party surveys also continued to rise during the quarter. As we look into the second half of 2026, I believe there is still a lot of opportunity for OPENLANE, and I'm very optimistic about our ability to execute our strategy with precision. We anticipate a relatively stable dealer market with our value proposition and a strong execution enabling continued gains in volume, market share, and wallet share. Our 2025 go-to-market investments in dealer to dealer continue to ramp up towards full productivity, and we're leaning into additional investments in 2026 based on that success.

Our Canadian business is successfully leveraging its leading market position, and our new revenue-generating products and services are gaining traction and momentum. As stated earlier, we expect off-lease supply to scale throughout the year, OPENLANE will be a primary beneficiary of this cyclical recovery. We will continue to balance growth and risk management at AFC. Finally, while we continue to monitor geopolitical and other macro factors that could impact our industry, we believe that our business model is resilient, adaptable, and highly capable of navigating new economic or industry challenges should they arise. At the risk of repeating myself from our last few calls, OPENLANE remains well-positioned in the market, and we're executing a strategy that is delivering results, winning customers, and outpacing the industry. Because of that, I believe the key elements of our value proposition for investors remain very compelling.