Automotive retailer America’s Car-Mart, Inc. (CRMT) has reported weaker than expected numbers for the first quarter of 2023 marked by its bottom-line lagging estimates. Shares of the company fell in after-hours trading yesterday in response.
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Revenue increased 23% year-over-year to $344.88 million, outperforming estimates by $12.52 million. EPS at $2 though, came in short of consensus by $1.15. In comparison, CRMT had generated an EPS of $3.57 in the year-ago period.
While unit sales increased 2.1% over the prior year to 15,536, units sold per dealership per month (productivity) remained flat at 33.6 sequentially. The company expects productivity to improve once the market sees more supply of vehicles.
The quarter was marked by supply-demand imbalance and higher vehicle prices. In this challenging environment, CRMT achieved its second highest quarterly revenue so far. Impressively, our Website Traffic Tool had this revenue uptick written on the wall for our users, as the total online traffic to CRMT witnessed a jump of 8.4% in Q1. Additionally, our tool shows online visits to the company increased from 718,290 in Q1 2022 to 1.42 million in Q1 2023. This implies despite a challenging macro backdrop, CRMT continues to gain traction.
Car-Mart CEO’s Comments
The CEO of the company, Jeff Williams commented, “We are ever more convinced of our strong, unique place in the used vehicle market and have never been more optimistic about our future. Consumer demand for our offering is high and expected to continue increasing, and we are well-positioned relative to the competition.”
Additionally, the company continues to create shareholder value via share buybacks. During Q1 it bought back 57,856 shares for $5.2 million and since 2010 has repurchased 58.4% of its outstanding shares.
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Street Says Hold After Recent Price Run-Up
Jefferies analyst John Hecht has reiterated a Hold rating on the stock alongside a price target of $110. Overall, the Street has a Hold consensus rating as well. The average CRMT price target of $115.33 indicates a 3.47% potential downside in the stock. That’s after a 26.4% share price gain over the past month.
Steady Gains Bode Well For CRMT
CRMT shares may have fallen on a lower-than-anticipated bottom line but the company continues to make customer gains in a difficult environment. With a price-to-earnings multiple of 9.2 and a price-to-sales ratio of 0.55 CRMT looks fairly attractive at current levels.
Furthermore, the market continues to toss up attractive bargains, if one knows where to look. Our data shows CRMT was the fourth most visited website in the retail space in July. Here are the nine other top visited retail websites you should definitely check out.
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