16 Quotes by Austin Ligon

We believe that this recognition is an acknowledgement of how we're revolutionizing our industry. We're giving customers what they want in a car-buying experience by creating a company culture that is focused on being ethical, trustworthy, and respectful of our customers.

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.

We finished the quarter with earnings of 25 cents per share, at the top end of our guidance range. Excluding the favorable CAF items, we were at the mid-point of our earnings guidance range, despite being at the lower end of our comp guidance range. As already discussed, we benefited from the unusually strong wholesale margins.

We expect modest improvement in used vehicle profits per unit as wholesale pricing moderates.

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.

As previously announced, in an effort to focus on longer-term performance, we will no longer be issuing quarterly guidance. As we report our quarterly results, we plan to comment on how our performance is tracking against our annual guidance.

In fiscal 2007, we anticipate gross capital expenditures of approximately $300 million. Planned expenditures primarily relate to new store construction and land purchases associated with future year store openings. Compared with the roughly $200 million of spending in fiscal 2006, the fiscal 2007 capital spending estimate primarily reflects a higher level of real estate purchases for store development in future years, as well as the timing of construction activities.