With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Industries included in the sector are automotive retail, general merchandisers, internet retail, and specialty retail.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Retailing

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-301-Advance Auto Parts

As one of the leading aftermarket auto parts retailers, the company serves professional installers and vehicle owners with automotive goods and services at over 4,000 locations.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-330-Advance-Auto-Parts

The automotive retailer sells aftermarket parts, accessories, and maintenance items to both professional installers and do-it-yourself customers.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Advance Auto Parts is an automotive aftermarket parts provider. Founded in 1929, the company offers replacement parts, accessories, batteries, and maintenance items for a variety of vehicles including cars, vans, SUVs, and trucks. The company operates over 4,200 stores and serves more than 800 Carquest-branded stores across these locations.

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Advance Auto Parts (AAP): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Advance Auto Parts

advance auto parts

Good morning, and thank you for participating in today's call. I'm joined by Shane O'Kelly, President and Chief Executive Officer and Ryan Grimsland, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, we will be referencing slides, which are available to view via webcast. The slides have also been posted to our Investor Relations website. Before we begin, please be advised that management's remarks today will contain forward looking statements.

All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding initiatives, plans, projections, guidance and expectations for the future. Actual results could differ materially from those projected or implied by the forward looking statements. Additional information can be found under forward looking statements in our earnings release and risk factors in our most recent Form 10 ks and subsequent filings made with the SEC. Shane will begin today's call with an update on the business and our strategic priorities. Later, Ryan will discuss results for the first quarter and provide an update on 2025 guidance.

Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. Now, let me turn over the call to our CEO, Shneur Kelly.

Thank you, Lavesh, and good morning, everyone. I want to take a moment to express my gratitude for the hard work, unwavering commitment and dedication of the Advance team. I am pleased to report that our team delivered better than expected first quarter results. After a challenging start to the year for the industry, we began to see demand rebound in late February led by our Pro business. For the quarter, Pro grew in the low single digit range including eight consecutive weeks of positive comparable sales growth in The U.

S. This positive momentum in Pro has continued during the first four weeks of Q2, driven by our focus on providing exceptional customer service. In addition to better than expected top line results, we also reported stronger profitability with near breakeven adjusted operating margin and we're on track to deliver positive operating margins starting with Q2. Based on our performance to date and expected progress on our initiatives for the remainder of the year, we are reaffirming our full year 2025 guidance. Ryan will provide additional details later, and I want to note that our guidance also considers the impacts of tariffs currently in effect along with our planned mitigation strategies.

We believe the combination of an aging and growing vehicle fleet in The U. S. Coupled with the relatively nondiscretionary nature of auto parts spending puts Advance and the industry in a favorable position to navigate through a volatile environment. We participate in a disciplined industry that has always operated rationally, and we would expect that to continue. In March, we reached a significant strategic milestone with the completion of our store footprint optimization program.

Approximately 75% of our store footprint is now concentrated in markets where we hold the number one or number two position based on store density. We have also embarked on an ambitious new phase of store expansion aimed at further strengthening our presence in these regions to capture share in the more than $150,000,000,000 total addressable market. Over the next three years, we expect to open more than 100 new stores with plans to further accelerate that pace of growth in the future. Our team is focused on implementing initiatives across the strategic pillars of merchandising, supply chain and stores to drive improvements in operational performance. These efforts are designed to strengthen our operational capabilities while building a robust foundation to deliver sustainable, long term profitable growth and enhanced value for our shareholders.

Next, I will provide an update on each strategic pillar. Let's begin with merchandising. The team has made good progress in expanding parts availability and securing quality products at a competitive cost. Last quarter, we piloted a new assortment framework in a single designated market area or DMA to improve parts coverage at the store level. We created a top down assortment plan for each store, hub and market hub in this DMA, which led to the rebalancing of hundreds of SKUs to align the inventory to market specific needs.

The new framework is enabling us to increase coverage in prominent hard parts categories, many of which are frequently in demand by our pro customers. During Q1, we expanded this framework to 10 additional DMAs, and in the first nine weeks following the rollout, we have observed an estimated uplift of nearly 50 basis points in comparable sales growth within these DMAs. Encouragingly, we are observing increased sales in categories where additional SKUs have been introduced, while sales in categories with reduced SKUs have remained relatively stable. Looking ahead, we anticipate gradual improvement in sales as increased parts availability translates into higher transaction volume. Feedback from stores has also been positive, which has motivated us to accelerate this program.

With our recent learnings, we are expediting the implementation and are now using technology to automate key processes. As a result, we plan to complete the rollout in the top 50 DMAs by the end of twenty twenty five with 30 of the 50 markets expected to be live by August. This is faster than our prior twelve to eighteen month timeline, which stretched into 2026. While this new assortment framework enables us to align SKUs to market requirements, we are also prioritizing the improvement of SKU depth across all stores. We are measuring this through our store availability KPI, which is now in the mid-ninety percentage range.

Notably, this KPI improved by approximately 200 basis points sequentially and compares to the low 90% range recorded last year. Strong coverage depth is enabling our store teams to sell complete assortment bundles and full application job quantities, which is critical for our customers and helps create repeatable pro business. Advance is a leading player in the industry with a ninety three year legacy and a growing store footprint that currently spans more than 4,000 stores. Having the right part at the right place in our network gives us the opportunity to capture our fair share of the market. Next, let's turn to product costs.

As we have indicated previously, the gap in merchandise margin is among the largest drivers of our operating margin gap compared to the industry. Over the last year, our team has partnered with vendors to conduct line reviews with the goal of securing high quality products at a competitive cost. This work is expected to continue through mid-twenty twenty five. And based on our progress thus far, we have visibility to greater than 50 basis points of annualized cost reductions that will start to flow in the second half of the year. We will continue to pursue further cost reduction efforts while also investing time to develop strategic business plans with our vendors to drive mutual revenue growth.

Our customer first approach and disciplined execution on core retail fundamentals continues to resonate with our vendor partners, giving us optimism in our ability to deliver additional future value. Next, supply chain. I want to start by acknowledging the tremendous effort of the supply chain team during Q1. This team played an integral role in successfully completing our asset optimization activity despite the complexities involved in the execution. Their work included relocating hundreds of millions of dollars of inventory across the network rerouting replenishment routes to align with our revised store and DC footprint and supporting the merchandising team to launch the new assortment framework in 10 markets.

Importantly, they achieved this while maintaining high safety standards and smooth day to day operations. Having participated in multiple supply chain transformations in my career, I can attest that the team's accomplishments were no small feat. We are on track to close 12 distribution centers this year with six completed to date. We expect to end the year with 16 DCs, making our way towards the goal of operating 12 large DCs by the end of twenty twenty six with each averaging approximately 500,000 square feet. As we complete the consolidation of these DCs, flow higher volume and optimize our inbound and outbound processes, we expect to drive incremental labor productivity.

We measure this with product lines per hour, which improved in the low single digit percentage range during Q1 compared to last year. We are targeting continuous improvement in this metric through the development of fresh operational standards for our DCs. For example, since we started moving more volume through our large DCs, we are evaluating daily workflows such as measuring the time to pick a part and comparing that against benchmarks to determine where our process needs to evolve. Ultimately, are building a foundation to efficiently support over 4,000 stores through 12 large sized DCs operating on a single warehouse system versus the previous model of 38 DCs of varying sizes with disparate systems. To do this successfully, we are investing resources to upgrade our operational standards to improve productivity.

In conjunction with consolidating DCs, we plan to drive cost efficiency by optimizing both the routing of replenishment orders from DCs and the movement of products between hubs and stores. To achieve this, we plan to implement a new routing framework in stages throughout this year. We anticipate that the combination of improved DC labor productivity and optimized routing will begin delivering cost savings by late twenty twenty five with a larger benefit accruing later. In May, we entered a pivotal phase in the development of our multi echelon supply network with the opening of two greenfield market hubs in the Midwest. We now operate 21 market hubs and continue to target 10 market hub openings this year while simultaneously building the pipeline for 2026 and 2027.

We remain committed to our goal of establishing 60 market hubs by mid-twenty twenty seven to strengthen our competitive position. A market hub with 75,000 to 85,000 SKUs expands same day parts availability for a service area of about 60 to 90 stores. Based on the aggregate performance of the market hubs in operation through Q1 and the stores being serviced by these hubs, we have observed an estimated comp uplift of nearly 100 basis points in those markets. These results reinforce our confidence in the path forward, which we expect to further improve as the new assortment framework developed by the merchandising team is fully implemented across the market hubs. In our stores, the team is focused on improving service levels to drive repeatable business and gain market share.

The Pro channel led the recovery in comp sales in the second half of Q1. This improvement in the pro was driven primarily by transaction growth, which we view as a leading indicator of our effort to move up the call list with pros. You may recall, early this year, we revamped the compensation and incentive structures for our frontline sales team and equipped them with additional tools and resources to better serve customers. We are seeing the results of these investments in the Pro channel, which makes us optimistic about the opportunity to capture additional wallet share of the Pro. Our store team is focused on exceptional customer service and was able to shave off approximately ten minutes in delivery time compared to last year.

This reduction is being achieved through a combination of training enhancements, better in stocks and increased accountability in the field. Our goal is to consistently deliver parts within thirty to forty minutes. Ensuring this consistency helps our pros turn their bays faster and elevates Advance's reputation as timely provider of parts. We are encouraged by the progress thus far and are confident in the team's ability to deliver on our service commitment. To support this, we are also testing a standardized store operating structure to guide our teams on store labor scheduling and to provide an effective mechanism to allocate resources such as delivery trucks and driver hours.

This test is now live in about 10% of our stores. Learnings from this test will inform our view on the standardized structure, which we expect to launch company wide later this year. Shifting to DIY. During the second half of Q1, we saw an improvement in DIY trends, although the weekly volatility continues to remain high. Maintenance related categories such as fluids, chemicals and oil are performing relatively better, suggesting that DIY consumers remain cautious in their overall spending.

As we look ahead, we expect the DIY environment to remain challenged due to the potential for higher broad based consumer goods inflation impacting household budgets. Despite the sales choppiness, we are proactively addressing areas of the business that are within our control. This includes enhanced training programs for our store teams to deepen product knowledge as well as a reallocation of key store roles to better assist customers. Our efforts to improve the in store experience are beginning to deliver positive proof points as we are seeing an improvement in units being sold per transaction. This metric has stabilized after declining for most of last year.

From a DIY communications perspective, we are also strengthening our brand message through a new marketing campaign with the theme right around the corner and ready to help. This campaign showcases Advance as a leading destination for automotive parts that offers convenience store locations, strong inventory availability, expert advice, free services and high quality brands. I want to underscore our commitment to advancing the turnaround and ensuring accountability. We are making traction on operational improvements for the business and I am optimistic about the opportunities ahead. Now, let me hand the call over to Ryan to discuss our financials.

good morning, everyone. I would also like to thank the Advance team for their commitment to serving our customers while continuing to make meaningful strides in our turnaround efforts. For the first quarter, net sales from continuing operations were $2,600,000,000 a 7% decrease compared to last year. This decline is mainly attributed to the store optimization activity completed in March. Comparable store sales declined 60 basis points during the sixteen week period in Q1 and excludes locations closed during the quarter which generated $51,000,000 in liquidation sales.

During Q1 sales started off soft declining in the low single digit range in the first eight weeks. Demand started to recover in late February aided by less weather volatility, normalization of tax refunds and consistent positive performance in our Pro business. Initiatives to improve inventory, in stocks and service levels for customers led to eight consecutive weeks of positive Pro comps in The U. S. Through the end of the quarter.

Separately, Q1 also benefited by the shift in timing of Easter into our fiscal Q2 which we estimate added approximately 20 basis points to comps. In terms of channel performance, Pro grew in the low single digit range which is an acceleration compared to Q4 and outperformed the DIY channel which declined in the low single digit range. Our Pro comp also accelerated on a two year basis and was positive for the third consecutive quarter. Transactions declined in the low single digit range during Q1 with pro down only slightly. Average ticket grew in the low single digit range and was positive in both channels.

From a category perspective, we saw strength in batteries, wipers and fluids and chemicals. Gross profit from continuing operations was $1,110,000,000 or 42.9% of net sales resulting in gross margin contraction of 50 basis points compared to last year. The year over year deleverage was largely driven by approximately 90 basis points of margin headwind associated with liquidation sales related to our store optimization activity. During the quarter gross margin also benefited from favorability on capitalized warehouse costs related to a pull forward of some inventory purchases ahead of tariffs. We estimate this added approximately 80 basis points of margin and is expected to normalize during the year.

Adjusted SG and A from continuing operations was $1,120,000,000 or 43.2% of net sales resulting in deleverage of 180 basis points compared to last year. A portion of the deleverage was driven by the comparison to a gain on asset sale from last year. Adjusting for this, SG and A would have deleveraged approximately 110 basis points mainly due to higher labor related expenses. As a result, adjusted operating loss from continuing operations came in at $8,000,000 or negative 30 basis points of net sales. A healthier top line performance helped us deliver better than expected operating margins with operating losses narrowing significantly compared to last quarter.

Adjusted diluted loss per share from continuing operations was $0.22 compared with earnings per share of $0.33 in the prior year. On a GAAP basis, we reported earnings per share of $0.40 due to a net discrete tax benefit of $126,000,000 associated with capital loss deductions following the Worldpac transaction, which was factored into our forecast for the year. We ended the quarter with negative free cash flow of $198,000,000 compared with negative $49,000,000 in the prior year. Free cash flow includes approximately $90,000,000 of cash expenses associated with the store optimization project and approximately $100,000,000 of additional inventory investments which was planned for later in the year to support the accelerated rollout of our store based assortment framework that Shane referenced earlier. For fiscal twenty twenty five, we have reaffirmed the guidance established in February.

We remain focused on executing and tracking the progress of our strategic initiatives to develop a strong foundation for the long term. Before discussing items within the guidance, let me provide our perspective on the current tariff environment and how that is influencing our outlook for the year. We are collaborating with our vendor partners to address the challenges posed by elevated product costs and evaluating each cost driver before accepting any increases from vendors. Our approach to navigating tariffs is expected to be measured as we make tariff related price adjustments. We will continually assess inflation and demand elasticity and will monitor competitive response while executing our plan this year.

Within the current tariff landscape, we are planning for a range of scenarios and feel strongly about our ability to navigate through the rising cost environment. These scenarios are in alignment with our full year guidance reinforcing our expectations for the balance of the year. The complexities of the current economic landscape also warrant an appropriate sensitivity to financial flexibility through the turnaround. We will continue to monitor and assess our debt capital structure with the goal of ensuring maximum financial flexibility for the business. We believe we have the right strategy, rooting core retail fundamentals to achieve our financial objectives and the benefits of our strategic actions is expected to build steadily over the next three years.

Next, let's discuss our expectations for this year. Starting with net sales, we expect net sales in the range of $8,400,000,000 to $8,600,000,000 Comparable sales is expected to grow in the range of 50 to 150 basis points on a fifty two week basis. We expect sequential improvement in comparable sales during 2025 with stronger growth in the second half supported by our focus on improving parts availability and elevated service levels. For Q2, we currently estimate flattish comparable sales growth including the impact of the Easter shift from Q1. During the quarter, we will also fully cycle through the $100,000,000 of price investments from last year.

Net sales also include contribution from new stores planned to be opened this year and we expect the fifty third week to contribute approximately $100,000,000 to $120,000,000 into net sales. Moving to margins. Adjusted operating income margin is expected in the range of 2% to 3%. We expect sequential progress in operating margins this year with Q2 expected to track in line with the full year range and further improvement expected in the second half. Gross margin is expected to be the primary driver of operating margin this year driven by a combination of product cost savings and supply chain cost leverage with an improvement in sales.

We expect SG and A expenses to be down year over year with margin in the range of flat to slightly down. SG and A includes the impact of annual wage inflation and other field investments offset by favorability from labor productivity and indirect cost savings. Additionally, we expect to save approximately $70,000,000 in annual operating costs related to our store and DC optimization activity. These savings will begin in Q2 and contribute to margin favorability for the balance of the year. Moving to the other items in guidance.

Adjusted diluted EPS is expected in the range of $1.5 and $2.5 We expect free cash flow in the range of negative $85,000,000 to negative $25,000,000 at the end of the year. Our guidance now includes cash expenses of approximately $150,000,000 associated with store and DC optimization activity, which is below our prior estimate of 200,000,000 reflecting favorability in lease disposition costs. This benefit was offset by opportunistic inventory purchases ahead of the tariff implementation earlier this year. In summary, we are pleased with our progress thus far and remain resolute in controlling the aspects of our business within our control while navigating a volatile macro environment. I will now hand the call back to Shane.

Thank you, Ryan. Before closing today's call, I would like to thank all our team members who are listening on the call today. I am incredibly proud of your efforts this quarter. Our team not only managed to deliver results that exceeded expectations, but also completed the store footprint optimization within an accelerated timeline while driving progress on our strategic priorities. Thank you.

With that, let's open the call for questions. Operator?

our first question comes from Simeon Gutman from Morgan Stanley. Simeon, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Maybe my first question, if you think about the 0.5% to 1.5% comp, you have an implicit mix of DIY versus DIFM performance within that. I don't think you've shared with that with us. But can you tell us now that first quarter is in the bag, can you tell us what that expectation, how it's changed? Do you have any difference in how you think the year will play out based on how it's performing so far?

Hey, Simeon, this is Ryan. I'll jump in here real quick. So, so far it's played out similar to what we expect. We haven't seen any change in trend on DIY and our expectations. But what we have stated is that we expect DIFM to be the driver of our performance.

The DIY will still be somewhat pressured. I think it's still early in this tariff environment to really understand if that will change going forward. Though we did model out different scenarios that reflected in our range of guidance. But as of right now, we expect the trends to our guidance expects the trends to continue where DIFM will lead and DIY will still be slightly pressured.

Hey Simeon, Shane here. Let me build on that. So you've seen the pro trend twelve weeks positive comp. DIY, I think the volatility of the situation and you see that in consumer sentiment, some of the credit card data default rates suggest there could be some difficulties for the consumer. Although we're controlling what we could control and we are putting effort against making sure we're relevant for the DIY customer.

That includes the availability efforts. That includes awareness around our marketing campaign, promotions, fewer, bigger, better, leveraging our loyalty program. We have 16,000,000 Speed Perks members, training for the stores in terms of how to present products and greet. So we'll look to do things to make sure we're participating with DIY customers.

Thanks. And the follow-up, if we take the full year guidance and look at the complexion with gross margin and SG and A, The first quarter was better on gross. It looks like you're going to have some tailwinds because the liquidation goes away. You talked Shane about the product cost that should improve throughout the year. It feels like that was built into the way you built your outlook, I think.

But can you talk about is there more upward pressure than you thought? And then on SG and A, with some of the cost removal, it doesn't look like there's a lot of upside to the SG and A forecast. Can you just I know you're not changing guidance, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but it feels like the guidance range still looks relatively appropriate even with some of the upside drivers. It looks like you've kind of captured that in the guidance for the rest of the year. If you can comment on that please.

Yes, Simeon. Yes, the big driver still remains the same is that our driver of operating income will mainly be driven by gross profit growth and especially in the back half of the year. And as Shane said earlier, seeing 50 basis points already annualized on that cost out, That's a big one. We've got the headwinds of in margin specifically that they're now tailwinds, but headwinds we faced last year in the back half of the year was about 170 basis points. So if you think about that build on our OI and then there was about 30 in SG and A.

SG and A is going be down year over year, especially with the store closures, pulling those out and then the work that the stores team is doing on productivity, we'll see that. We're also going to see on supply chain. With the work the team is doing there, we're going be able to leverage on the sales volume. So as Shane talked about the lines per hour, the productivity supply chain is driving, that's going to allow us to leverage on the sales increase that we'll see in the back half of the year. The big bulk of the growth is going to be on gross margin back half of the year and we like what our merchant team is doing led by Bruce on our cost out and working with our vendor partners.

Just to add that there's a series of puts and takes that goes into how we came to reaffirming the guidance. Ryan described some of them there. Know that we've run the scenarios and what the tariffs might look like, what that volatility might look like with consumers and the concatenation of that left us to put guide where it is and keep it there.

The next question comes from Seth Sigman from Barclays. Seth, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. It sounds like progress in a lot of areas. I'm trying to figure out with the improvement in comps this quarter, how much of that was from closing stores that were previously dragging on the comps?

Maybe you could give us a sense of how much those stores were under comping previously, so we could try to understand the dynamics there. And then as we think about the closings this quarter, I assume there is some sales transfer to the remaining stores, particularly on the pro side of the business. So if you can help quantify some of that would be great.

Absolutely. So back to the first part was the mix of maybe the closing stores. So the comp difference between those closing stores and the remaining stores wasn't material. I think we had talked about that in the past. It was just a lower base and the profitability of those.

So they could comp on a lower base sales volume, especially out west. So it didn't really have much of an impact materially on the comp mix. So I wouldn't say that that was a driver of the comp performance in the quarter. We did see some transfer sales mainly in the pro area and that was planned and expected and we achieved what we expected. We were really happy with that.

I have to give a shout out to the pro team who worked diligently to transfer those pro accounts to the new stores and they did a very good job doing that. So there's some in there, not quantifying that, but there's some in that pro trend. What we really like to see, I think the comp difference and what we expected was really the first eight weeks, of the weather volatility, the tax refunds, trying to understand is there extra is there pressure on the consumer that's different? We saw that bounce back in the final eight weeks of that quarter. We saw that normalize.

And some of the initiatives we had around Pro and improved time to serve coming out of our stores, I think, really

Just some and thanks for the question, Seth. Just some contextual flavor to that. Coming through that process as quickly as we did, there were a number of teams. We talked about supply chain in the prepared remarks.

Our stores team led by Jason Hand, our real estate team, Todd Davenport. These guys getting that done as quickly as we did, there's secondary effect when you're going through these processes. It creates uncertainty in your organization when you're doing it. And by the way, as you customers think about what your longer term trajectory looks like. So for us being done with it and now moving our narrative back to focusing on our strategic pillars, back to creating value, back to growth, That's where we're moving the company now.

And so we've come through that and now driving forward on strategy for the remainder of the year.

Okay, great. That's very helpful. And then I did want to ask about the guidance specifically as it relates to tariffs. I get that tariffs are manageable in this sector. What have you embedded here?

How does it impact your P and L as we move through the year? And how are you thinking about pricing? Thanks so much.

Yes. Great question. I'll start and Ryan can add to it. So for tariffs, it's a volatile situation. And think about tariffs as you got the 301s, the 232s, IEPA and tariff creates variability by product, country of origin, tariff magnitude, by the way changes to any of the above, the stackability of a tariff whether it's discrete or combined with others.

And so as we've looked at that in aggregate across the company, our blended tariff rate with what is currently in effect is about 30%. And if you think about the applicability to products, about 40% of what we source can have some applicability to tariff. Now some of it might be a subcomponent in the good. So before you just take the 30% times the 40% to say that's the economic impact, know that there's subcomponents there. But importantly, before just moving forward with that math, we've done mitigation strategies broadly across a number of dimensions.

Yes. I'll just touch on how we approach this. So our strategy first is we push back on all cost increases and really work with vendor suppliers. Then we look at alternative sources of supply. So we'll look for that and I'll touch on that in a second as well.

And then finally, anything we can't mitigate between vendors, sources of supply, we're passing that on to price. And it's been fairly constructive and we've been able to pass that along. Ultimately, we think the full value chain should bear some of that, whether that's the vendor, the supplier, retailer and then ultimately the consumer are going to bear some of those impacts. But to give you an example of supply, when we think about our China exposure, about 10% from China is direct import Or 10% of our overall product is direct import from China. By the end of the year, more than 50% of that that we're direct importing from China will be sourced from other countries.

And the team is already making significant progress on that. So we're looking at alternative sources. We're quickly making changes. Our pricing cost team and our merchants are working diligently around the clock to look at alternative sources. And as this dynamic tariff environment shifts, we're shifting and we're adjusting to find the best cost for us.

Let me just add that we're in a rational industry with rational players. Aspirationally, we would look to hold rate as an objective. If we can hold rate, then we're going to look to managing operating profit in terms of how we think about elasticity units and margin. And we'll drive forward with that approach. The team led by Bruce Starnes, they're looking at this.

They look at it broadly across the portfolio and then they look around how we would manage each particular category and product. And that analysis and effort, I think, given, again, as we started the point of the volatility of the situation.

The next question comes from Chris Horvers from JPMorgan. Chris, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everybody. So I'll take that baton on tariffs and what's going on there. At this point, how much inflation was did you have on the same SKU basis in the first quarter? Is any of that tariff pricing?

And will that accelerate as you move forward from here? And then historically, if I recall, on the LIFO side, prior sort of methodology was you would actually write up inventory and it would create sort of these LIFO benefits early in the inflation process. So can you also talk about how that influences the P and L on the gross margin side?

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Chris. A couple of things. So the inflation impact in Q1 was immaterial. And from a guidance perspective and the scenarios we played out, we're still in low mid single digits on inflation in our scenarios.

So we've that range of outcomes that we put there from a guidance perspective contemplates different scenarios related to tariffs. There's it's still early and there's still a lot. We're only halfway through the ninety day pause period in in some of them. So there's still a lot that needs to play out, and we'll get more informed as we go. But the range of outcomes that we looked at really are contemplated in our range in the guidance.

From a LIFO standpoint, we had a little bit of an impact in Q1. That was part of the 80 basis points that impacted, but it wasn't it's only I think about roughly approximately $4,000,000 LIFO favorability in the quarter. We'll see. One of the that we're doing that'll impact this is we're looking at our weeks of supply both for us and what the vendors might have currently in their warehouses here in The US. And we're managing our POs based on that so we don't have to cut new POs right away, and we can work through the current cost that we've got, to minimize the LIFO impact, early on.

So that should have a benefit. We've got decent weeks of supply in some of these categories and we're working through those. So that's why we haven't seen much of an impact early on. We also talked about we did a forward buy before the tariffs and that helps with that weeks of supply that we can work through before we see a big impact in LIFO.

Just like Chris, anecdotally as you think about it, moves companies make in situations like ours is first year, you're pushing back the vendor and you have inventory on hand. And by the way, I think the volatility in terms of what's in effect and when for how much all played a part in Ryan's depiction depiction of not having an impact in Q1. And he's modeling as is the merchant team how that flows in terms of the rest of the year.

Makes a ton of sense. And a couple of margin questions. So first on the gross, if I look at sort of like the underlying trend, it seems like we'll be in this like mid single digit range as we mid sorry, mid-40s range as you get towards the end of the year. Was there is there anything that you're seeing or whether it's with tariffs or just the operational side of the business that deters that potential? And then on the SG and A front, that $70,000,000 of cost savings from asset optimization, is it right to just take the SG and A from 1Q back out to 70,000,000 and that's sort of the underlying base that we build from based on seasonality and top line?

Yeah. Chris, just on the $70,000,000 it's not SG and A, it's more COGS related. And Q1 is a tough one because it's from a liquidation piece, it's more sales liquidation impact, that $70,000,000 and due to the DCs. DCs really fall up into our COGS. So I would put that more on the gross profit line.

From an SG and A standpoint though, the rest

to see that down year over year as we get through that cost. And you will see closer to that mid-40s margin rate. From a tariff standpoint, one thing that Shane alluded to earlier is that while we ultimately want to maintain rate, as the costs come in, we're going to be focused on operating profit improvement as well. So managing the elasticity and the flow through on the operating income side. So while when we looked at those range of outcomes in our guidance, we looked at all of those from elasticity, what we can pass on COGS price.

And so I think our guidance really contemplates the ranges of outcomes that can happen the rest of the year from what we know today. And Shane alluded to the complexities of all the different types of tariffs that are in there by product category.

Great. Thanks so much. Have a great rest of spring.

The next question comes from Michael Lasser at UBS. Michael, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my question. As you look towards your longer term goal, can Advance Auto Parts achieve the margin expectations implicit in the 2027 guidance if DIY sales per store remain relatively flat over that time because that seems to be the area where it's gonna be the most difficult to effectuate change and has been the area where Advance has really struggled historically, such that there may be deeper investments needed in that area in order to generate improvement?

Let me start on DIY front because certainly some of your points are relevant and we touched on what The U. S. Consumer might face going forward. But also know that we recognize our relative position and are putting appropriate effort around being a participant with the DIY customer. And I touched on a few of them earlier, but let me add a couple of others that are relevant.

You know, vendor partnerships. So we've talked about tariffs and that relationship with vendors. We've touched on, our strategic pillar of cost out. There's a third component of how we're working with our vendors, which is strategic business planning to create mutual revenue growth. And that's good feedback that we got from the vendors, which is, hey, don't just approach us on on the cost side of tariffs and and and, and our contracts.

Work with us, and we'll work with you on creating growth. And DIY is a is a an area around that. And you see that in terms of what we'll be doing with promotions, but you also see that in terms of our our marketing campaign of around the corner and ready to help. Reminder that as the number one or number two player in 75% of our markets, we're now a more thorough participant where that DIY customer will be closer in proximity, and by the way, with our store team members and our services. So before you kind of depict our 27 as not having relevant DIY share in our mix, we're not seeing it that way and know that these initiatives will help keep us in good stead.

Advance Auto Parts (AAP) Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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