A Sky News report from August named Lithia as the unidentified bidder in a failed deal to buy Pendragon, one of the largest auto retailers in the U.K. Lithia at the time told Automotive News it doesn’t comment on “any potential acquisition activity until the transaction is complete.”
But when asked by an analyst about Lithia entering Europe and specifically the U.K., DeBoer voiced his interest, noting Western European businesses typically trade at lower multiples than what dealerships trade for in the U.S.
“If we can find the right team because of the strong value of the dollar, it seems like it’s a good time to be able to do that,” DeBoer said. “And I know there were some alleged rumors of us working on a project over there. I think we were pretty clear on if that was us that was talking about it. It wasn’t just about the raw dealership assets. It was about the raw dealerships’ assets as well as some fleet and leasing type of exposure that helps open up a new horizontal and, probably most importantly, the ability that they may have a DMS system that’s pretty savvy and may help us with our $110 million annual cost of our DMS stack today.”
Pendragon has its own DMS, Pinewood, which it acquired in the late 1990s.
“That’s a big amount,” DeBoer said of what Lithia spends on its DMS. “If we can save half of that, that’s $50 million, or a couple dollars a share.”
David Whiston, an analyst with Morningstar in Chicago, noted the strong dollar can help Lithia on purchasing power if it decided to enter Europe.
“I would be surprised if 12 months from now if they [Lithia] haven’t made a deal in the U.K., or at least somewhere in Western Europe, because they’ve already been doing some work on it, most likely,” Whiston said.
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