ROGERS, Ark. -

With America’s Car-Mart locations turning vehicles on a monthly pace at a record level, the buy-here, pay-here dealership network closed its 2021 fiscal year with the highest amount of quarterly revenue in company history.

The successes prompted Car-Mart president and chief executive officer Jeff Williams to say, “We are transitioning from a collections company to a sales company that is very good at collections.”

Car-Mart’s retail vehicle sales for the entire fiscal year jumped 7.4% as its locations watched 56,806 units roll over the curb, up from 52,914 vehicles retailed during its 2020 fiscal year.

Williams indicated that during the company’s fourth quarter, Car-Mart’s 151 locations averaged 36.5 sales per month, establishing a new record and in part prompting his comment contained in a news release about the company’s positive transition.

Williams elaborated about other ways Car-Mart continues to be in sales mode.

“We are completing the rollout of our new service contracts and the reaction from our customers has been very positive,” Williams said. “As we have previously stated, we believe that most of our existing dealerships could support 1,000 or more customers over time and that we have significant long-term growth potential from this existing dealership base.

“In addition, we will continue to open new locations and look for acquisition opportunities into the future,” he continued. “Our associates have done outstanding work in very difficult and uncertain times and have demonstrated how nimble our business can be. We have over 2,000 associates supporting over 88,000 customers, and they come to work every day to make a difference in the lives of others.”         

Car-Mart also is making a difference for its shareholders as the company highlighted net income of $43.5 million, or diluted earnings per share of $6.19, for the quarter ended April 30. In the closing quarter of the previous fiscal year, Car-Mart posted net income of $9.3 million, or diluted earnings per share of $1.35.

The improvement came since Car-Mart set a record with $279 million in revenue during the closing quarter.

The company mentioned the prior-year quarter included an $11.7 million (diluted earnings per share decrease of $1.42) pretax charge to increase the allowance for credit losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Car-Mart generated the year-over-year improvement in part because of the gains made at the time of vehicle delivery.

The company reported its average retail price for vehicles retailed during the 2021 fiscal year was $13,621, resulting in gross profit per retail unit of $5,790. Those figures represented a 15.5% year-over-year rise in retail price (up from $11,793) and a 15.8% increase in gross from a year earlier (up from $4,999).

And here’s another likely reason why Williams was so pleased with Car-Mart’s collections efforts. The company said its accounts 30 days past due finished the 2021 fiscal year at 2.6%. That’s down from 6.2% registered at the end of the previous fiscal year even as the number of active accounts increased from 80,669 to 88,092.

Car-Mart chief financial officer Vickie Judy mentioned several other positive metrics about the company’s portfolio and balance sheet.

“Net charge-offs for the quarter, as a percentage of average finance receivables, were down to 4.8% compared to 5.6% in the prior-year quarter. As a result of the improved credit losses as well as our outlook for projected losses, we lowered our allowance for credit losses from 26.5% to 24.5% as a percentage of finance receivables, net of deferred revenue,” Judy said in the news release.

“Our debt, net of cash, to finance receivables is 27.6%, compared to 25.1% at the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020. During the fiscal year, we added $188.4 million in receivables, increased inventory by $45.8 million, repurchased $10.6 million of our common stock, and funded $9.0 million in capital expenditures, a total of $253.8 million, with only a $67.0 million increase in debt, net of cash. These metrics, a strong balance sheet and strong cash-on-cash returns position us to continue to add customer count and grow dealerships,” Judy added.

With robust sales, customers maintaining their monthly payments and outstanding debt in control, Williams reiterated how upbeat he is about Car-Mart.

“We are pleased with our results and are optimistic about our ability to continue to grow the company as we move forward,” Williams said. “We have a unique position in the market and believe that we have an obligation to serve significantly more customers — we improve lives by reducing stress related to our customers’ local transportation needs. We give our customers peace of mind by keeping them on the road and supporting them at the very highest levels. We are clearly seeing the benefits and the power and potential of the various investments we have been making to the model.

“It has been a very difficult year with the pandemic and social unrest in our country, but our team has stayed focused on taking care of each other and our customers and we have become stronger as a result of these challenges,” he added.