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Asbury Automotive: First 2023 Acquisition Is a Big One

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On Sept. 8, Asbury Automotive Group ABG announced an agreement to buy the 20-store Jim Koons Automotive Group for about $1.2 billion. For Asbury, which receives 29 franchises selling 15 brands and six collision centers, the deal is its entrance to the Washington, D.C., area. The transaction will close in the fourth quarter or in early 2024 and be funded via cash and credit lines. We are lowering our fair value estimate by about 9% to $360 per share because we’ve been modeling $480 million of 2023 acquisition spending. We feel Koons’ 2022 revenue of over $3 billion and its size as the 23rd-largest U.S. auto dealer, according to Automotive News, merits a premium to the 0.3 price/sales multiple we had been assuming for 2023 deal spending. It is Asbury’s first deal since announcing its $32 billion 2025 revenue target in April 2022 and management has guided to $6.9 billion of acquired revenue across 2023-25. It also said earlier this year that it will update the 2025 plan at the end of this year. If the $32 billion target is lowered, we’d expect more share repurchases but may also reduce our fair value estimate to reflect less revenue.

Founded in 1964, Koons’ 20 stores are in northern Virginia and Maryland plus one Lexus store in Wilmington, Delaware. Nine of the stores are Detroit Three, mostly Chevrolet and Ford, but also one Jeep store in Vienna, Virginia. Other stores include three Hyundai or Kia locations, a Maryland Mercedes store, five Toyota dealers, and one Volvo. Asbury’s release says the stores include one of the highest-volume Toyota and Stellantis (Jeep) stores in the United States. Koons is one of 13 private dealers with 2022 revenue over $3 billion and Asbury expects Koons’ profit to be in-line with Asbury’s stores. The deal follows Asbury’s history of being willing to acquire larger groups as it did with Larry H. Miller ($5.7 billion of annualized revenue) and Stevinson Automotive ($715 million of annualized revenue) in late 2021.

The author or authors do not own shares in any securities mentioned in this article. Find out about Morningstar’s editorial policies.

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David Whiston

Strategist
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David Whiston, CFA, CPA, CFE, is a strategist for Morningstar Research Services LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. He covers the automotive industry, including dealerships, parts manufacturers, and automakers. He has covered the automotive industry since joining Morningstar in 2007.

Before Morningstar, Whiston spent four years in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ New York real estate audit practice and one year in its Chicago office working on real estate acquisition due diligence.

Whiston holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting from the University of Richmond. He also holds a master’s degree in business administration with concentrations in finance, economics, and organizational behavior from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation, and he is a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Fraud Examiner. In 2012, he ranked first in the specialty retailers and services industry in The Wall Street Journal’s annual “Best on the Street” analysts survey. He ranked first in the same industry in 2011.

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