OPENLANE, Inc J.P. Morgan Automotive Conference

Thank you, Rajat. Delighted to be here.

Yeah. Well, there have been some rumors. I don't want to comment on rumors, but in the abstract, in terms of consolidation, I think historically this industry was somewhat duopolistic in nature. Right? If you go back to the physical auction era, there really were two larger players, Manheim being one, ADESA was the other. ADESA was owned by KAR. We've gone through a period where there's been maybe some more fragmentation of that. I think digital technologies came in, that brought in some new players. We did a transaction where we sold ADESA to focus on a digital strategy. Today the environment is definitely more than duopolistic. There's multiple players, five, six different players. I think probably there is a rationale for some consolidation over time. Yeah. I do think that in most marketplace businesses, they consolidate to two or three, not five or six.

I think that is what I would say is more typical, I think that is probably going to be true of this industry over time as well.

I think physical businesses often tend to be a little bit more local or regional, then you can roll that up into a chain or a national chain.

Right. But the auction itself, at least in the old days, was more driven by your strength in that metro market or in that regional market.

Digital businesses, by their nature, tend to be more sort of coast-to-coast, national in nature, right?

Right. I still think the same thing applies.

Pick your marketplace vertical. Most of them tend to consolidate to two or three, has been my experience.

Yeah, sure. So Apax decided to sell about 8 million shares. It was announced yesterday. We participated. We bought $25 million worth. It was very opportunistic. We certainly wanted to tag on. We've been pretty active in the buyback market all year. We bought $25 million, $26 million in Q1, another $23 million, $24 million in Q2. So another $25 million here, logically made sense for us knowing where the price was. It also leaves us open. Once we clear the open window, we'll be back in market some more because share buybacks have always been part of our capital allocation. We generate a lot of cash, and we feel like that's a good use of excess cash.