Austin Ligon Sales Quotations
Austin Ligon Quotes about:
Sales Quotes from:
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Adjusting Quotes
With an estimated television viewing audience of approximately 185,000, Charlottesville, Va., represents our first entry into a small market. We will be adjusting our store footprint, inventory, and our staffing model in this store, as a result of the smaller overall sales opportunities provided by this market. This store's performance over the next few years will help us better understand our longer-term opportunities in small markets.
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Base Quotes
Selling, general, and administrative expenses as a percent of net sales and operating revenues increased slightly to 11.4% in this year's third quarter from 11.3% in last year's quarter. As expected, the moderate rate of increase in unit comps was not sufficient to provide SG&A leverage. Having a larger percentage of our store base comprised of stores not yet at basic maturity and last year's lower-than-normal corporate bonuses were also contributing factors. At the end of this year's third quarter, 49% of our stores were less than four years old, compared with 40% at the end of last year's third quarter.
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Benefit Quotes
Our third quarter used car sales growth reflected increased traffic compared with last year's third quarter, as well as continuing strong execution. We were able to sustain positive momentum even as the cross-shopping benefit from this summer's new car employee pricing programs waned. Subsequently, new car sales and traffic levels dropped significantly, reflecting the limited model year close-out vehicle availability that resulted from the success of the employee pricing programs.
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Achieved Quotes
We currently anticipate comparable store used unit growth for fiscal 2007 in the range of 2% to 8%. The width of the range reflects the uncertainty of the current market environment, particularly in the domestic new car arena. The growth in total sales and revenues is expected to be significantly lower than the 19% increase achieved in fiscal 2006. This decrease reflects the difference in store opening patterns. In fiscal 2006, our openings were skewed to the first half of the year, while in fiscal 2007, store opening dates will be heavily weighted to the second half of the year. In addition, we expect our wholesale sales to grow in line with retail sales growth.