The auto retail study puts all eight listed US auto retailers of any scale on one basis — six franchised dealer groups and two used-only retailers, $211 B of revenue and $118 B of market value between them. This is the short version: three things it establishes, and what each one is worth to somebody deciding whether to own any of them.
One: the group is not one group
The five franchised dealers a public buyer can still own trade between 6.3× and 7.5× EBITDA, on 7.6× to 9.7× trailing earnings — every one of them on a single-digit price-earnings ratio, and all of them within about a turn of each other. The sixth, Penske Automotive, is being taken private by its controlling shareholder, so its 11.5× is a transaction price rather than a market view.
The two used-only retailers are priced on a different basis altogether. CarMax is on 27.0× trailing earnings against the thinnest EBITDA margin of the eight at 3.5%, and Carvana on 31.0× EBITDA — the only multiple worth printing for it, because a deferred-tax release leaves it with no meaningful earnings multiple at all.
The takeaway. Any statement that begins "auto retail trades at" is already wrong, because this set runs from 6.3× to 31.0× on the same measure. The useful question is not what the sector is worth but which of these businesses you are actually buying, and the gross profit mix below answers that better than the sector label does.
Two: gross profit comes from the back of the shop
New vehicles are about half of a franchised dealer's revenue and roughly a fifth of its gross profit. Parts and service runs the other way: a tenth to a sixth of revenue, and 41% to 48% of gross profit. Finance and insurance is single-digit revenue and a quarter to a third of gross profit, because it is booked net of its cost.
| Retailer | New | Used | Parts & service | F&I | Finance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPI | 21% | 10% | 44% | 26% | — |
| ABG | 20% | 8% | 48% | 23% | — |
| AN | 13% | 9% | 48% | 30% | — |
| SAH | 16% | 8% | 43% | 33% | — |
| LAD | 20% | 13% | 41% | 26% | — |
| KMX | 0% | 68% | 0% | 16% | 17% |
| CVNA | 0% | 59% | 0% | 41% | 0% |
Penske Automotive is left out of that table because it does not publish the same split; the used-only pair are in it, and they are the shape of the argument rather than an exception to it — selling only used cars empties the parts and service column, and used vehicles plus finance carry the whole of the gross profit.
The takeaway. Anybody ranking these businesses on revenue mix is ranking them on the half of the business that barely pays for itself. A dealer's earnings are a service annuity with a car dealership attached, and the right question about a new-vehicle sales number is not how big it is but how many cars it is putting into a service bay for the next decade.
Three: the windfall has mostly gone, and the share count hid it
Across the six franchised dealers together, revenue is up 82% since 2018. The EBITDA margin went from 3.9% in 2018 to 7.2% at the 2022 peak and back to 4.9% — 69% of the gain returned.
Earnings per share still compounded at 14% to 22% a year over seven years, and that is not a contradiction. It is the buyback. AutoNation has the slowest revenue growth of the six over that window and the fastest earnings per share, on a diluted count falling 12% a year.
The takeaway. The operating cycle and the per-share record point in opposite directions here, and which one you read decides whether these look like melting ice cubes or compounders. Both readings are honest. Neither is complete without the other, which is why the study prints three years and seven side by side rather than choosing.
The full workings — the basis, the adjustments that make floor plan and captive finance comparable across all eight, every chart and the downloadable workbook — are in the auto retail study. Figures are struck on the September 2026 quarter and priced at the 30 October 2026 close.