CarMax Inc. 2027 Q2 Earnings Call

Thank you for joining our fiscal 2027 second quarter earnings conference call. I am here today with Keith Barr, President and CEO, Enrique Mayor-Mora, Executive Vice President and CFO, and Jon Daniels, Executive Vice President, CarMax Auto Finance. Let me remind you, our statements today that are not statements of historical fact, including, but not limited to, statements regarding the company's future business plans, prospects, and financial performance are forward-looking statements we make pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on our current knowledge, expectations, and assumptions, and are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. In providing projections and other forward-looking statements, we disclaim any intent or obligation to update them.

For additional information on important factors and risks that could affect these expectations, please see our Form 8-K filed with the SEC this morning, our annual report on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2026, and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q previously filed with the SEC. Please note, in addition to our earnings release, we have also prepared a quarterly investor presentation, and both documents are available on the investor relations section of our website. Our commentary today may include non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the comparable GAAP measures are available in the investor presentation. Should you have any follow-up questions after the call, please feel free to contact our investor relations department at 804-747-0422, extension 7865. Lastly, let me thank you in advance for asking only one question and getting back in the queue for more follow-ups.

Keith? Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us.

As I reflect on my first six months at CarMax, I am proud of the progress we have made in strengthening the business. Last quarter, I introduced our strategy for growth, built around four pillars that place the customer at the center of everything we do and that are designed to meaningfully improve how we operate at scale and support consistently strong performance. Our strong second quarter results reflect solid execution and the initial benefits we are seeing as we deliver on the strategy. Used unit comps grew 13%, driven largely by improved price competitiveness with total units across used and wholesale growing 15%.

Earnings per share grew 81% year-over-year to $1.16, supported by robust comp growth, other gross profit expansion through the performance of our Extended Protection Plan products, an increase in cash contribution, and continued SG&A leverage. I want to thank all of our associates for their hard work, which has underpinned these results. Enrique and Jon will speak to our second quarter performance in more detail in a few moments. Our improving performance has been driven by the speed and focus our teams have put into delivering our strategy. We have named our strategy for growth Shift into GEAR, and have rolled it out across our corporate offices and entire field organization. Our associates are highly engaged with the steps we have taken to strengthen our core operations, which are designed to deliver robust financial results over the years to come.

We have a lot to be proud of, and I want to highlight a few examples of the progress we made across each of our four pillars this quarter. While we speak to the pillars individually, like many aspects of our business, they are interconnected and many overlapping benefits exist. As a reminder, Shift into GEAR starts with a great offering. We will give customers every reason to choose CarMax by offering a great car at the right price. During the second quarter, we further strengthened our price competitiveness to support retail sales growth. We did this by continuing to drive efficiencies and reconditioning, dynamically managing GPUs, and then passing savings on to customers. In addition, we continued to improve our pricing algorithms to ensure we remain more competitive across demand cycles.

We did this by incorporating local market insights more granularly and by expanding comparison points across a broader set of vehicles. These enhancements resulted in sharper pricing that resonated well with our customers and supported our sales. Our second pillar is easy experience. We will make it easy to do business with us, both online and in our stores. This quarter, we enhanced the customer experience to better support the purchase journey from digital to in-person. We scaled AI voice technology to 100% of both inbound store and customer experience center calls, which enabled customers to quickly resolve their inquiries through our agentic AI tools or directly connect to the right associate for help. Additionally, we improved our digital experience by redesigning our car detail page to make it easier for customers to find and buy the right car for them.

Recent updates include providing greater visibility into our inventory selection, incorporating personalized monthly payments, and communicating next steps in the purchase process more clearly. The enhancements we made this quarter supported sales conversion, and we anticipate further gains over time. Our third pillar is add value. This pillar focuses on growing profitability by maximizing value across all aspects of our business. This will be done by connecting customers with valuable offerings and by capturing a larger portion of customer financing through CAF. During the second quarter, we grew our Extended Protection Plan unit margins materially year-over-year as we continued to launch our redesigned offering. Additionally, we increased our Tier 2 penetration and recorded a gain on the residual sale related to our 26B non-prime securitization. Our final pillar is run lean.

We will unlock efficiencies to enable a great offering, meaningfully improve how we operate at scale, and support strong returns for our shareholders. During the second quarter, as I noted earlier, we continued taking cost out of our reconditioning operations and maintained our approach of passing savings onto customers through more competitive pricing to drive sales. Also, from an SG&A perspective, we took additional steps this quarter to solidify achieving our commitment of $200 million in FY 2027 exit rate savings. To support and advance Shift into GEAR, we are strengthening our leadership team. Today, I am pleased to announce two key appointments that will help us build on the momentum we are seeing as we begin to deliver on our strategic plan. First, effective October 5th, Elizabeth Dirgins will join CarMax as Executive Vice President, Chief Digital and Customer Officer.

In this newly created role, Elizabeth will own and unify the end-to-end customer experience from customer acquisition through vehicle transaction. In this capacity, she will oversee our marketing, product, and Edmunds team. With more than two decades of digital product and customer experience leadership, Elizabeth comes to us from Volkswagen Financial Services, where she served as chief digital officer for the North American region. Second, Jeff Campbell, who has been with CarMax for over a decade, joined our senior leadership team in August as Senior Vice President of Strategy. Jeff is leading a newly centralized function designed to accelerate key decisions by bringing together all of our strategy, data science, AI, and pricing teams. Jeff has held leadership roles at CarMax spanning product, strategy, and transformation.

Elizabeth and Jeff both bring the skills, experience, and focus we need as we build a faster, more connected company that puts the customer at the center of everything we do. Both positions will report directly to me. Our customer promise is to deliver a great car at the right price with an online and in-store experience that our customers love. All the steps we have been taking are in service of that promise and to create confidence for the road ahead for our associates, customers, and investors. We have a clear strategy, a solid foundation, and a team that is committed to delivering strong unit and earnings growth that enables us to consistently reward our shareholders. Based on our second quarter performance, continued momentum, and improving leverage, we intend to resume share repurchases at a modest level in the third quarter.

Now I'd like to turn the call over to Enrique to discuss our second quarter financial performance in more detail.

Enrique? Thanks, Keith, and good morning, everyone.