David Smith; Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer; Sonic Automotive Inc
Jeff Dyke; President, Director; Sonic Automotive Inc
Danny Wieland; Investor Relations; Sonic Automotive Inc
Thomas Keen; EVP of Operations, EchoPark Automotive; Sonic Automotive Inc
Heath Byrd; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; Sonic Automotive Inc
John Murphy; Analyst; Bank of America
Rajat Gupta; Analyst; JPMorgan
Bret Jordan; Analyst; Jefferies
Jeff Lick; Analyst; Stephens
Chris Pierce; Analyst; Needham & Company, LLC
Operator
Good morning and welcome to the Sonic Automotive, fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. This conference call is being recorded today, Wednesday, February 12, 2025. Presentation materials which the company management discussions on the conference call can be accessed at the company's website @ir.sonicautomotive.com.
At this time I'd like to refer to the Safe Harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. During this conference call, management may discuss financial projections, information, or expectations about the company's products or market or otherwise make statements about the future.
Such statements are forward-looking and subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In addition management, it may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. As defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission, please refer to the non-GAAP reconciliation tables in the company's current report on Form 8K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier today.
I'd now like to introduce Mr. David Smith, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sonic Automotive.
Mr. Smith, you may begin your conference.
David Smith
Thank you very much and good morning everyone. Welcome to the Sonic Automotive, fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. As you mentioned, I'm David Smith, the company's Chairman and CEO.
Joining me on today's call is our President, Jeff Dyke; our CFO, Heath Bird; our Eco Park Chief Operating Officer, Tim Keen; and our Vice President of Investor Relations, Mr. Danny Wieland. We would like to open the call by sincerely thanking our amazing teammates for continuing to deliver a world-class guest experience for our customers.
Our Echo Park automotive teammates have once again earned the top spot as the number one pre-owned automotive dealer and guest satisfaction ranked by reputation.com. And our Sonic Automotive franchise teammates set a second consecutive annual record in customer satisfaction scores.
Our teammates are truly living our Sonic purpose to deliver an experience for our guests and our teammates that fulfills dreams, enriches lives, and delivers happiness. We believe our strong relationships with our teammates, our manufacturer and lending partners, and our guests are key to our future success and as always, I would like to thank them all for their support and loyalty to the Sonic Automotive team. I'd also like to welcome our newest Sonic teammates from our fourth quarter acquisition of the remaining 50% joint venture of North [Point] Volvo in Greater Atlanta.
In addition to acquiring Audi New Orleans and motorcycles of Charlotte and Greensboro, collectively we expect these acquisitions to add approximately $145 million in annualized revenues to our business. We would also like to announce that we are back in the market and actively pursuing major acquisitions of new vehicle franchises in 2025.
Turning now to our fourth quarter results, our GAAP, EPS was $1.67 per share, and excluding the effect of certain items as detailed in our press release this morning, adjusted EPS was $1.51 per share, a 7% decrease year over year.
Fourth quarter consolidated total revenues were an all-time quarterly record, up 9% year over year, while consolidated gross profit grew 6% and consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased 5%. Moving now to our franchise dealership segment results. In the fourth quarter, we generated all-time record quarterly franchise revenues of $3.4 billion up 12% year over year.
This revenue growth was driven by a 13% increase in new retail volume, a 5% increase in used retail volume, and a 10% increase in fixed operations revenues. Our fixed operations gross profit and F&I grows profit also set all-time quarterly records up 12% and 14% year over year, respectively.
With the acceleration and new vehicle sales volume in the fourth quarter, new vehicle day supply decreased to 46 days, down from 57 days at the end of the of the third quarter. Same stored new vehicle GPU was $3,241 subsequentially from the third quarter due to our luxury brand mix and in line with our previous guidance to exit the year in the low $3000 range.
On the used vehicle side of the franchise business, while we grew volume by 5% year over year, supply constraints and consumer affordability remain a challenge. Our used inventory day supply was in our target range at 31 days, and used GPU was stable sequentially at $1,396 per unit on a same store basis, approaching normalized GPU levels in this supply environment.
Our FNI performance continues to be a strength with same store franchised FNI, GPU of $2,427 in the fourth quarter, up 4% sequentially and year over year. The continued stability and FNI at these levels supports our view that FNI per unit will remain structurally higher than pre-pandemic levels, even in a challenging consumer affordability environment.
Our parts and service or fixed operations business remains very strong, with a 12% increase in same store fixed operations gross profit in the fourth quarter. This strong growth was driven in part by higher levels of warranty repairs combined with the effects of our initiative to increase technician headcount by 300 net technicians during 2024. We are very excited to announce that we exceeded this challenging goal, adding 335 net technicians during 2024. Which we expect to set the stage for strong fixed operations growth in 2025 as we continue to focus on technician hiring and retention.
Turning now to our Echo Park segment, fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was $4.2 million. Below our previous guidance for $7 million to $8 million in Echo Park adjusted EBITDA. This shortfall was driven primarily by $200 sequential decline in used GPU from the third quarter. As a result of building inventory a little bit too quickly, exiting the third quarter, which led to aging inventory and depreciation risk amidst a seasonal slowdown in used demand.
In response, we have taken steps to right size our inventory at Echo Park, heading into the first quarter and expect for used GPU to improve sequentially. For the fourth quarter, we reported Eco Park revenues of $506 million, down 9% from the prior year. And fourth quarter, record Ecoar gross profit of $49 million up 14% from the prior year.
Echo Park's segment retail unit sales volume for the quarter was approximately 16,700 units, down 5% year over year. On the same store, on the same market basis, which excludes closed doors. Eco Park revenue was flat, gross profit was up 29%, and retail unit sales volume increased 4% year over year.
Eco Park segment total gross profit per unit was $3004 per unit, up $606 per unit year over year, despite lower than expected front-end use GPU. Echo Park used vehicle day supply finished the fourth quarter at 38 days compared to 33 days to the end of the third quarter.
Our unwavering confidence in Echo Park's long-term potential has allowed us to weather the challenges in the used vehicle market in recent years, and we believe our performance in 2024 demonstrates the tremendous opportunity for this brand. Full year 2024, adjusted IBA was $27.6 million up from a loss of $83 million in 2023. And the Echo Park segment achieved profitability on a pre-tax basis in 2024.
We believe these results validate the strategic adjustments we've made over the past several quarters, and we look forward to resuming disciplined long-term growth for Eco Park as used vehicle market conditions continue to improve over the next several quarters.
Turning now to our Power Sports segment, for the fourth quarter, we generate revenues of $30.6 million gross profit of $7.5 million and a segment adjusted even to loss of $1 million which was in line with our expectations for a seasonally lighter fourth quarter.
We continue to focus on identifying operational synergies within our current power sports network while fine-tuning our operating playbooks. While we are taking a disciplined approach to expansion in this segment, we remain optimistic about the future growth opportunities in this adjacent retail sector when the time is right.
Finally, turning to our balance sheet, we ended the year with $862 million in available liquidity, excluding unencumbered real estate. Including $384 million in combined cash and floor plan deposits on hand. We continue to maintain a conservative balance sheet approach with the ability to deploy capital strategically as the market evolves.
Additionally, I'm pleased to report today that our board of directors approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.35 per share, payable on April 15, 2025 to all stockholders of record on March 14, 2025. As you can see in the investor presentation we released this morning, we have once again provided certain limited financial guidance for 2025.
Note that there are many variables that may affect our business in 2025, including the impact of potential tariffs, shifts in electric vehicle production and demand, and changes in the interest rate environment and consumer affordability, among others.
In closing, our team remains focused on near-term execution and adapting to ongoing changes in the automotive retail environment and macroeconomic backdrop. While making strategic decisions to maximize long term returns.
Furthermore, we continue to believe that our diversified business model provides significant earnings growth opportunities in our Eco Park and power sports segments that may help to offset any industry-driven margin headwinds we may face in the franchise business.
And as I mentioned earlier, we look forward to announcing some major new vehicle franchise acquisitions in 2025. We remain confident that we have the right strategy, the right people, and the right culture to continue to grow our business and create long-term value for our stakeholders.
This concludes our opening remarks, and we look forward to answering any questions you may have.
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. With that I'll be conducting a question and answer session (Operator Instructions)
John Murphy, Bank of America.
John Murphy
Good morning guys. David (inaudible). Just a first question, on the acceleration in M&A, if you just, mentioned that they thought multiples were a little bit high, so they were slowing down, and we hear that from some folks. But like you, we hear some folks that are, kind of leaning into this. So I, I'm just curious what you're seeing in the market, what you think of evaluations, and there's many ways to play the game and, regions and strategies to go after. So I'm just curious what you're seeing that might be, somewhat different and what really the target is for your acquisitions.
Jeff Dyke
Yeah, this is Jeff. Dave you want to go?
David Smith
(inaudible)
Jeff Dyke
Okay, so this is Jeff. At the end of the day, our background and our strength sits in luxury. We're seeing a lot of opportunities on the luxury side across the country. Multiples have actually gotten better from our perspective, not worse. We're seeing more deals come across. I've been with Sonic for 20 years. We're seeing more deals come across, our desk now than we ever have.
And we're in a great position. We're agreeing to buy in just about every single manufacturer that we have, certainly across all the luxury import lines, and so it's, we're set up for that. We've got a great balance sheet. We've been saving our dollars.
We've got the liquidity to go out and do this without adding debt to our balance sheet. And so it's a great opportunity for us. We're ready for that. Our team's ready for that. We don't have to add any overhead, so it's just an immediate addition of EBITDA and the lowering of your SG&A, and it's the right thing to do for us at this moment. We've got a lot of deals in the hopper and would expect us to be announcing deals here in the coming month or two.
David Smith
Yeah, this is David. I mentioned just to piggyback on Jeff's comments about, our teammates and the and the record customer satisfaction scores that I mentioned earlier have have allowed us to have some opportunities on the table that our competitors don't have. So it's, it creates a strategic advantage for us to have that performance. So we really appreciate our team's efforts there.
John Murphy
Just to follow up, other than luxury, is there a specific sort of region, or strategy that you're going after, size and scale, large dealerships, lower, smaller dealerships. I mean, what's, or is it? Yeah, sort of all comers on the luxury side.
Jeff Dyke
Well, I mean, I would tell you it's Jeff, I would tell you luxury and import, and there might be a domestic deal here or there, but from California, from sea to shining sea, there are deals across all markets, on the East Coast, Alabama. Florida, California, Texas, we're looking at multiple deals, have multiple deals in the hopper, and in each of our big markets, and, it rounds out, where we might not have a luxury brand in particular market allows us to sort of round out our package for that market for our consumer. So it's, there's a lot of opportunity out there, John, and we're going to take advantage of that here in 25.
David Smith
And we particularly love growth markets, and when we're taking a look at in some markets we've looked at recently are not in growth areas and we decided to pass on some deals there but so it's something to keep in mind and Jeff is from Texas, so he always tries to bring this.
John Murphy
There's nothing wrong with Texas. On new GPUs, which is that, the hottest topic of when they're going to normalize and where they're going.
Yeah, I appreciate the outlook that you gave in in the in in the slide deck, but maybe could you give us sort of some color of how big a weight or drag EVs have been on GPUs and hopefully as we get through, clearing out some of that that inventory here and you don't get. Restocked or restuffed, to put it politely, with more EVs, what kind of relief that can create on your GPUs.
Jeff Dyke
Well, first of all, I sure (inaudible) hope that's the case. We don't want to get restuffed with all the EVs, and you're exactly right. They need to do a much better job of managing their day supply across the board. Now day supplies came down in the fourth quarter. It's because volumes went way up. Let's see what happens in the first two quarters of this year and particularly against the domestics, but I think it's about a $400 drag for us.
And that needs to go away. That will heavily offset the reduction in new GPU, and it's really, I mean, a big drag on the west coast and in particular in the luxury brands that we just, we've got to do a better job as an industry, and the manufacturers have got to do a better job of managing their electric vehicle output along with what the consumers are willing to buy. And that's something that's just really incredibly important. It's going to become even more important as we go through this year, and hopefully, the new government and their focus will give us a little relief there.
Danny Wieland
And John, this is Danny, one more point on that. That's part of that wide range, the 2,500 to 3,000 new GPU we guided to for 2025 is the variability in DEV. The good news is that we finished Q4 with about 10% of our inventory mix, being electric vehicles on 11% sales. Again, we're a little higher sales penetration than the industry because of the luxury and California exposure, but that was down from 14% of our inventory mix at electric vehicles at the end of the third quarter.
So while we didn't get the benefit of an improving headwind and GPU, we've at least right size and aligned the inventory levels as of now or as of the end of the year with what our sales rate is. So that's a big step in the right direction.
Jeff Dyke
And don't forget the manufacturers are heavily incentivizing EVs right now, so you probably have a little false positive in terms of the amount of volume that we're doing in the country right now.
John Murphy
I think you're being polite calling a false positive there. Just real quick, lastly on Echo Park, things are turning the corner here, what are the the KPIs or the things that you need to see internally and potentially externally to turn the tap back on for store openings, just want to understand where that goes.
Jeff Dyke
Yeah, so I'll let Tim talk a little bit here in a second, but look, we want to get through this year. I think it's really important to watch, affordability continue to drop. We're buying cars in the auction lanes in the 23,000 to 23,500 range. We're buying more of a percentage of our cars off the street. We're testing some things to see if we can buy even more off the street. And as prices come down and affordability comes back, we're going to start opening stores. It is our intention to begin opening stores first quarter, second quarter of '26.
That's how things are going right now. Should that get better from an affordability perspective, maybe we could pull that up. A little bit. As we already own real estate. We already have facilities, so it's not going to be that big of a deal for us to go out and start opening stores. It is a big deal though to wait and make sure we're very mature how and when we open those based on what's going on in the marketplace and we got a little bit out of hand in the in the third quarter with the level of inventory that we had going into the fourth quarter. Our system did what it's supposed to do. It right size things, cost us $200 a copy, and that, or we would have been in the [$7.8 million] range in EDA.
So we've got that all corrected and margins have returned to normal here in the first quarter. Tim, anything you need to add to that?
Thomas Keen
No. I mean, certainly, we had to make the adjustment in the fourth quarter. We know what it cost us, but we're going to benefit from that in the first quarter because our inventories were rightsized going into the first quarter.
Heath Byrd
And John, this is Heath. Just to add, the external factors are obvious that we've all been talking about, the used car supply is going to hit the bottom in theory in 2025. So we think the second half of '25 and going into '26, we will be back on the upswing, and that will set us up perfect for expansion of EchoPark.
David Smith
I mean, John, we opened a store in Houston. We closed a smaller store and opened a bigger store in Stafford in Houston, Texas. And it just shot out of the gates. It had a great opening. It's just rolling this month, should do 350 to 400 cars and maybe close to 400, which would put it in there as our second or third largest store automatically.
So big markets, the big store, all that's working as we had hoped for. I just want to see the pricing continue to drop a little bit here. Lease returns come back. Those things that's all going to help and benefit EchoPark. If the manufacturers continue to not be able to help themselves on the new car day supply, EchoPark is just going to win and win in a big way.
Operator
Rajat Gupta, JP Morgan.
Rajat Gupta
Hey, thanks for taking the question. I just had a quick follow-up on EchoPark for the fourth quarter. And I appreciate the comments around like the inventory, some liquidation happening there, hurting the grosses. But I was surprised to see volumes not do better. I mean some of your peers like CarMax, Carvana, just more independent used car dealers have put up pretty good numbers for November, December. I'm curious why we did not see that strength at EchoPark. Was it just due to just lack of like younger car supply? Anything else that you can point to? And I have a quick follow-up.
Thanks.
Jeff Dyke
I mean, look, on a same-store basis, we grew at 4%, 5%, somewhere in that ballpark, kind of right along with where our franchise stores were. Look, I think there's an opportunity for us to grow more than that, Rajat. The overaged inventory took a little bit of focus from us. There's some marketing things that we could have done a little bit differently. And I think we'll still see that happen in the first quarter. It wasn't a bad fourth quarter.
We projected at the beginning of the year that first and third would be very similar and second and fourth would be very similar from a volume perspective, they were. So we'll see. It wasn't a bad quarter, but at the end of the day, that aged inventory or the potential for aging inventory, which is what we had caused a little bit of a slowdown for us. And we focused on that, got that cleaned up. And as we said, a minute ago or as Tim said, we're rolling in the first quarter and should be a really nice first quarter.
Rajat Gupta
Got it. That's helpful clarification. And then just a follow-up on parts and services. You've done a great job increasing technician count to 2024. I would have expected you get the full benefit of that in 2025, like at least the hiring that took place in the second half of 2024. It looks like you're going to add more technicians again in 2025. You have some easy comparisons from CDK in 2Q, 3Q. I was curious like is the mid-single-digit growth guide just some conservatism in your part? I would have expected that to be much higher, just given all these dynamics around technicians and just CDK comps?
Thanks.
Jeff Dyke
Well, I'm not going to give you everything right off the bat there, Rajat. I mean, yeah, look, at the end of the day, mid-single digits is kind of what we're guiding to, but there's upside. There's no question when you look at the number of technicians that we've hired, we're very excited about that. I got to keep them all, but we've got plans in place to do that. And as you can see, it's really paying off. The kind of growth that we saw in the fourth quarter. We had an amazing January in fixed operations.
If that carries through, what you just said is going to be accurate, and we're going to have a little better fixed year than probably what we're projecting. But it does get tougher as the year goes on. So it will get tougher in the fourth quarter because we were a little bit at full strength in the fourth quarter of '24. But first quarter, second quarter, maybe first half of third quarter, you should see some really nice growth from a fixed operations perspective.
Heath Byrd
And Rajat, this is Heath. I just want to add that we do believe we're going to get $100 million in annualized fixed operations gross profit from those technicians, but they're not all going to be up to the level, it's going to take through the year. So you should see that getting better and better, helping offset some of the difficulties in the third and fourth quarter from a comp perspective. But that is -- that $100 million is a number once they're fully mature and in place.
Operator
Bret Jordan, Jefferies.
Bret Jordan
Hey, good morning, guys. Could you talk about, I guess, the Powersports segment and sort of what you see as the TAM there? I mean, how big could it be? And given how tough the cycle is in that space right now, is now a good time to be buying there? Like isn't -- wouldn't you be piling it on here because they would be cheaper or is that not really the case?
Jeff Dyke
Now that we're kind of dipping our toe in the water, people think their deals are worth more. And so I think that one of the things that's important to us is to get really good at what we're doing. And our team is maturing around that. And I really would like to see another quarter or two of great playbook execution or even this year of great playbook execution. We've got a chart of accounts now.
These are really Wild, Wild West stores that are doing things in a million different ways and to bring them in under the umbrella and get them all operating in the same direction is a bit of a lift, but we're learning how to do that and do that better. We made a small acquisition in the fourth quarter. Probably some opportunities. We got an ad point in Sturgis. We're adding -- we got a Harley-Davidson ad point in Sturgis for the show this year, which is going to be great.
That's going to add some extra revenue for us. Typically, we're doing 500, 600 motorcycles during that Sturgis rally, and that's going to go up significantly for this year. We'll see. We're hopeful that the [fan we think the fan] is greater. We're hopeful that we can grow this business, but we're being very cautious in not getting in over our heads and being very prudent with the dollars that we have to spend on acquisitions.
David Smith
Yeah. And this is David. It's important to keep in mind that our list of priorities, right? We've got our core business, our franchise business and our EchoPark business and the focus and dollars that it takes to grow those is a big one where we're -- we've gotten into Powersports, which we think there's a great opportunity there, but we don't want anybody to think we're getting distracted with something else.
Bret Jordan
Okay. And then a question on EchoPark. I mean the inventory mix is this year is a trough year in lease returns. Do you need to take the average age of the vehicle mix up this year just to have available supply? And I guess can you talk about sort of how much is being sourced internally, you talked about more direct buy versus picking up those $23,000 cars in auction. Like where do you see EchoPark's average vehicle being this year?
Jeff Dyke
Yeah. So we've moved from about 12% of our overall mix to 20% plus of our overall mix, which is great. And Tim, you want to add into that?
Thomas Keen
I mean, I think the average in '25,is going to continue to get better as the year goes on, but I think it's going to fall in that $24,000 range. We'd like to see it go lower. We don't know what the post-COVID normal look like. We know it was $21,000 at our peak. So somewhere between $21,000 and $24,000 is a sweet spot, and that's where we're looking for it to go.
Jeff Dyke
I don't think we have to change our mix in terms of year age, though. We did that in '23 and '24, but I don't think we need to do that in '25. We've got enough -- there's plenty of inventory out there to support 17 stores that we have. That's not an issue as we proved that at the end of the third quarter by having too much inventory and being a little bit aggressive there.
So we're not really concerned about being able to buy and handle and support, in particular, in the 0 or 1- to 5-year-old category throughout this year. And that's only going to get better as affordability gets better, lease returns start to come back next year, all these things really play into our hand as we move forward.
If we're patient, and that's the thing. I just think if you look at '25 at EchoPark, it's very similar to '24 with operational improvements in stores that weren't making money. We're going to make a little more money. I think we guided to 30% to 33%, somewhere in that ballpark in EBITDA, do a little more volume, continue to execute really well and really prep ourselves for beginning to open stores in '26.
Operator
Jeff Flick, Stevens.
Jeff Lick
Good morning. Thanks for taking our question. I wanted to ask a question that maybe kind of bridges or brings together your franchise business and EchoPark. First part is, I was wondering how much of the 4Q franchise, the new business do you think was due to kind of pent-up demand from 2Q and 3Q? Like just curious how much -- how sustainable do you think that's going through?
And then as it relates to EchoPark, I mean, I guess I was a little surprised to hear you could have too much inventory given availability and affordability was an issue. And as I guess, if I look at 4Q for the new business, the new environment, it seems like this was the first quarter where availability and affordability might have been a little better.
So I'm just wondering if there's maybe some relationship there where there's some substitutes. So just if you could comment on how unique do you think 4Q was and what that means for 2025 on the new side and then just the relationship as it relates to EchoPark?
Jeff Dyke
Probably some pent-up demand on BMW from the stop sales coming out of Q3 going into Q4. We always have big Q4's. I mean just because of our luxury mix, and it all comes down to December and then it all comes down to the last 10 days of December, and we just go berserk. I don't know if I would draw a correlation between that and what's going on, on the EchoPark side.
It's a different mix, a lot of trades, we mostly sell trades on the franchise side. We're buying cars, some off the street, like 20% of our overall mix, mostly from the auction, 80% of the mix. I don't think there's a correlation there. The correlation is as new car inventory day supply increases, which it's doing, prices come down, which we're seeing on Nissan, we're seeing it on Stellantis, two brands that have just been unable to manage their inventory.
And we can buy those vehicles back now pre-COVID type pricing. But there's still further to go. Affordability needs to come back down. But there's plenty of inventory. Like I said, I probably couldn't go out and buy enough inventory to supply 50 or 60 stores right now, but we can darn well do it for 17 to 25 stores. That's something that's in our bailiwick. And we want to just watch what happens here over the next 6 to 9 to 12 months before we pull the trigger and open our first location for EchoPark.
David Smith
This is David. I also think that it being an election year, I think just having some definitive answer on that, I think, played into people making decisions about their transportation.
Jeff Lick
Great. And then maybe just a quick follow-up, given you (inaudible) senior team on. One of the things that's fascinating is when you -- if you put a blindfold on people and didn't give everyone the ticker symbols and just showed the results, your results look as good or better than some of the other public peers. And a lot of times, that is the case throughout the years, but you seem to always trade at a little bit of a discounted multiple. I'm curious how you guys think about that and what do you think maybe you could do to close that gap? Because it seems like it's maybe at this point, an unwarranted [gap].
David Smith
Go ahead.
Jeff Dyke
I was going to say, well, you certainly have written a nice report on us, and we appreciate the confidence. I mean you scratch your head, right? I mean if you look at the performance numbers, and I know EchoPark plays a big weight in everybody's thought process. But when you look at the mothership and our new business, I mean, we had a strong fourth quarter, and we continue to have strong quarters.
The new volume increase year-over-year, our pre-owned increase year-over-year sort of leads the segments and fixed operations certainly does. It was a great fourth quarter. We scratch our heads all the time saying what the heck are we missing that the Street sees. We're just going to keep plugging away, keep executing at a really high level.
We have never been better in our CSI, our customer satisfaction scores. We have never been more green. We're so green. You can see us from the moon, I've heard in terms of our KPIs with our manufacturers. We are green to go out and buy dealerships. We're going to do that. We're in so many good positions for really the first time in this company's history, we're just sitting in a great seat.
And look, our stock price has grown. There's no question. We had a great year of growth in our stock price of one of the best, I think, out there. And we expect it to continue to grow. And we expect everybody else to catch on at some point in time to see exactly what you just said because that's what we see, too.
David Smith
And Jeff, I'll just add one more point on it. And Jeff, you know this as well as anybody is, obviously, from a technical standpoint, the float is going to impact some investors. And so I think that plays in a lot to how our stock trades as well.
Jeff Lick
Great. Well, listen, just keep chopping wood and controlling what you can control. Best of luck in 2025.
David Smith
That's exactly what we say every day.
Operator
Chris Pierce, Needham Company.
Chris Pierce
Hey, good morning, everyone. On the aged inventory you cite at EchoPark, is it across the board or is that you kind of bit off more you can chew at some of your newer stores and that's kind of where you had to cut bait?
Jeff Dyke
It's a little bit of both, but mainly driven from my perspective, kind of overforecasting the demand in the third quarter that fell a little short at the end and carrying that into the fourth quarter and us having to make the adjustments to wake up in the first quarter the way we wanted.
Chris Pierce
Okay. And then what would you say in your oldest markets like Denver, are you seeing anything? I think it was referred to earlier, the third-party data on Carvana and CarMax as they grow units. Are you seeing anything in your older markets that's of concern or it's business as usual? Like how would you frame that in your older markets?
Thomas Keen
No. I mean, especially Denver, we're still number 1. Some other Carvanas of the world have made some progress, but they're taking it from people other than us.
David Smith
Yeah. Our oldest markets are real, real stable. In that Denver market, we're the largest pre-owned dealer in the state, I think, and it's wildly profitable, and that's the rent and repeat that we're looking for.
Chris Pierce
Okay. And just lastly, how would you frame -- I just want to get a sense of -- if you look at EchoPark SG&A, it's up about $5 million versus the second quarter, but units were the same versus the second quarter. Like what's kind of going on under the hood as far as staffing that's driving the increased SG&A? And how should we think about that in '25?
Danny Wieland
I think we're up about $2 million -- this is Danny. We're up about $2 million from the second quarter. And down a little bit versus the third quarter sequentially on an adjusted basis. So there was some noise related to gains on property sales in prior periods, too. So you got to look at the adjusted numbers when you're looking at that trend. And I think that may be the delta.
And really, maybe just to close out that thought, Chris, the SG&A to gross ratio, that expansion up into the 85.5% range in the fourth quarter is primarily driven by the $200 headwind on the front-end gross, less about the expense side, more about the lost [gross].
Operator
Thank you. We've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further or closing comments.
David Smith
Great. Thank you very much, everyone, and we will talk to you next quarter. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.
