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Text: Those risks include, but are not limited to, risks associated with pricing, volume, conditions of markets, adverse developments in the global economy as well as the public health crisis related to COVID-19 and resulting impacts on demand for new and used vehicles and related services.
Uncertainty regarding the duration and the severity of COVID-19 and its impact on U.S. and international authorities to ease current restrictions on various commercial and economic activities.
Uncertainty regarding the timing, pace and extent of an economic recovery in the U.S. and elsewhere from the unknown current and future impacts of COVID-19 and unknown future impacts of oil producers and the effects of such can have on travel, transportation, oil prices, which, in turn, will likely adversely affect demand for our vehicles and service.
Also, our ability to obtain an inventory desire for new and used vehicles and the impact of supply change disruptions, which may occur from time to time.
Also, our ability to maintain vehicle margins and implement and maintain expense controls and maintain sufficient liquidity to operate.
Those risks and other risks are described in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the last 12 months.
Copies of these filings are available from both the SEC and the company.
As required by applicable SEC rules, the company provides reconciliations of any such non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures on its website.
I'd now like to take the time -- to take -- hand the call over to Earl.
I'm pleased to report that for the quarter, Group one generated adjusted net income of $103 million.
This equates to adjusted earnings per share of $5.57 per diluted share, an increase of 236% over the prior year and an increase of 170% over the pre-pandemic first quarter of 2019.
Our adjusted net income results exclude noncore items of $1.7 million of after-tax disaster pay provided to employees who couldn't work during our February Texas store closures partially offset by an $800,000 after-tax benefit from legal settlements and a $200,000 after-tax net gain on dealership and real estate transactions.
These profit results were particularly impressive given the fact that our Texas operations, which typically represent around 40% of our total revenues, were severely impacted due to a record-setting February winter weather event.
Our stores effectively lost about the equivalent of a full week of business.
It is likely that vehicle sales were largely deferred into subsequent months, but the available service shop hours were permanently lost.
Also the U.K. remained under lockdown throughout the entire first quarter.
With so many restrictions in all our markets in 2020, it was difficult to generate revenue growth.
This improvement was driven by new and used vehicle revenue increases in the U.S., of well over 20% in the first quarter.
Of course, we should remember that the pandemic did start to negatively impact traffic and sales during the second half of March last year.
But the important fact is that consumer demand for vehicles in the U.S. remains extremely strong and hit an even higher year in March.
It is true that sales have and will be hampered to a certain degree by low inventory levels.
But this continues to support above-average margin levels.
Daryl will speak more about our inventory situation shortly.
Our aftersales business has suffered throughout the pandemic from less driving and a variety of lockdown conditions in all our markets.
In particular, our U.S. business started 2021 very slowly in January and February, but exploded in March.
Again, Daryl, will provide more detail, but this gives us great confidence that we will enjoy very strong parts and service business this spring and summer in both the U.S. and also likely the U.K. as those facilities are now completely open.
In the U.S., we are especially pleased that our service results have now returned to pre-pandemic levels.
On a same-store basis, our U.S. total aftersales gross profit increased 3% versus the first quarter of 2019, and customer paid gross profit increased 14% over that same pre-pandemic time period.
These are very encouraging signs for continued aftersales improvement in 2021.
Daryl will provide more detail on our U.S. results in a moment.
Relative to the U.K., mandatory lockdowns began on November 5, 2020, and lasted through the entire first quarter.
They have since been lifted as of April 12.
Like the U.S., our U.K. operations have shifted heavily to online selling via our Acceleride platform since our showrooms have been closed for five months.
Despite not having the benefit of physical sales departments, or the ability to conduct test drives, we were able to deliver over 13,000 new and used vehicles during the quarter.
Limited new vehicle availability increased our same-store new vehicle margins by 160 basis points to 5.6% during the first quarter.
Our aftersales margin increased by almost 400 basis points to 58.4% as most service work at our dealerships was heavy repair work as customers chose to defer routine maintenance until after the lockdown.
The strong new vehicle and aftersales margins combined with strong cost discipline, evidenced by an 1,800 basis point same-store SG&A improvement over last year, enabled us to generate a meaningful level of profit in the U.K. despite closed showrooms.
As we were permitted to open showrooms again on April 12, we've seen very strong sales and service traffic levels back in our dealerships.
This gives us a high level of confidence in our U.K. business during the remainder of 2021.
A number of factors contributed to our outstanding U.S. first quarter results, namely, new and used vehicle sales growth, aftersales growth and continued strong cost discipline, all of which are a continuation of the trends from the second half of 2020.
Compared to the pre-pandemic first quarter of 2019, our same-store new and used unit sales increased by 11% and 5%, respectively.
This 11% increase in new outperformed the retail industry.
U.S. new vehicle inventory levels finished the quarter at 14,500 units, of 34 days supply.
We anticipate inventories remaining tight and we'll continue to adjust our operations as necessary.
Our same-store used vehicle unit sales improved sequentially by 14%, along with a 5% growth over the first quarter of 2019.
Used inventories remain constrained as well.
However, we've made a number of changes in our merchandising, sourcing, reconditioning and acquisition processes that have resulted in higher velocity and better inventory return.
Although we are around record high monthly levels of 90 units sold core rooftop, in the quarter, we continue to believe there is a great deal of opportunity in used vehicles in our dealerships going forward.
The second and most encouraging profit driver was our aftersales performance.
Warranty and collision sales were still very depressed in January and February, but we saw improvement in March.
Our customer pay business is very strong.
As Earl mentioned, our same-store CP customer pay gross profit was up 14% versus the first quarter of 2019.
This allowed us to grow total aftersales gross profit by 3% versus pre-pandemic levels, despite the significant headwinds in warranty and collision, both of which will reverse in time.
We saw a significant expansion in gross profit per repair order in the quarter, offsetting RO declines.
In March, traffic counts increased and our same-store customer pay RO count grew 23% versus March of 2020.
We foresee aftersales continuing to ramp-up in the near term.
The third major factor driving our outstanding profit performance was continued cost discipline.
Our first quarter adjusted SG&A as a percentage of gross profit was 63%, down from 74% in the pre-pandemic first quarter of 2019.
Part of the decline is certainly due to higher vehicle margins, which we don't believe to be fully permanent, but a material part of the improvement is due to productivity gains.
For example, because of tools like Acceleride, our salespeople are more productive.
Because of our mix, the higher mix of flat rate techs, our techs are more productive.
These examples of permanent productivity gains will allow for us a significant ongoing reduction in our cost structure.
I would like to provide another quarterly update on Acceleride, our digital retailing platform.
We continued our upward trajectory in the first quarter by selling a record 4,000 vehicles through Acceleride, an increase of 124% over the prior year and 7% of total retail units sold.
Customers choosing Acceleride continue to close at a much higher rate than our other sources.
Additionally, I would like to share with you a number of enhancements we have made or will make soon to the Acceleride platform.
First, we've integrated real-time loan payoff quotes within the platform.
Second, we launched an Android App in addition to our existing Apple App.
Third, customers now have the ability to toggle between English and Spanish.
And fourth, in addition to be able to reserve a vehicle with a credit card, customers also now have the ability to process down payments for any amount directly through the app.
And fifth, over the next couple of months, we will introduce dynamic delivery fees live within the customer workflow.
This will introduce delivery fees earlier in the process and include them in the monthly payment calculation based on the customer's delivery address.
We're also working through numerous other enhancements and will provide future updates as appropriate.
We believe our digital retailing process is second to none in the industry, and we continue making improvements to remain at the forefront of this transformative technology.
Turning quickly to Brazil.
Despite a 7% decline in new vehicle industry sales driven by tight inventories and additional COVID lockdowns, our team did a tremendous job of growing margins and aggressively thinning the cost structure in order to realize a very strong quarterly profit in what is seasonally the weakest quarter of the year.
We easily set a record for the most profitable first quarter over the entire eight years of Group 1's ownership and are well positioned to benefit from a sales rebound coming out of the pandemic.
As of March 31, we had $83 million of cash on hand and another $245 million invested in our floorplan offset accounts bringing total cash liquidity to $328 million.
There was also another $283 million of additional borrowing capacity on our U.S. syndicated acquisition line bringing total immediate liquidity to over $600 million.
We also generated $157 million of adjusted operating cash flow in the first quarter and $134 million of free cash flow after backing out capex.
Our rent adjusted leverage ratio as defined by our U.S. syndicated credit facility which reduced to two times at the end of March, leaving plenty of flexibility for capital deployment.
On a net basis, which considers all U.S. cash on hand, our leverage was 1.6 times as of March 31.
Finally, related to interest expense.
Our quarterly floorplan interest of $7.6 million was a decrease of $5.3 million or 41% from the first quarter of 2020.
This decline was primarily driven by lower inventory levels and related borrowings.
Non-floorplan interest expense decreased by $4.3 million or 24% from prior year, primarily due to the last year's bond debt refinancing.
As a reminder, we continue to manage our interest risk conservatively.
We have floorplan swaps averaging $550 million in place through 2026.
We also considering our mortgage swaps on bond debt, over 75% of our debt is at fixed rates.
As a result, a 100-basis point increase in interest rates would only have an approximate $0.20 negative impact on our annual EPS.
Our balance sheet and liquidity position have never been stronger, and we look forward to growing the company through M&A.
We are seeing a strong flow of potential deals and anticipate closing or entering into contracts to acquire additional dealerships this year.
Related to our corporate development efforts, we previously announced the March acquisition of two Toyota franchises on Cape Cod that increased our new England platform to 10 stores and will contribute $120 million in incremental annual revenues.
We also previously announced the January dispositions of the Cadillac franchise in the Dallas-Fort Worth market area and a mini franchise in the El Paso market.
We've also since completed the termination of the U.K. Ford franchise in March and the disposition of a Mississippi Kia franchise in April.
As Daniel mentioned, we continue to prioritize external growth in our capital allocation process and we're optimistic that we will have beneficial opportunities as the year progresses.

user
compname announces record first quarter 2021 financial results.
q1 adjusted non-gaap earnings per share $5.57.
compname says q1 revenue increase driven by u.s. new and used vehicle revenue growth of more than 20 percent.
quarterly new vehicle revenue increased 15.0 percent, on a 4.3 percent increase in unit sales.

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