We left millions of dollars on the table. Can Hyundai rise up to challenge Toyota? This Florida car dealer is making big bets on the Hyundai brand and the future of the Korean automaker. Today on the car dealership Guy podcast, I'm speaking with Andrew DeFeo, managing partner of Hyundai of St. Augustine. Don't forget to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. Before we get into the show, this episode is brought to you by the AutoHauler Exchange. AutoHauler Exchange is changing how vehicle shippers and carriers can connect and work together. Now, if you need to ship a car, you can work with carriers all over the country directly. And if you transport cars, you don't have to look through brokerage boards to find good, fair jobs anymore. By eliminating the middleman, all shipments on AutoHauler Exchange come directly from the owner of the vehicle being shipped with carriers receiving real shipment opportunities at direct pricing. AutoHauler Exchange helps shippers and carriers work together easily and clearly adding transparency and making better partnerships. Get off the AutoHauler and Rollercoaster by getting on the AutoHauler Exchange. To learn more, visit autohaulerexchange.com or click the link in the show notes below.
Andrew DeFeo on the CDG podcast. Andrew, welcome. Yes, thank you so much for having me. It's great to see you. A huge CDG fan and really love what you and your team are doing. It's awesome. My man, good to finally have you on. We're over here in good old Philly coming off an earthquake from this morning. So it's been quite a fun morning. Yeah, I hope everything's no joke. Hopefully it was just an earthquake and nothing else. Yeah, I can only imagine all the couples yelling at the husband or the wife or whatever, like, hey, what's going on with the washing machine shaking the whole house? That's the first thing that I thought about. I'm like, what is going on? So that's been a fun morning.
Andrew, I'm really excited for this conversation. I think you just having dug into some of your accomplishments, what you've worked on as a dealer principle, found it fascinating your investment in actual physical property and the future of the showroom, which I think in many cases, some people will say, is there a future for the showroom? Will people be buying mostly online? You especially are extremely active in the tech space. So when I'm thinking about this at night, I'm thinking about the podcast next day, and I'm saying, okay, like hell of a juxtaposition here, because you are like arguably one of the most tech forward dealer principles I know in terms of actually, like, you know, you do venture and you do a lot of things like that in just a tech space. And you've also invested some of the most out of many dealers I know in your physical dealership. And so anyways, that's my that's my spiel to kick it off and kind of the juxtaposition or what went through my head as I was prepping for this episode. So we'll get into that. It's going to be super interesting. And it really cares what you're going to say. And before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about your background?
Sure, you see, so some dealers in this business have what's called a PhD. Papa has dealership. I actually have a GHD grandpa had dealership. And so my grandfather, his family was a baker. And he back in the 40s started to just kind of jockey used cars, had enough money to buy one sell that one profits to buy two sell two. And sure enough, in the late 40s, early 50s, he was awarded a Wiley's Jeep franchise, Jersey City, New Jersey that turned into a Chrysler franchise. And the rest is history. You are I mean, your third generation. And you're doing some pretty great things, which I think is, you know, did you ever see that stat? It's like most family wealth is lost after like, I forget, was like three or four generations. Have you ever seen that? Yes. Yeah. Well aware of that. I have the generation that sure me, my brother, my cousin, should have ruined the business by now, but we're still kicking. What was it like growing up with a dad and a grandfather into business?
Sure. So we basically had gasoline in our blood. In the state of New Jersey, there's something called blue laws where you weren't allowed to open on Sundays. So that's when we saw our father. And but during the week, they were from open to close. They grew the business pretty big in the 70s and 80s between my grandfather, father and uncle with a primary owners of Costa to about 35 dealerships across Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and luckily, Florida, we'll get into that later.
But in the in the late 80s, recession hit, they were spread a little thin. My grandfather was a very trusting individual, almost to a fault. And a couple of operators took advantage of that. And they got into some, financial concerns in the late 80s, but luckily, a private company called MCO came along that wanted to be car dealers, but didn't want to own the land, which turned out to be really good for the family long term and bought a significant portion of those dealerships. That group eventually became United Auto Group, which eventually became Penske Automotive Group.
And my uncle, Sam Defeo, was president of them up until 2006. And after retirement, my father and uncle are still involved in the business. And as our I've got a lot of family members and where we retain some of the dealerships in that transaction, we've picked up some open points here and there. Haven't made too many major acquisitions, but right now the group stands at about 15 stores across Connecticut, New Jersey, Florida. And I got the easy part in the family. I'm down here in lovely Florida.
Give us an overview of the group today, like just sales, service, what are you doing per year, units, and how many cars are you servicing that give us an overview? Sure. So the group itself, like I said, is 15 rooftops. The primary brands that we represent are Hyundai and Kia. We have six Hyundai three Kia. We still have a Cadillac store, a Chevy store, a Subaru dealership, Volkswagen, and two Chrysler Dodge D brand stores. The way the group is set up is that the DeFeo family or the majority owners, but in each of the businesses, we have an operating partner. Sometimes that operating partner is a family member, such as myself.
I have a brother that's in the business with me down in Florida. I still have two cousins in the business, as well as a brother-in-law, and then another cousin that operates and oversees the real estate portfolio. Before the show, as Hyundai is, I bleed Hyundai blue, so that's my main focus. I took a look last year. The six Hyundai stores retail just over 8,000 units, which represented about 1.1% of Hyundai's total national sales out of the 845 Hyundai dealers that were there. Here in Florida, the store that I'm most tied to is the one in St. Augustine. We've retailed just about 1,250 new Hyundai's, only 600 used. That's a big area of opportunity for us.
Now that we've moved into our new facility, our plans are much greater, long-term, probably closer. I think we've got 2,400 new and about 1,200 used in us on the footprint that we have here. Other locations, one location is similar in size, another one is about half the size of us, and then our Volkswagen stores about 80 to 100 new and used car a month down the street from us. Okay, so I want to dig into that. What do you think about, give us the background on your store, your new store. Again, I just found it fascinating that the size of this investment, which I'd like for you to break down for us, but I want to know, if you can just give us the background and why you decided to make this investment in this really nice new store and a new part of town.
Sure, so Hyundai itself has been in our family since 1986. Up in Jersey City, New Jersey, we were one of the first Hyundai dealers in the United States. We've seen tremendous growth with the Hyundai brand, especially over the last decade, but there's been some ups and downs, just like any brand out there. We were, had the honor of being awarded an open point for Hyundai in Florida. We already had two Hyundai dealerships. We were awarded an open point in Florida, typically with open points. You don't get to pick where you go, you just, if you get it, you say where and thank you. So it happened to be St. Augustine, Florida, so we moved into an old Honda facility that was building a new facility across the street in 2008. Back then, Hyundai was retailing 400,000 vehicles a year, and that facility really served its purpose. I'm sure you remember back in 2008, 2009, that was the great financial crisis. So I had two old lessons in life. I started in retail with the Mitsubishi franchise. We built a sales facility for that and was able to make the Mitsubishi store work. And then I also was able to navigate through the great financial crisis. So I had a couple of really good trials by fire to make it in this business. And I would say the old location, at about 2013, 2014, we really started feeling pain points around our capacity. We were only about three and a half acres. The service department only had eight service bays. We were only able to fit two cars on the showroom. Florida is a little different. You don't need huge showrooms because it doesn't snow that much so people can still go outside and see the cars. But we were really feeling the pain points. We looked at some land around 2016, 2017, but that land would have been protestable by the Florida franchise laws by other Hyundai dealers. So we passed on that. And right before the pandemic started, the local Toyota dealership, big, big Toyota operation, very well run, had purchased 20 acres by the freeway, by the old flea market. That really wasn't a destination at all. It was just vacant land. And I called up my uncle, who is one of our operating partners. And I said, Sam, I said, the Toyota dealership is moving up to the freeway. I think it's time with the Hyundai's kind of push for their new facility design and their facility program. I think it's time for us to make the move. So we were able, if we were fortunate enough to get eight acres. And this was during the pandemic. And we can talk about the pandemic.
But in March of 2020, we didn't know if we were going to be in business. If the government was going to shut us down, and they actually did shut some of the dealerships down across the country, including some of the family stores in New Jersey and Connecticut, luckily in Florida, the great state of Florida, our governor kind of pushed through. And it turned out to be a great thing for everyone. And so we closed on the property late December 2020. And the construction, we finalized construction in September 2023. We opened in December 2023.
Wait, so I, but I want to understand, right? How big was this investment in terms of dollars? So total investment by the time we put the last phone on the desk and the last computer, service and everything, probably $16, $17 million. It was a sizable investment. Pre COVID, that would have been closer. We think to about $11 or $12 million. So COVID, the inflation that took place there between material and labor really pushed the price up.
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And so if I'm a dealer listening to this, considering making an investment, what was the thought process that went into making this investment into such a great new facility? I think from two angles. One, I'm curious to know from economic angle, how did you know what factors went in, payback period. I mean, whatever you can share, two, from just a practical customer experience angle, right? Believing that the future is of auto retail still involves the showroom. However, that evolves, that is still the destination. So can you dig into both of those points?
Sure. So from an economic perspective, we reside in St. John's County. Florida is one of the faster growing states in the country, especially during COVID. There was a pretty decent size movement from the tri-state area. Much like Texas got a lot of California residents. Florida got a lot of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut residents. And our county is one of the faster growing counties in the state of Florida. And a lot of that growth was happening in the northern part of the county versus we were kind of in the central part. We were also probably about five miles off, directly off of the freeway. So if you drive by 95 in Florida, there's a lot of auto malls. And St. Augustine really didn't have one. The exit to the north of us had a couple of dealers, including one of the largest four dealers in the country. And so we saw their success. And we said there's definitely reason for us to be by the freeway, especially when one of the larger Toyota dealerships in northern Florida is going to be there.
In hindsight, if we were the only dealership moving, I don't know if we would have done that because Hyundai is a great brand. I don't know if they're a destination brand just yet. Toyota is a destination brand. It draws just a tremendous amount of traffic. And so the fact that we're right next to it, and now there's going to be a Mazda dealership right behind us, there is safety in numbers. And we kind of all complement each other. As far as our products, there'll be a lot of cross shopping. But the population in St. John's County is growing enough that there'll be opportunities for everyone.
you can share on the actual economic side specifically, like numbers wise, right? When you made that type of investment, what was going through her head, and how did you think about payback period? Sure. So the land itself, St. John's County, still even for people to live here, it's relatively affordable. So the land itself backed when we negotiated it was in 2020 for eight acres. It was a little over 400,000 an acre. There's parts in South Florida where there's probably 10 to 20 plus million dollar an acre for land.
So the land was relatively reasonably priced. Hyundai's facility program, the facility itself is gorgeous. But what came with that was the materials are a little bit pricier. So that definitely pushed the cost of the building up. But we're getting rave reviews from our customers. And it really improved the morale of our employees. And now we feel that we have a facility that is in line with the quality of the Hyundai vehicles that Hyundai vehicles have been definitely over the last several years or design has really upped their game. Like I said, the cost was definitely, I mean, again, I picked the worst time to open up a dealership in 2008 before the great financial crisis.
And I picked the worst time to build a dealership during COVID with inflation through the roof. But as far as payback period goes, luckily profits. Again, I don't think anybody in this business would have thought in their wildest dreams the amount of profitability that was made during the business during COVID. And we were one of the only dealers in our area that didn't charge over MSRP. We can talk about why a little bit later about my philosophy towards business.
But we still were very, very profitable. We could have been wildly more profitable if we took advantage of that supply and demand mismatch. But so profits were good. We put all of that back into the business. And we borrowed some money from our lender that we've had a long standing relationship for as far as payback period. It's probably going to be depending on how you look at it three to five years, the behind the scenes man, but three to five years, I think we're uncomfortable and saying publicly. Yeah, so look, when we when I think about that, right, three to five years, you make this big improvement in the facility.
A couple of things come to mind. First of all, does the manufacturer give you any preferential treatment? Any other ancillary benefits now that you're getting out of this? We know that it's better for customer experience. But what else behind the scenes is benefiting you from being in a facility like this now? Sure. So Hyundai, most manufacturers at some point in their life will have a facility support program. Sometimes it's not necessarily published, but this one was a published program called the Hyundai Accelerate program where they wanted to get a upgrade their dealer body, their 840 dealers. And it was a it was a favorable program. I wouldn't say that was there's been some manufacturers where it was almost like a 50 50 partnership.
This one, depending on how many cars you retail in your new facility, it could be 20 to 30% of the facility cost coming back to you. But again, that's pre tax. So that that money is taxed. So it's closer to 15 to 25% payback. Interesting. And how do you actually get that payback from the manufacturer? So that is in monthly payments to your parts statement. Now, there is and it's for only a period of time that was set for that program has since ended to be able to participate in it. But for the dealers that did qualify for it, we have about two years left on that program, which again is motivation for us to sell more cars because we earn more to pay back for the facility.
There was additional inventory support, which was helpful. Probably would have been more helpful if we opened during COVID when inventory was really tight. But it's definitely been helpful in growing our business. Our March sales were and we're just getting started. We were up 45% in new vehicle volume. We just missed our all time record, which was set actually 12 years ago. But we'll probably get it in April or May and then never look back. Interesting. 12 years. What happened 12 years ago that you think led to our record that long ago? Sure.
So during 2011 and 2012, there was a tsunami in Japan that caused significant inventory shortages for Honda, Toyota and Nissan. Hyundai also at the time had a new design called Fluidic Sculpture in their sedans with the Sonata and Elantra. This was before the SUV craze. So those two things combined really lifted Hyundai up. They really put Hyundai on the map. Hyundai was on the cover of Fortune Magazine and it was a great time. In December of 2012, we sold 144 new cars in our old facility. It's been a while since we've gotten even close to that.
Then, unfortunately for Hyundai, they were too sedan heavy when the shift to SUV happened. So while the industry was going 60, 70% SUV, Hyundai was still closer to 50, 60% sedan in their pipeline. But that's definitely been adjusted and we are now in a comfortable 70% SUV, about 25, 30% sedan. Why didn't you charge markups or why didn't you take advantage of the supply, demand and balance? So I am not in the car business. I am in the relationship business. And I don't necessarily focus on one single transaction, whether it be in my sales or service department. I want to create a relationship with somebody and then nurture that relationship over time with them, their family members, their friends, their neighbors, their social media contacts. And while in the short term, there was a lot of money left on the table.
We had people flying in from California to buy palisades because you could go on Reddit and see people talking about, you got to go to Hyundai of St. Augustine because they're not charging over MSRP for palisades. When some dealers were charging 10, 15, $20,000 over and look, there are many different ways to run their business. And I have all the utmost respect for everyone that was doing this. But I just felt long term it was in the best interest of our business. And for my employees, that we didn't take advantage of that supply, demand, mismatch equation. So I want to take the others out of the equation here. So intentionally. I want to think of every listener to this podcast right now, and I want to think what is going through their head. So a couple of things. First of all, I am a dealer and I'm telling you, oh, well, Andrew, that customer from California, he's just using you. He's not going to be a customer for life. So why go out of your way to offer them the long end of the stick when anyways, we're not a local customer, there is no relationship there to be had. How do you respond to that?
我们有人从加利福尼亚飞过来购买帕拉塞德,因为你可以在Reddit上看到人们谈论,你必须去圣奥古斯丁的现代汽车(Hyundai of St. Augustine),因为他们不会以高于建议零售价销售帕拉塞德。当一些经销商要价高出10、15、20,000美元,看,经营业务有许多不同的方式。我对所有在做这件事情的人都表示最高的尊重。但我认为从长远来看,对我们的业务和我的员工来说,最好的是不利用供需不匹配的方程式。所以我想把其他因素排除在外。故意的。我想起此时此刻播客的每位听众,我想知道他们在想什么。所以一些事情。首先,我是一家经销商,我告诉你,哦,安德鲁,那个来自加利福尼亚的客户,他只是利用你。他不会成为终身客户。那么为什么要费力地为他们提供长期的好处,毕竟,我们不是本地客户,没有关系可言。你如何回应这个?
Sure. So a great point before the internet existed, if somebody had a good or bad experience, they would say, hey, I'm going to tell my neighbor, I'm going to tell my coworkers, well, okay, that's 10, 20, 30 people, that's great. In a matter of five minutes, somebody can tell a potential, you know, billion users, billions of users on the internet about their experience. And like I said, like the power of forms like Reddit, if you search for Hyundai of St. Augustine, you can see us multiple times in there. And you know, did it again, we left millions of dollars on the table. But how much we're talking about, how many millions, how many millions were left on a table? That's what I want to know. Let's see.
So I don't do the math because I kind of, you know, but but I would say, I would say it's it's it's in the neighborhood just for Hyundai, St. Augustine, I would say easily, $68 million. Wow. Yeah. Wow. You left $68 million on the table. Yep. Over the over the three year period. Yeah. Yeah. And I believe it. I mean, it makes total sense. How, I mean, how did Hyundai feel about it? I mean, clearly, I'm sure they're ecstatic. It's great for their brand. But did they ever say anything? I mean, did they ever, like, was there any conversation about that? Not not us specifically. I think every manufacturer came out and and suggested to the dealers, like, we'd really prefer you to not do this. This is kind of a short moment in time. And there is going to be repercussions from it in the future. We're already starting to see that now. We're trying, customers from other dealerships are trying to trade their vehicles in from all brands. And we're seeing significant negative equity that we just, you know, in some cases, we can help them out. But in other cases, it's much like if you bought a house at the top of the market, I hope you like that house because you're going to be in it for a long time.
I think the other thing that I can imagine dealer would think right now is, well, when the supply demand imbalance was in your favor, you didn't take advantage. But now, when the supply demand and balance is falling out of your favor, the market will force your hand. And you will take advantage by lowering your price, bring it on rebates. So how do you respond to that? Right? Because if we are thinking here, like super objectively, and it's like, if it's all about supply and demand, then MSRP is just an arbitrary, fictitious number. And at every given point in time, there is a fair market price for a vehicle, whether it's higher than this arbitrary number or lower. So a customer is not going to pay you more now, right? When the vehicle is selling for below MSRP, how do you reconcile that? That's a good question. And I think, again, it goes back to our reputation. That's what I'm here for, Andrew. That's what I'm here for. Yeah. And I think we've earned enough goodwill over the years, because, and we can talk about not just during COVID, but just not charging markups, like they call them addendums in this business, or adding on what I feel are unnecessarily adds to $500,000, $2,000 pinstripes. We've gained a lot of business because we don't do that.
And I think customers, at the end of the day, we need to make a fair profit. And I think customers are willing to pay us a fair profit because they hear from their friends that we are so transparent and upfront in our process that we didn't take advantage of that situation, that we don't have markup stickers on our vehicles. And sometimes we've heard feedback from customers to say, I bought from you, I paid more for the vehicle because of the experience that I got from you versus the time it would have taken me to save an extra $500 from somebody else, or the other vehicle might have been able to sell me the vehicle for less, but they required me to finance with them, and then buy their family package and things like that. So I think of the long term, again, many different ways to run this business. But we run a pretty profitable business. I think I also want to make sure my employees know my team members know that I would never ask them to do something where they are not proud to go out to dinner with the logo on their shirt.
We can wear this anywhere. I mean, it was funny, I was at a you know, I don't eat it often, but I was at an ice cream shop the other day. And the person behind the thing gave me a little extra scoop because he said, I love Hyundai have said Augustine, and I said, I really appreciate that. And it turned out that he was in school to be a technician, and I said, we're looking for technicians and he applied, and I think we might be able to give him an apprentice job. And when he graduates, he might be working here. So again, that's what it means to me that we're proud to wear our logo around town. People know that we're a good billy to do business with. And it's not just the single transaction. It's a long term relationship with the brand with the Hyundai brand and really with our people. And we're trying to really get our people to understand that they are the brand. They want to do buy from that person, service with that person. It's not just about Hyundai. It's not just about Hyundai, they've seen Augustine. It's really about them, the frontline employees.
So with full intellectual honesty, was it worth it in hindsight? Yes, 100%. I mean, you're a living case study. Like you are a literally a living case study. What do you think was it? Like you said, the reasons you mentioned is there anything else missing before we move on to the next topic, right? Like any kind of any takeaways now if you could go back to 2020 or. So a lot of employees in this business, you know, much let's take the stock market. There were a lot of people during COVID that thought they thought they were the next Warren Buffett or Bill Ackman. Everything they bought stocks just go up, right? Stonks.
Same thing of the car business. There were a lot of people. There are great people in this business. But every it was autopilot. Let's be honest that during COVID that the car business was on autopilot, a lot of money was made. Pay plans weren't changed. So you had salespeople, sales managers, general managers, dealers, making an excessive amount of money. And they had lifestyle creep, most of them. And now their pay is back to 2019 levels depending on the brand. It could even been before that. And they're saying, where was my COVID paycheck? And it's not there anymore. So now those businesses are losing that talent because those people are trying to go somewhere else to make that site to help with money.
And my question, my answer is, where are you going to make that type of money? I mean, okay, Toyota, Lexus made possibly. But so we didn't lose people because yes, our team made money just as we made more money as a business. But it wasn't to the excess that you saw at the other businesses. And now they're losing quality people. And we've actually even picked up a couple of them.
So you mentioned other brands. I got to ask you, I mean, do you think there's a future where Hyundai challenges to Yoda? Like, do you think that's realistic? And when I say when I say challenge, I mean in market share, sure. So so so my answer right now is no, and it's not because I don't believe they can as a brand in terms of quality or brand image. I think it's because of production capacity right now. Now, over time, I know we've got the Metapplant opening up in Savannah, Georgia. That's going to be late this year that can produce about 300,000 up to long term 500,000 vehicles. I know right now it's slated for EV. But we're hoping it can produce some hybrids and some plug in hybrids. We might be able to dig into that a little deeper, dig into that a little deeper. What's happening behind the scenes here in Hyundai world, right?
Why did you just say that? Well, I, you know, I just read the headlines for any manufacturer. I mean, even just yesterday or the day before Ford announced that they're kind of scaling back their EV hopes and dreams for a three row crossover and some of their trucks, and they're focusing more on hybrids. I don't discount that EVs will play an important role in the framework of the United States. But I go back to my days at Toyota. They are one of the well, most well-run car companies, let alone companies. And they've been vocal that they think 30% is kind of the watermark in the United States.
And while Hyundai is a bit more bullish on EVs, they're also spending a tremendous amount of money in hydrogen. They've got some fantastic hybrids and plug-in hybrids. So it's difficult to determine where the EV percentage is going to be in five years. If you say, well, where would it be in 50 years? Well, yeah, I mean, let's be, yeah, it's there's not going to be 60, 70%, 80% ice vehicles on the road in 50 years in any part of the world. But I don't think of my personal opinion is I don't think it's going to be all EV. I think there could be even a technology that we don't even know that exists. I mean, think of the people that were fighting DVD versus Blu-ray. Nobody knew that streaming was going to come around. And now it's made all of that obsolete.
尽管现代汽车对电动汽车抱有更乐观的态度,他们也在氢燃料领域投入了大量资金。他们拥有一些出色的混合动力车和插电混合动力车。因此,很难确定未来五年电动汽车的占比会有多大。如果你问,未来50年的情况会如何?嗯,我是说,任何地方在 50 年内都不会有60%,70%,甚至80% 的内燃机汽车在道路上行驶。但我认为,个人观点是未来也不会全部是电动汽车。我认为可能会出现一种我们甚至不知道存在的技术。想想 那些支持 DVD 和蓝光对战的人。没有人知道流媒体技术将会出现。现在流媒体技术已经使DVD和蓝光过时了。
So my concern is that we as a country, manufacturers, I really feel for manufacturers because they've got to spend tens of billions of dollars in CapEx for something where right now there's some manufacturers losing tens of thousands of dollars per EV that they sell. And at some point, the CFO is going to say, we need to stop making these. And sure enough, we're seeing that from General Motors and Ford and some other manufacturers. And then me as a dealer, I mean, part of that that our spend on our new facility was EV infrastructure. It cost me probably $500,000, $600,000 between all the chargers, additional conduit I have to have. And I'll be up front in the state of Florida.
EV sales are not robust at all. We are starting to see a little bit of uptick because the manufacturers helped out with significant incentives. I mean, we're like, when you can lease an EV for under $100 a month with a few thousand dollars down, you're going to sell. It doesn't matter what it's powered by. You're going to sell that vehicle. And that's kind of where we are right now with that. So going back to the meta plan, it is going to be a world class facility. And I hope that they have a plan B in the near term to at least build hybrids and plug-in hybrids and TVs because our consumer base in a lot of parts in the United States are really looking for the hybrid and that plug-in hybrid option.
I want to shift to your store a little bit, like talk to us about your actual store profitability. Right. You did mention you have an opportunity in used. I'm curious, I'm curious about, you know, your split between new car profitability, service profitability, how it all funnels down to the bottom line. Can you shed some light on that? Sure. So, and again, a lot of opportunity in fixed-ups too. So last year was our last kind of full year in our old facility. Our service and parts profits were about 30% of our total net profit. We have increased our service capacity about two and a half times. So I definitely see our fixed operations business probably getting closer to 40. I really hope 50% of our net. And if it's 50% of the net, it's probably when we talk about the term absorption, how much your fixed operations kind of covers your expenses closer to 70 to 80%, which is pretty good for an import. Domestics are usually, you can get some domestic franchises that sometimes are over 100% fixed absorption because the warranty work is so much more on that. Keeping in mind.
Just understand, your absorption today is 70 to 80%. No, it's probably closer to 60 to 70% of my expenses. And then when you go to the bottom line closer to 30%, our new car business is about, I looked at the number this morning, was about 55% of our net profit. Actually, it's close to 60% and our used car made up the remainder of that. One of the reasons why the new car was so high is there's what they call below the line support programs that you don't aren't seen on, when you see invoice to MSRP, there's some, depending on if you have good customer satisfaction, you're using all the right tools that the manufacturer wants to use. There's some support programs. But again, we really see opportunity in pre-owned and fixed.
But on the pre-owned side, I kind of learned the ropes on the new car side of the business. I started at Toyota. I got into Mitsubishi then Hyundai, which kind of new car franchises for us. And I like the scoreboard of the new car rankings. My uncle constantly reminds me that, you can shoot for the move there, but let's get the used car number up. And there's some really successful new car franchises that are uber successful because they have that used car game. So last year, our new to use ratio, which is kind of a metric that we look at in the industry, was close to three new to everyone used sold. I think this year, I'd like to get a close sort of two to one. But I don't think we, and how they've seen August Steve, will be at that one to one ratio. I know some dealers that are for use to one new. It's that big of a swing there. Is that driven from what you're saying? Is that driven by simply fewer used or more new? It's probably companies from both really more new. Right now, we are not acquiring vehicles at auctions. It's really just we're trying to be super focused on driving our new car volume because we did get some additional support from the manufacturer. And from that new car volume, we're going to be very competitive at what at the curb of trading that vehicle in.
It's it's difficult for us like so in the state of Florida, the number one used vehicle is the Ford F-150 followed by the Chevy Silverado. Then you go down the line, the Honda CRV, the Civic, the Camry, the RAV4. It is very difficult for us to go to an auction and buy an F-150 or a Chevy Silverado at a competitive price versus the Ford dealer on the street that can take that vehicle in and sell it at a fair price. Now, we do great with our with our hunting vehicles that we take in on trade. And we definitely love the Hyundai certified use vehicle program. But at this stage of the game, I'm not ready to go out to the auction to try to buy other people's leftovers. And there's usually a reason why a vehicle has is that an auction in this day and age with all the the internet marketing and Google that if a vehicle didn't sell somewhere other than maybe a convertible in Colorado versus in Florida or on vice versa, a four-wheel drive suburban in Miami versus being sold, there's usually something wrong with that vehicle at the auction. But again, I'm learning car business.
So let's recap that for a second. The profit breakdown, we're talking roughly 50, 55% new, 30, 35% service fixed ops parts, and then the remainder from used. Right. Second, secondly, you mentioned that your use is primarily off lease, non auction. Are you acquiring use in any other way? Are you buying off the street? We are in the process of creating a campaign around buying off the street and in our service lane. I'm a big fan of cats. Most people are dog people. I'm a cat person. And so our mascot is my tuxedo cat. His name is Frankie, but we've created the mascot Auggie for St. Augustine. And we're just in the final stages. In about next 30 to 60 days, you're going to see a campaign around Auggie buys cars. And that's how we're going to go to market with being a cat dealership, not a car dealership to try to be a friendly place to either sell or trade your vehicle in. So we're excited about rolling that out. Alright.
So again, going back to what I mentioned earlier in the podcast, one of the most interesting things about you is your deep involvement in tech. And by the way, now that you've told me that you lived in California and you're now I add up, you know, everything adds up, I understand how you got exposed to this world. So that makes sense. I want to ask you though, as someone that is so tech savvy and you're so involved in the ecosystem, I see you tweeting and I see you're replying to and you've told me, right? Like, it's impressive because I know a lot of this world, given my prior experience having, you know, built a startup. But what are you seeing in the market today when it comes to either breakthrough innovative kind of game changing technology that is impacting automotive retail? What are you seeing? What is on the forefront that is really kind of, you know, has captivated your attention? Anything out there?
Sure. So I think it's the, you know, we look at technology, there's a lot of shiny objects. You know, we walk the floor at any day, you know, hundreds, if not, maybe I don't know if they're up to a thousand vendors or not, but sure feels like it, that we want to look at tech that can improve the experience for both our employees and our customers. And sometimes, it comes off real shiny in the demo, but then once it's implemented, it creates more bottlenecks in the system. And we're trying to reduce as many roadblocks and bottlenecks as possible to have a seamless experience.
At the end of the day, we're going to save customers money, but we're going to really save customers time because time can't be replaced, money can. So time is really everybody's most valuable resource. So anything that can save time in the process for our employees or customers is really important. Artificial intelligence, you know, that's a buzzword, but it's out there and it's that's big right now. And I think we, you know, we're looking at how can we answer the phone, especially in our service department better using artificial intelligence? Because a lot of times those calls are just, hey, I want to schedule an oil change, or I want to check out the status of my vehicle. And those can be answered by artificial intelligence pretty easily.
It's going to get to the point where if somebody says, how much is that oil change going to cost for my specific vehicle, artificial intelligence will be able to do that pretty easily. Is it covered under warranty? Artificial intelligence will be able to scan the warranty. What I'm really excited about, I'm talking to a kind of a stealth mode company right now that's going to be rolling out soon that if somebody calls on a vehicle, we'll be able to provide them availability and even our best price, which is really what customers want. Do you have a vehicle and what's your best price? Well, the AI is going to be able to say, well, you'll see what zip code you live in. Will you be trading a vehicle in? And it will kind of does the name start with a T. It does. Okay, look at that. I'll circle my friend. Like a system just because of that.
I told you. I told you. Hey, that makes me feel a little bit better about the investment I made in them this week. So wait, that's so crazy. Because I just, I just got a text about them yet last night from another person. And I'm like, what is going on with these guys? So they're doing something right. We're not going to talk about the name just yet. But something, yeah, so good to know. I'm interested in another you made investment. All right.
So, so, so I want, I want the AI to integrate with our digital retail solution. And so that can all happen over the phone. Because right now, I mean, look, I'm embarrassed. If you go to my website and go to my chat, it's managed chat. And I'm not happy with it. We're switching CRM providers. Been with one company for 15 years. And we're launching actually next week. The previous CRM company was great when we started in 2008. But they're just they their support went downhill and their research and development went downhill. And this new CRM company was actually built by a dealer group several years ago. And I really like it when technology was built by a dealer. I kind of missed the boat on that. I didn't develop any apps myself. But I'm invested in a few of them. But so we're really excited about that. And I want to bring chat in house. But eventually it will be replaced by artificial intelligence. And that doesn't mean that we're going to replace people. It's just going to mean that those people will now have more time to spend giving better face to face interactions or studying more on product knowledge.
We're really big on trying to inspire people to improve their lives through financial planning, learn more about health and fitness, which was kind of a rabbit hole that I went down a few years ago. So it's not just about the car business. I'm going to go back to a friend of mine, Liza Borges from Carter Myers, love people more than you love cars. And I love the car business, but I'm learning to really love people more than the car business now. And I'm seeing it in the benefits in the business. Now, tell me, do you think more dealers should just be involved in investing in VC? Right? Like, do you think that is like, is this a way for dealers to own their future, own their destiny? Or do you think it's a little too far-fetched? What's your thoughts on dealerships investing in tech?
Clearly, we know there's been a rise in dealership focused VC funds or dealer tech focused VC funds. We have FM Capital, we have Steve Greenfield with automotive ventures, we have auto tech ventures. There's a handful out there. But I'm curious to know what's your thoughts on dealers investing in VC in general? Sure. I mean, but, you know, caveat, it is a very risky business that most of these companies fail, but when they do succeed, you get a roadster, you know, companies come out of it like that. I've only been doing it for a few years now, but it's really helped me network with people that really weren't in my professional or personal network before. And I'm learning a lot about the future. And it's not just automotive, it's around the artificial intelligence space, it's around biotech and things that I just couldn't see in a retail business in St. Augustine, Florida.
I definitely, I mean, if I can get any advice, play with money that you're willing to go to zero, because it most likely will go to zero, but there's that one or two companies that you place a small bet on that can give you outsized returns. But look at it, not just from a return perspective, but really how I can learn more about the future and how this can help my business and really just help society in general. I would have shifted to Amazon hunting. Right. Again, you are very young. A lot of things in this basket. Who, who, what? I don't know anything about what he's talking about. Oh, yeah. And we're going to have a lot to come on this topic over the next couple of months. Some special, some special guests and special episodes. You have a lot of eggs in this basket, right? Two questions to start off. Knee jerk reaction when you hear the news, assuming you knew a little bit about it beforehand, but knee jerk reaction when you hear the news. And then your thoughts today, about this opportunity and what it means for the future go.
So I remember the announcement very well. And that was fantastic that you got our Hyundai National Dealer Council Chairman Andy Wright within, I think, 24 hours on the pod. That was a that was an awesome episode. I often go back and listen to it a couple of times just to get particulars. My knee jerk reaction was, well, Hyundai already had a partnership with Amazon. They've had it for almost four years. It was called the Evolve showroom. And so when I had some dealers calling up, you know, really scared about this. I said, you know, your inventory has been on Amazon for the past four years. They said it was. And the, you know, and and candidly, it wasn't a successful program in my eyes just because they got some great PR out of it initially, but then it wasn't really promoted properly down the road. Now this is a completely different partnership. And it involves a from beginning to end transaction, which we're already trying to do on our websites. Now you're just being exposed to the Amazon Prime brand. And it's almost 200 million Amazon Prime customers. There's still the details really are in all public, because I think they're still working through this. And the reason why is because Amazon, they want to make this, I don't want to, not perfect when they launch it to the public, but pretty close because this is Amazon's brand name on the line. And it's not just Hyundai's brand. Eventually there will be, I am sure there will be more manufacturers on it. But I applaud Hyundai for being first to market with this. We got tremendous amount of positive publicity. And now it's just time will tell as as they roll this out across the country, how the market will take it. It's been tried in the past with brands that aren't as strong as Amazon. We could look at Truecard and Truecard had affinity programs with companies like Consumer Reports, USA, American Express. And we saw some success with that. Like American Express Truecard leads were like the Glengarry Glen Ross leads. So if you've ever seen that movie, they were very, very qualified customers that were low funnel and they were buying from somebody. They weren't filling out something for a gas card. Costco has been an affinity program that many dealers have had success with. So this is another type of affinity program, but it's also got some tech behind it to see if they can make the transaction a lot smoother for the customer and hopefully for the dealer. I think I would tell you that I did also come after we did that conversation. I did feel similar to you that it was something that was maybe misconstrued in other media. And after Andy had explained it, it seemed pretty something pretty understandable and not all the hoopla that it was made out to be or something potentially very adverse to the industry. So I would agree with you there. I still think it's interesting to see how that's going to evolve and how dealers in general are going to do more of an online transaction on the new side.
So I'm actually surprised Amazon is getting in on the new car side before they would just buy like when Carvana was trading at $5, they should have just bought Carvana and they would have had a tremendous use car operation along with reconditioning facilities because I think at the time Carvana had already bought a Dessa and then they could funnel those preowned customers into the parts and accessories business that's very robust on Amazon.
But obviously Carvana's stock is kind of skyrocketed over the last year. But I still think that there is a play for Amazon to get into the preowned vehicle business. But I don't know, maybe I'm putting my foot in my mouth because I don't know if I necessarily want them in the preowned vehicle business. I mean, does that even make sense for them with no supply chain, you know, advantage, no moat, right?
Carvana, it's not even a franchise dealer. They don't have lease returns. They don't have any proprietary source of supply. Do you think that that is, it just feels to me like it goes against Amazon's kind of ethos of really owning their supply chain, having that competitive advantage.
While I did, while I agree with you that Carvana is a great organization and the way they operate, meaning they have the logistics network and whatnot, they don't have the supply chain advantage, even with owning an auction, right? They don't own the cars that run through that auction. So I think that's, I've always been very skeptical. And I've heard, I've heard, you know, Amazon, Carvana, even lately, I've actually heard it a couple more times from some people that pretty smart people.
But I don't know, I just don't see it. Yeah, like you said, there's no used car factory. And so the supply chain is probably the most important part of your preowned vehicle business because you've got to, you have to own that vehicle right to be able to make a fair profit and recondition the vehicle properly for safety and cosmetically and mechanically. So you bring up a great point.
But I also think that it gives Amazon the ability to get people into their ecosystem for that parts and accessories business, which is, you know, probably very high margin for them. And if they ever go down the line of also having Amazon service centers, like, look, nothing is out of the question with a company like Amazon. They've gotten into almost every vertical. They've also gotten out of a lot of verticals.
I'm actually one of the other reasons why I'm a tech guy is because I'm still a gamer. And Amazon went pretty heavy into the gaming space. And they've had a couple of big, big, I'm just say, flops. And they're still looking at it. But I think they're spending less and less in that space, as well as others. I know they're in the healthcare space now. They tried to get into the robot vacuum space that doesn't seem like it's going to happen. But so I maybe look, that's why I love this industry so much is that I've never been more energized over the past couple of years between, you know, EVs, new retailing models, some companies coming into the marketplace.
Hey, we're going to go direct to consumer. Actually, let's go to a dealer network model. And then, of course, we've got what was the Chinese vehicle, you know, thing looming in the horizon. So with that said, before we wrap up, this has been an awesome conversation. It's always fun chatting with you, Andrew. Thank you. I want to just get your take on the future of your group. And specifically, are you looking to make more acquisitions? Are you looking to scale? Are you looking to be more inquisitive? Or are you looking at, like you said, kind of grow internally, make yourself more efficient? Where's your head out right now? What's your outlook for the industry? And where's your head out?
Sure. Well, as far as the outlook for the industry, yeah, I love it when I see public companies acquire. I love when I see big dealer groups acquiring, whether it's their own money, private equity, because really, really smart people smarter than me are investing a lot of money in a business that my family is heavily involved in, that they see that this isn't a five, 10 year horizon. We still have a couple, maybe more decades of business that, again, like, yes, it's very profitable, but we as a dealer group, we give back to the community. Like this isn't just, you know, funding, you know, my boat, I don't have one, I have no desire to have a jet or anything like that. We give back to the community and we have a great opportunity to give opportunities for our employees as they grow in our organization.
So back to your question about acquiring, I'd say in the short term, no, because we've got a tremendous amount of opportunity in the 15 rooftops that we have now to, for operational efficiencies. But as we grow employees from within eventually, really, really good employees will want to get into the general manager role or a general sales manager or service director. And if we don't have that opportunity within our group already, they'll go elsewhere. So that's when we start to think about acquiring. But I'd say in the near term, it's really just focusing on operational efficiencies of the existing businesses we have. And fortunately, the brands, the majority, the brands are hunting Kia, which right now are really good brands to have. And I'm optimistic that they're going to be continuing to be good brands in the future based on the product pipeline and the people that are leading the company.
Well stated, my friend, Andrew DeFeo, managing partner of Hyundai of St. Augustine. This was really, really fun. Thanks for coming on. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, thanks for having us. Have a great day. All right.
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