BENTONVILLE, Ark. — America's Car-Mart enjoyed nearly a 4-percent gain in net income in the first fiscal quarter, boosted its sales by almost 7 percent and says its business model is stronger than ever.

The company also revealed that its chairman is retiring after his term wraps up in October. Tilman "Skip" Falgout III will step down from his post after more than seven years as chairman.

"Our chairman, Skip Falgout has decided to retire from our board of directors. He will continue to serve until our annual shareholders' meeting in October. As our chairman since May 2004 and our chief executive officer from May 2002 to October 2007, Skip participated in a period of tremendous growth for the company," said president and chief executive officer William "Hank" Henderson.

"On behalf of our associates and shareholders, I'd like to express my appreciation to Skip for all of his contributions to the company and wish him all the greatest success with his future endeavors," Henderson continued.

Net Income Climbs, Improvement Widespread

Moving along to discuss the quarterly results in more detail, net income came in at $8.3 million, up from $8.0 million in the year-ago period.

Revenue totaled $100.5 million, compared to $91.5 million a year ago. Same-store revenue jumped 3.6 percent. Car-Mart had 9,049 sales in the fiscal first quarter, up 6.7 percent year-over-year.

"Our financial performance was solid for the quarter. Our strong cash flows allowed us to fund our 9.9-percent increase in revenues and the resulting $11.9 million increase in finance receivables together with $11.1 million in share re-purchases and $.7 million in capital expenditures, all with only a $9.9 million increase in total debt," explained Car-Mart chief financial officer Jeff Williams.

"We continue to focus on solid deal-structuring to ensure that our customers have good equity in their vehicles throughout the term of their contracts. Also, we have done an outstanding job of minimizing purchase price increases in a difficult environment," Williams added. "As we have repeatedly said, we are only successful if our customers are successful, and we are dedicated to earning their repeat business one customer at a time."

Continuing on, Car-Mart said it now has more than 51,000 active customers and has 108 dealerships. Sharing some more financial metrics, the company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 31.1 percent, with the debt-to-finance receivables ratio at 19.5 percent.

Car-Mart's allowance for credit losses was static in the first quarter, coming in at 22 percent of finance receivables.

The provision for credit losses was 20.5 percent of sales, and down payments were at 7.3 percent in the first fiscal quarter, compared to 7.2 percent in the same period of 2010.

"We continue to execute our game plan very effectively as we grow the business in a controlled manner. We are excited about our future prospects and the opportunities that will develop for our associates as well as for our new customers as we open new dealerships and continue to grow our customer base at existing locations," said Henderson.

"Our business model is stronger than ever, and we are focused on continuing to push for further improvements so that we can expand our offering to more hard-working folks in need of good, basic affordable transportation," he continued.  "Our associates continue to do a super job of working with our customers to help them succeed which is certainly showing up in our solid credit loss numbers."

Stock Repurchases, Dealership Expansion

Williams also delved into some stock repurchase metrics and discussed dealership additions. He pointed out that Car-Mart repurchased 388,520 shares during the period, and since Feb. 1, 2010 has bought back about 1.67 million.

The company also rolled out two new stores during the quarter and plans for eight more by the end of April.

"Obviously, we believe in the long-term value of our company, and we will invest in the repurchase program when favorable conditions are presented to us. We've opened two dealerships during this fiscal year and have several in the pipeline and currently anticipate that we will open eight additional new dealerships between now and April 30, 2012," Williams noted.

"Our focus on cash flows is allowing us to re-purchase shares and, at the same time, add customers at new and existing dealerships at a solid, controlled pace."