You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: This is Sonic Automotive.
That was very choppy from our perspective.
I want to be sure that the listeners can hear.
That must a bad connection.
I'm David Smith, the Company's CEO.
Joining me on the call today is our President, Mr. Jeff Dyke; our CFO, Mr. Heath Byrd; our Executive Vice President of Operations, Mr. Tim Keen; our Chief Digital Retail Officer, Mr. Steve Wittman; and our Vice President of Investor Relations, Danny Wieland.
During the first quarter of 2021, we continue to build on our strong momentum coming off record adjusted earnings in 2020.
We generated record first quarter total revenues of $2.8 billion, up 21% on a year-over-year basis and record first quarter earnings per share of $1.23 per share, tripling our adjusted earnings per share of $0.40 per share in the first quarter of last year.
These results were driven by strong performance in our franchise dealerships, and another all-time record quarter for our EchoPark business, reflecting increasing consumer demand and continued execution by our team.
I'm pleased to report positive trends in the first quarter have continued into the second quarter, and we continue to see strength in all facets of our business.
We remain extremely confident in our long-term growth targets based on our current results and near-term outlook and the increasing number of Americans that are receiving vaccinations and beginning a return toward normalcy.
Given these trends in our progress to date, we are confident we can attain our goal of more than doubling total revenues to $25 billion by 2025.
And significantly increasing profitability going forward.
In our core franchise dealership segment, first quarter revenues were $2.3 billion, a 15% increase from last year.
Total franchise pre-tax income was $70.5 million, an increase of $47.9 million or 211% compared to last year.
On a two-year comparison compared to the first quarter of 2019, same-store franchise dealership revenues increased 14% and pre-tax income increased by $49.8 million, which is a 240% increase, reflecting the impact of our lower expense structure as a result of strategic actions that was taken last year.
Turning now to EchoPark.
We continue to experience rapid growth during the first quarter, achieving all time record quarterly revenues of $507 million, which is up 53% compared to the same period last year.
We also achieved record quarterly retail sales volume of nearly 19,700 units, which is up 41% year-over-year and ahead of 18,000 to 19,000 units we guided to on our February call.
In addition to top line growth, we have to -- build of our EchoPark model that currently use vehicle pricing environment during the total gross profit per unit of $2,339 and above our target of $2,150.
Our first active part delivery center in Greenville, South Carolina continues to outperform our model selling 160 vehicles in March at nearly $1,750 in total gross profit per unit.
Generally $100,000 and store level profit for the month.
Our outlook in the EchoPark stores and delivery centers also continue to ramp aggressively.
With our Phoenix hub selling 228 vehicles in its full month in March, driving $125,000 of store level profit.
The unit ratio of December's used car acquisition is already ramping up nicely selling 300 plus in total gross profit per unit.
And we continue to apply our learnings to each new EchoPark store we opened or acquired.
And results are proving the scalability and momentum of the EchoPark model.
We believe these results showcase the flexibility, value proposition and consumer demand or EchoPark's unique pre-owned vehicle shopping concept as more guests choose to visit our stores and or shop echopark.com for the incredible inventory selection on diesel pricing and a unique guest experience that we offer.
As an update on our expansion of EchoPark's nationwide distribution network and omnichannel retailing platform, we opened five new locations in the first quarter.
In April, we opened our latest retail hub in Birmingham, Alabama and our third delivery center in Charleston, South Carolina.
We remain committed to opening 25 new EchoPark locations in 2021 and we're on track for our 140 plus point nationwide distribution network by 2025, which we expect to retail over 0.5 million pre-owned vehicles annually by that time.
With our progress to-date and the continuing development of our omnichannel retailing platform, we are confident that we can reach $14 billion in EchoPark revenue by 2025.
It's important to recall that Sonic actually grew earnings per share in the first quarter of last year compared to 2019 due to the strength of our January and February results despite the initial impact of the pandemic in March of 2020.
Since that time, we have substantially improved our expense structure, which was reflected in the current quarter's profitability and operating margins and our expectations for the remainder of 2021 and beyond.
In the first quarter of 2021, total SG&A expenses as a percentage of gross profit were 72.2% representing a 830 basis point improvement compared to the first quarter of last year and 790 basis points better than the first quarter of 2019 which in dollar terms, while same store franchise gross profit increased 34.5 [Phonetic] last year, same-store franchise SG&A expenses decreased $7.5 million, demonstrating the permanent expense reductions we had previously [Technical Issues].
Turning now to our balance sheet, we ended the first quarter with $435 million in available liquidity and set an all time high liquidity mark in April at $570 million which included over $300 million in cash on hand.
More recently, the Company closed a new four-year $1.8 billion credit facility.
The credit facility was substantially oversubscribed with strong support from both new and incumbent financial partners.
We are very pleased with this transaction which has extended our debt maturities, improved our borrowing costs and raised our total available liquidity and fore-playing capacity to facilitate our growth plans.
Reflecting our current business momentum, expansion of liquidity resources, I'm very pleased to report that our Board of Directors recently approved 20% increase to the Company's quarterly cash dividend to $0.12 per share payable on July 15, 2021 to all shareholders of record on June 15, 2021.
Additionally, the Board increased our share repurchase authorization by $250 million, bringing our total remaining authorization to $277 million.
In summary, our record first quarter performance reflects steadily increasing automotive retail demand as well as constantly improving operating conditions.
EchoPark has rapidly become one of the leading success stories in the pre-owned automotive retail industry, and we look forward to continuing its rapid expansion in 2021.
We expect to see continued strong demand for both new and pre-owned vehicles in the near term, which should drive further growth for our franchise dealerships and the EchoPark brand.
At the same time, our efficiency improvements have enabled us and had enabled us to operate in a much leaner more profitable manner.
Despite the challenges we all faced in the last year during this global pandemic, Sonic and EchoPark has emerged as much stronger, more efficient organization.
We are encouraged by our successes to-date and remain confident in our long-term strategic plans.

user
sonic automotive q1 adjusted earnings per share $0.40 from continuing operations.
q1 revenue $2.8 billion.
q1 adjusted earnings per share $0.40 from continuing operations.
board of directors approved a 20% increase to company's quarterly cash dividend, to $0.12 per share.

assistant