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Rick Galloway

Thank you, Justin, and welcome to everyone joining us today. Before I dive into specifics on the fourth quarter, I would also like to cover some of our accomplishments throughout 2024. Despite the macroeconomic challenges as Justin mentioned, we continued to focus on those things within our control.
We accelerated the integration of Finishmaster, completing that exercise in the first quarter and helping us to increase annualized unisex synergies by the end of 2026 to $65 million. We initiated the 2024 restructuring plan with the objectives of exiting businesses and markets that do not align with our strategic objectives and executing on opportunities to streamline operations and our logistics models.
In Europe that resulted in exiting certain operations and increasing the efficiency of our logistics footprint, resulting in a reduction in facilities and overhead costs. In North America, we focused on aligning our cost structure with demand by rationalizing overhead costs to most efficiently serve our customer base.
While these actions were challenging, they were necessary to tackle and align with the strategic imperatives we discussed at Investor Day, including simplification of the business portfolio, improving our lien operating model globally, and increasing our margins in order to maximize total shareholder returns. We are confident the actions we have taken will drive our success in 2025 and beyond.
Now on to the fourth quarter. Overall, Q4 results exceeded our expectations and guidance. Europe's performance was a highlight. As the segment delivered a record fourth quarter even in dollars and percentage, despite challenging macroeconomic conditions. Self-service performed in line with expectations with another quarter of year-over-year improvement in even in dollars and percentage.
North America improved its EBITDA margin by 50 basis points due to a one-time legal settlement, despite revenue losses from a brief cyber incident in Canada. Specialty results remain under pressure with soft demand.
Turning now to the fourth quarter consolidated results. Despite challenges in North America and Specialty, and the stronger US dollar affecting Europe, our fourth quarter performance exceeded expectations due to strong European results and some favorable non-recurring items.
For the full year, we reported diluted earnings per share of $2.62 and adjusted diluting earnings per share of $3.48. The latter of which was toward the higher end of the guidance range we discussed back in October, but a decrease of $0.35 per share compared to 2023. The $0.35 per share decline in adjusted EPS was primarily influenced by a combined $0.30 per share impact from interest and taxes.
With an additional $0.13 decrease attributed to commodity prices and foreign exchange rates. Despite the macroeconomic challenges and significant inflationary pressures on overhead and cost of goods sold. Our efforts in simplification and strategic capital allocation have resulted in a positive contribution of $0.08 for the full year.
For the fourth quarter, we reported diluted EPS of $0.60 and adjusted diluted EPS of $0.80, a $0.04 decrease from the prior year figure. As you may recall, our Q4 2023 results included some favorable one-time discrete tax items which were not repeated in Q4 this year, resulting in a $0.09 year-over-year decrease from taxes.
In addition, lower FX rates and unfavorable metals price movements contributed to a further $0.02 decline. On the positive side, lower share counts due to our ongoing share repurchase program improved adjusted EPS by approximately $0.03. The remaining $0.04 year-over-year improvement reflected the strong performance by Europe and net favorable non-recurring items in North America.
Now for segment results. Going to slide 7. North America posted a segment EBITDA margin of 16.8%, a 50 basis point increase relative to last year. For the full year, we reported a segment EBITDA margin of 16.6%, slightly above the expectations we discussed last quarter, due to a favorable non-recurring legal settlement that was partially offset by our Canadian cyber incident.
The decline in organic revenue, especially within our aftermarket business due to reduced repairable claim counts, adversely impacted margins during the quarter. This also included a related mix effect on gross margins, as aftermarket collision revenue typically yields higher margins compared to our other wholesale lines.
Salvage margins were also down in the quarter reflecting unfavorable movement in revenue, vehicle cost trends, and commodity prices in 2024. On the other hand, overhead expenses improved 270 basis points in North America, reflecting favorability from the one-time legal settlement and lower personnel costs, primarily related to lower incentive compensation.
The Uni-Select synergies and productivity initiatives largely offset significant inflationary pressures and the leverage effect of the organic revenue decline. While we expect headwinds on repairable claims and salvage margins to continue in 2025 due to the factors I've mentioned, particularly in the first half of the year, we estimate that the North America's EBITDA margins will be in the low 16s, consistent with 2024 after adjusting for the non-recurring items.
Looking at slide 8, Europe reported a segment EBITDA margin of 10.1%, a 180 basis point improvement over last year and its third quarter in a row with double digit EBITDA margins.
The year-over-year improvement consists of 110 basis points related to non-recurring charges in the prior year, while the remaining 70 basis points relates to the ongoing efforts to simplify the operations and portfolio, as well as productivity efforts that more than offset inflationary pressures.
As I stated on our last call, we expected EBITDA margins in Europe for the full year to be in the mid to high 9s, which is where we landed. From where we stand today and the actions we've taken to address productivity, we believe we can build upon our recent gains and expect to deliver improvements, with EBITDA margins expected to be double digits in 2025.
Moving to slide 9. Specialties EBITDA margin of 4.1%, 160 basis points below the prior year, primarily driven by a decline in organic revenue and resulting leverage effect on overhead costs. Demand softness in the light vehicle and RV product lines and competitive pricing pressures remain challenges for the business. For the full year, segment EBITDA margins were 6.8%, below our expectations, but largely related to the revenue softness.
Early signs indicate some of our markets have stabilized. However, a rapid rebound in 2025 is unlikely due to inconsistent recovery. Thus we expect segment EBITDA margins to improve to around 7% to 8% for the full year 2025.
Self-service generated an 8.3% segment EBITDA margin in Q4, which is a 230 basis point improvement from last year. In dollar terms, segment EBITDA increased by $4 million. Disciplined vehicle procurement combined with overhead cost controls overcame unfavorable movements in scrap steel prices and helped to drive the third consecutive quarterly improvement in year-over-year profitability.
Shifting to cash flows on the balance sheet. We produced $149 million in free cash flow during the quarter, bringing our year-to-date total to $810 million. But slightly below our expectations, we invested in North American inventory, anticipating possible Q1 port strikes and tariffs. We remain dedicated to delivering value to our shareholders, allocating over $150 million to $80 million in share repurchases and $78 million in dividends.
As presented during our Investor Day, we committed to allocating at least 50% of our free cash flow towards returning value to our shareholders. We are pleased to announce that we exceeded this commitment in 2024.
As you can see on slide 10 for the full year we deployed $678 million for share repurchases and dividends, representing over 80% of our free cash flow. We also invested approximately $3 million in two tuck-in acquisitions in the fourth quarter, both in North America, including one in Canada and one in the US. For the year we spent approximately $50 million on acquiring 10 highly accretive tuck-in businesses.
We paid down approximately $62 million in outstanding debt in the quarter. As of December 31, we had total debt of $4.2 billion with a total leverage ratio of 2.3 times EBITDA, an improvement from the prior quarter. We remain committed to maintaining a manageable debt level and our investment grade rating.
As of December 31, 2024, our current maturities were $38 million, but we have a $500 million term loan coming due in Q1 2026. As normal practice, we actively manage our capital structure, and we are currently evaluating our options to determine the optimal solution to address our pending 2026 term loan maturity.
Our effective interest rate was 5.3% at the end of Q4, slightly down from Q3 as a result of recently lowered benchmark rates. We have $1.7 billion in variable rate debt, of which $700 million has been fixed with variable interest rate swaps, which effectively provides a fixed rate on over 75% of our debt.
I will close with our thoughts on 2025 guidance as shown on slide 11. Our guidance is based on current market conditions, recent trends, and assumes scrap and precious metal prices hold near fourth quarter prices, and no material impact from tariffs.
On foreign exchange, our guidance includes recent rates, including the euroat $1.04 the pound sterling at $1.25 and the Canadian dollar at $0.70. The global tax rate is at 27.0%, which is comparable to our 2024 rate. We expect organic parts and services revenue growth between 0% and 2%. Please note, we have one less selling day in 2025.
In North America, we expect revenue to be roughly flat on a per day basis, given we don't expect an immediate rebound in repairable claims and won't realize the full benefit of some of the favorable trends Justin mentioned until later in the year.
We believe Europe is poised to perform a bit better than they did from a revenue perspective in 2025, despite the ongoing challenging macroeconomic backdrop across the continent. For Specialty, we expect low single digits for organic revenue growth given the macroeconomic indicators we are seeing. As a result of our revenue growth expectations, we are estimating adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range of $3.40 to $3.70.
As you can see on slide 12, our EPS guidance anticipates headwinds from lower foreign exchange rates, depreciation and amortization, as well as the one-time items discussed earlier, partially offset by benefits from metals prices, interest, and taxes.
We're focusing our efforts on those items we can't control and anticipate more than offsetting the net negative impact of those items through improved operating results, which reflect the carryover benefit from the simplification and productivity measures we took in 2024, and the continued benefits from our disciplined focus on capital allocation.
Free cash flow is expected to be in the range of $750 to $900 million. We will continue to balance our trade working capital and capital expenditure needs to fund our strategic growth objectives for 2025 and beyond. Thanks for your time.
I will now turn the call back to Justin for his closing comments.

Justin Jude

Thanks, Rick, for the financial commentary. As we enter 2025, I want to reaffirm my strategic priorities for our global enterprise as we drive sustained long-term total shareholder returns. First, make sure we are growing above the market. Next, simplify our operations by ensuring lean thinking is in everything we do to enhance our margins and simplify our portfolio across our markets and businesses to ensure we're the best owners.
Improve free cash flow by growing profitably and strengthening our balance sheet. Invest in growth organically and via small, highly synergistic tuck-ins and with a continued moratorium on any large platform acquisitions. And focus our capital allocation strategy around returning capital to our shareholders through a combination of share repurchases and dividends.
With these priorities in place, coupled with our industry leading teams, we are well positioned to navigate the challenges ahead and deliver strong operating results for all of our stakeholders. As always, I want to thank the 47,000 plus dedicated team members of LKQ for their commitment to advancing our business each day and driving our mission forward, no matter the obstacles. Time and time again, our team has shown these challenges are opportunities for growth for both themselves and the overall organization.
With that operator, we are ready to open the call for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator instructions)
Craig Kennison, Baird

Craig Kennison

Hey, good morning, thanks for taking my question. It really goes to the SKU rationalization project in Europe. I think the concern had been that by reducing brands, you might miss on some revenue opportunities, but you benefit from better vendor terms. It looks like you had a better comp in the quarter than most of your peers. So maybe you're actually not losing revenue. Just curious if you can comment on any revenue impact from that decision?
And then on a related note, if you could comment on, I guess, the beneficial terms that you earned by consolidating your business with the remaining vendors? Thank you.

Justin Jude

Morning, sir. Thanks for the question. On the SKU radialization, we're taking a very cautious approach. We're not trying to fast track this in the next six months. It's really a two to three year project because our biggest concern to your point is making sure that we don't, that we have a revenue concern, and so far, we've not.
A couple of the reasons why when we do the SKU rationalization, although we're reducing the number of actual stock numbers in our warehouses, we're increasing the actual ability to say yes by applications, meaning when a customer has a specific year making model and a part type, our goal isn't just have a brand.
Our goal is to have, be able to say yes, regardless of the brand. Additionally, we're adding more private label, as I mentioned in my, in the script. And that's allowing us to compete into a different market where price is a little bit more, customers are a little bit more conscious on price. So far, we haven't seen any revenue concerns. The group that we have working on this, I mean, it has operations, sales people, supply chain to make sure that we don't impact the business and impact the revenue.
On the term side, we haven't gone through everything we do expect to see a slight improvement in terms better cost of goods, but we haven't quantified that yet.

Craig Kennison

Thank you.

Justin Jude

Thanks, Craig.

Operator

Jash Patwa, JPMorgan.

Jash Patwa

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just one bigger picture question. We're now starting to cycle the impacts of lower than normalized new [SAAR] levels in 2022 and 2023. And that are expected to reduce the population of vehicles in the younger age cohort of the vehicle, of the company's suite spot a 3 to 10 year old vehicles.
I'm curious if this is likely to have a meaningful impact on market trends over the next couple of years. Any color you could share around the distribution of reparable claims across vehicle age pockets, which would be meaningful to case the impact here.

Justin Jude

Yes, good question. We obviously monitor new car production sales into the market. So far, it hasn't been a huge impact on, in our model on repairable claims. Obviously, the vehicle car park is aging. That's always good for LKQ, whether it's on the collision side, the product lines we sell are on the mechanical piece.
Obviously, we sell a lot of engines and transmissions and that aging fleet uses those items a lot more, obviously, than a newer one. So we haven't seen any meaningful impact currently, and we're monitoring it on a go-forward basis. It really is going to depend on to your point on the [SAAR] sales over the next couple of years to see if there's a longer-term impact.

Rick Galloway

And Jash, our sweet spot is a little bit closer to 3 to 12 years. So it's a little bit further than the 10 that you talked about. The good news is we have started to see recently some Manheim information that indicates used car prices have been going up last few months. So that's a good thing for us.

Jash Patwa

Understood. That's really helpful. Just as a follow-up, I was curious if LKQ's North American and European supply chain are meaningfully differentiated from some of your local peers in that potential tariffs could provide the company a transitory competitive advantage. Any historical precedence you could share around LKQ's organic revenue growth trajectory in comparison to the industry on its economic shocks would be super helpful. Thank you.

Justin Jude

Yes. Obviously, your question on tariffs. The headlines all about Mexico, Canada and China, obviously, there's maybe more to come. Just from a risk standpoint, do you guys understand, if we quantify what we import into the US from those three countries, it's less than 5% of our total purchases, so not real meaningful.
Historically, we've always been able to pass it on to our consumers on to the customers. Overall, the devil's in the details, if there are tariffs that impact our competition, whether that's OEM or if it impacts something else that doesn't necessarily impact LKQ as much of that as a competitive advantage from a cost saving standpoint. But obviously, there's a lot more details that work through and a lot more unknowns for us to figure out whether it's an opportunity or not.

Jash Patwa

Understood. Thank you and good luck.

Justin Jude

Thank you.

Operator

Scott Stember, Roth Capital.

Scott Stember

Good morning and thanks for taking my questions as well.

Justin Jude

Morning, Scott.

Scott Stember

Could you guys talk about the mega yards, some early returns and some KPIs that we could be looking for in the future to really gauge how things are progressing on that front?

Justin Jude

Yes. From a high level, just the explanation and definition of mega yards. Obviously, we've got 100-plus yards across North America. Some of those are landlocked where we can expand. When we move into a mega yard, it gives us the ability to consolidate potentially two or three local yards into that mega yard, but it also gives us capacity to produce more cars or to (inaudible) more cars.
We've had a couple over the last several years. It's a new initiative for us. So we see great returns on those long-term baked-in our model for a couple of reasons. One, we can produce more cars with the same management. We don't necessarily have to have multiple general managers if we consolidate three yards in a one big one. We can hold those vehicles longer, giving the opportunity to sell more parts off of that vehicle.
Scott, if you think about we buy a car for $2,000, our cost of goods is $2,000 no matter what. So the longer we can hold that vehicle creates more opportunities to sell off for those, sell off of that vehicle. So we see great returns on it in the future. but most of these, we've only created a few of these in the last several years, so.

Scott Stember

Got it. And then there was some commentary about North America, some positive things going on, I guess, weather was one of them. Can you talk about that? And then just following up on that, just for a cadence for guidance, if we were looking at the midpoint, how should we look at the recovery throughout the year.

Justin Jude

Yes, I'll take the first part of that, Scott and I turn it over to Rick. On the repairable claims side, some of the positives we've seen, obviously, are the inclement weather Also, we're kind of anniversarying some of the issues that we've had.
Rick just mentioned that we've had a couple of months of used car pricing kind of flattening off and starting to increase. So with the large increases from an insurance premiums with the used car prices dropping, that was impacting consumers' choice to fix their vehicle and impacting repairable claims.
Now that we're starting to see used car pricing level off, there are still some states that haven't necessarily passed to larger increases. But for the most part, the majority of states increased those premiums or allowed the premiums to increase. And so we're kind of going to be anniversarying that throughout 2025. And Rick can kind of talk about how we have that baked in the guidance.

Rick Galloway

Yes, Scott. So same kind of works for the corporate side consolidated numbers. But if you're talking specifically about North America. If you look at last year in 2024, the per day numbers were around, just using round numbers around 3% down, 5% down, then it went to about 7.5% and 8.5%. We're expecting the exact opposite of that to happen through the year this year. We'll be down a little bit in the first half of the year and then will be positive year-over-year in the back half to where we're roughly flat for the year. So think of that starting off in a low point in Q1 and then growing throughout the year when you look at the organic numbers.

Scott Stember

Got it. Very helpful. Thank you guys.

Justin Jude

Thanks, Scott.

Operator

Brian Butle, Stifel.

Brian Butle

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just first one, just maybe some additional color on the portfolio review from a strategic perspective. I know this was kind of started back in September. Maybe just where we are on that and the time line you think going forward from here when there may be some decision opportunities to be made?

Justin Jude

Hey Brian, thanks for the question. Just to be clear, it started before September, our review of the portfolio. It is not done. It is still ongoing. Obviously, in 2024, I mentioned we did divest five businesses, primarily in Europe, totaling $153 million of revenue with really little to no profit.
But once again, we're not done. There's, any time you want to exit a business, a market, a product line, there's always variables that can occur. And I'll just, I guess, stated that I would, I'm the kind of guy that's going to not tell you what we're doing, but show you once we're done. So it is ongoing and expect more.

Brian Butle

Okay. And then a follow-up on the margin opportunity in Europe. When you think longer term, you're kind of in that double digit, which has been great success. How should this improve, I guess, beyond 2025? Is there an opportunity where you continue to eke out some margin improvements? Or do you really reach a level somewhere down the road here that, is it 10.5% or 11%?

Rick Galloway

So Brian, I'll take that one. The numbers we haven't quoted exactly where we think we are. But I can tell you, Justin and I are very, very bullish about where we think that the market can go and the business can go in our European business.
We're clearly several 100 basis points above many of our competitors, but we think that number can continue to grow for the next several years. What we talked about is about 30 to 40 basis points each year for the next several years. I wouldn't put a cap on that at 11%, 11.5%.
I think that number can continue to grow over the next at least three years and probably three to five as we start thinking about the work that's being done on the category management. as well as the overall portfolio management that we're doing in our European business. So I think double digits is solid for '25, and it continues to grow pretty nicely for the next several years.

Brian Butle

Great. Thank you very much for taking the question.

Justin Jude

Thank you.

Operator

Gary Prestopino, Barrington Research.

Gary Prestopino

Good morning, all. I just want to get some clarification here. There was, on the margins in North America and Europe. You said there was a onetime legal gain non-recurring in the quarter. How much of that contributed to what the 50 basis point increase in adjusted EBITDA margin?

Rick Galloway

Yes. So Gary, we're not going to talk specifically about the legal settlement, but what I'll give you is directionally, combined between the legal settlement, and we did have a brief cyber outage. If you look at North America's margins for the year, there's about 50 basis points for the year. So we ended up coming around 16.6% for the full year, about 50 basis points of that, we would consider non-recurring bring us down to a full year number around 16.1%.

Gary Prestopino

Okay. And then you did outline, there was a 101 basis point impact on Europe in Q4. Was that the tax of last year? Was that the tax issue in Italy?

Rick Galloway

No. There was a couple of items in 2023, that we had some severance costs and some other non-recurring items that showed up the VAT issue that we had that some of those is pretty much that 110 basis points. It was about 110 basis points of non-recurring. And then I talked about in the prepared remarks, there's about 70 basis points of mix 50, 50 between the portfolio actions and the good work the team is doing on simplifying the operations.

Gary Prestopino

Okay. And then just a question on the EV side. I mean I realize it's very early stages. But anything you're doing on the EV side? Is it mostly collision repair for body parts, or are you seeing other areas where you can take salvage off these EVs and put them into the recycled channel in terms of parts.

Justin Jude

Yes. On the EV side, we are a couple of different initiatives that are underway. First, if you remember, we got into the recycling or remanufacturing of hybrid batteries. So think of nickel metal hydride and then, obviously, the technology migrated over to lithium-ion. We are also investing in the remanufacturing of full battery electric vehicles. We've had a couple that have been completed, and we're in the process of testing right now.
In addition to your question around a salvage vehicle that's electric and we bring it in, obviously, there's collision parts that we can sell off of that. Most of the batteries today are getting recycled and shredded, getting fed back into a new battery production. I mean obviously, there's not that many electric vehicles in the road as a percentage.
And in addition, those batteries are typically lasting seven, eight years, so there's not a lot of demand and there won't be for several years. But there are things that, once again, were [bets] that we're placing to make sure that when the opportunity comes out, it is an opportunity and not a headwind for us

Gary Prestopino

Okay. And then lastly, if I could just sneak one more in. You mentioned something about the collision claims being CCC's collision claims were down a certain amount in Q4, but there was a couple of puts and takes around that. Could you just go over that? Yes, 6% repair claims. You mentioned there were some puts and takes as it regard to your business.

Justin Jude

Specific to claims, yes, they were down roughly 6% for Q4. I guess we were kind of talking about on some of the puts and takes, some of the things that we're seeing softening, some of the slowdown of the headwinds that we were facing in 2024.
They haven't, all of a sudden, January 1 hasn't rolled around and those headwinds have gone. We just anticipate that those are slowing down and those were, the used car pricing that was on a continued decline in 2024, we're starting to see that flatten out and go positive.
In addition, the large increase in insurance rates that were done in 2024 are kind of anniversarying out. So that should moderate and hopefully, we'll start to see some improvements in the back half of the year, as Rick mentioned (inaudible).

Rick Galloway

(multiple speakers) to the prepared remarks that Justin talked about, what he was talking about for volumes year-over-year, don't forget the UAW strike, we got a benefit in 2023 on the volumes. So when he was talking about some of the puts and takes you're saying the year-over-year we would have a down, a hit related to the UAW strike. And then we also had the hurricanes that happened early in 2024. So there's a couple of items that impacted revenues year-over-year as well.

Gary Prestopino

Okay, that's what I was looking for. Thank you.

Justin Jude

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Brett Jordan, Jefferies.

Brett Jordan

Hey, good morning guys. Follow up on the CCC questions. Could you give us the total loss rate in the fourth quarter? Is that year-over-year change moderating?

Justin Jude

I don't have the exact number in front of me. I know the total loss rates slightly did go up in '24 as once again, primarily in our opinion driven by the used car pricing. But with the used car pricing starting to moderate and increase, that should alter the total loss rates going forward. In our long-term model, Brett, we have a moderate growth and total loss for a while. So that's kind of factored into our long-term thesis that the collision business is still good for us long term.

Brett Jordan

Okay. And a question on the private label program in Europe. I think you talked about percentages use. What is it as a percent of revenues? And could you, maybe give us some color as to what the gross margin difference is in private label versus your national brand product?

Justin Jude

Yes. The percentage of revenue is circa 20%. We see the opportunity to grow that to 30%. We have some markets today that are in at 30%, if not a little bit more than that, Brett. Historically, we think, I mean historically, we've seen a 25% increase in the margin. So apply 25% factor to the actual gross margin percentage, meaning if it's 50%, it goes up to, actually use a better number. If it's 40%, it goes to 50%, but we typically see a 25% increase in the actual percentage rate.

Brett Jordan

Okay. And this is a housekeeping number. I guess if tariffs and who knows what happens with tariffs. But when you look at the OE pet product in sold North America collision. What percentage you said less than 5% of your product is coming out of Canada, Mexico, China. What percentage of the OE parts are coming out of Mexico or Canada?

Justin Jude

I don't necessarily have the full answer to that. I mean I know when they produce a vehicle, they mark on there what percentage is produced domestically, but they never break down whether that's an engine headlight hoods or vendors. There is definitely, they produce more parts in Mexico or Canada or China than what we do percentage-wise, I would say. So if it impacts all imports from those three countries, we actually think it's a benefit.

Brett Jordan

Great. Thank you.

Justin Jude

Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. We have no further questions, so I'll pass you back to Justin for any closing comments

Justin Jude

Thank you, operator, and everyone, thank you for joining the call this morning, and we look forward to speaking to you in April when we report on our first quarter 2025 results. Thanks, and have a good afternoon.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your line.