July Auto Intel Report w/ Guest Steve Greenfield

‍SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul, Paul Daly

Paul Daly  00:00

All right know it's a very special Wednesday today I almost said Tuesday because of the holiday but we gotta we gotta back up myself. I caught myself. Today we have the one and only you see them you note I'm Steve Greenfield see EO and founder of automotive ventures. It's gonna be a good time though. It's good to be they stopped in state when they see the Wednesday bounce. It doesn't feel like midweek because of the holiday. I'm all off.

Kyle Mountsier  00:47

I know. My wife was like, is it Tuesday or Thursday? And I was like, maybe it's Monday. I didn't like yesterday. Just happened. Yeah, it's, it's crazy.

Paul Daly  00:55

So I think I think more dealerships closed this Fourth of July, than in the history of fourth of July's because of the inventory issue. We were talking to a dealer yesterday. He was like, Yeah, we're closed. It's for our families. He's like, it's not like we're gonna like unload some ground stock.

Kyle Mountsier  01:13

Yes, yeah. No. And I think also just, it's becoming one of those places where dealers can find that additional day to take care of their families. I heard I heard one friend joke. He was like, basically the whole the whole country closed except Florida. Right, which is not true. Florida. Oh, Florida was open. Everybody. Everyone in Florida was open. They're like, we got to do this thing. We'll be there.

Paul Daly  01:35

Oh, man, I'm interested to see what the stats are about that. But either way, we were excited because we launched the Soto con tickets to the pre registration list yesterday. And people are buying tickets for like, the first tickets come through like you sent the email your like their five people on site. 30 seconds later, it's like tickets purchased. Right? So it's always fun to see go from like concept to synthesis to like, people are actually coming now. Like now we're now we're really do I mean, we were really doing it before. But now that people are coming. It's this new like weight of obligation, like, oh, man, we better have everything just right. But if you're on the pre reg list, check your inbox, check your spam, if you didn't get it or just shoot us an email at crew at a soda.com We'll make sure you have the opportunity to register. But later this week, we're going to make general announcement launch tickets to everybody. And we are just like battening down the hatches about to go into our 60 days of content ramp up into a soda, soda con and we're going to have probably safe to say hundreds of pieces of content for you. And I'm talking full length podcast, we have two new podcasts launching in the next 60 days, for a little bit deeper, more textured conversation, you know, the morning show is kind of like giving you the news, give me some thoughts getting you on your day with some energy, these other two podcasts are going to be a little deeper, more substantive. When it comes to the length of the conversations. We're going to have tons of industry experts, tons of dealers coming at you on social media, if you're not following us on LinkedIn, that is kind of the place where that gets I would say, the majority of the content. I mean, we're also on Instagram and Tiktok. Right, which is more of a lighter fare. But um, you know, for the deep industry substance, LinkedIn is where it's at. So a lot Kyle is kicking off right now like from now through the

Kyle Mountsier  03:18

literally call, literally Paul right now because speaking of really smart people and content in the automotive industry

Paul Daly  03:31

we've never introduced somebody with a segue.

Kyle Mountsier  03:34

That was That was crazy. That was a whole thing. Excited to be joined by Steve Greenfield automotive ventures. You see him on the screen if you're hanging out. Steve, welcome to the Morning Show to the automotive.

03:46

You got some MC Hammer on this morning. It was great.

Paul Daly  03:49

It's a good day. Well, listen, speaking of getting whatever you get in the morning, segue there we go. I like how in this screen format, MC Hammer is like dancing, right? I'm sticking

04:02

straight on my head. Exactly what we were

Paul Daly  04:06

talking before before the show before you came into the stream. And we would like to start off the show. Understanding a little bit more of really intense questions get very intense on with the hard hitting stuff first thing in the morning. What does your morning routine look like? You're someone that gets so much done in a day. And it seems like you're everywhere. And we joke about like having a dozen email addresses that we have to manage. What is your morning group? What is your morning routine?

04:30

Well, I hate to say it like I'm not a morning person. You know, I'll work until midnight or one o'clock typically, but mornings are not my time. And I also hate to admit I've got eight cats in the house. All of them are rescue cats. So I literally spend the first like 45 minutes when I wake up. It's cat time. You know, making sure everyone's fed. Everyone has water cleaning litter. And you know it's my time to like go around the house and see all the cats so it's literally like No,

Kyle Mountsier  05:00

it's a practice in automotive industry, right? It's like herding cats in the morning so that you can herd cats.

05:07

I'm quite literally herding cats in the morning. That's the first thing I do for the first, like 45 minutes.

Paul Daly  05:11

So you say you don't have a morning routine, but that's probably the most unique morning routine I've heard in my life. And I can see it like, you know, like, like Zen kind of thing. Like it's kind of simple tasks, right? You spend your life and in mental complexity, right? It's like the cats do the same thing every day. They need the same thing every day. Well, that's great. That's amazing. Just eight cats in the morning esteem. Steve greenfields morning routine. So that wasn't at all what I was expecting. But I was expecting like, 10 pages or something 30 minutes of like, you standing in tree pose, you know? No. That's all right. Let's talk about like real business for a second. So your monthly Intel report, automotive Intel report is read by 1000s and 1000s of people across the industry, we wait for it to drop in our inbox. And then we usually start texting each other about it, you know, within an hour of dropping like, oh, did you see this? And, and we saw this month. And we're like, we have to see if Steve will come talk about it on the show. It's always great. But this month, I think the opening just kind of hit us a little bit harder. So let's start by you just giving a brief summary about what the report is, like, why you started doing it, why you're keeping doing it. And then we'll get in, we have five things we want to talk about from it.

06:27

That's great. Well, thanks, guys. I always appreciate the time with you and appreciate making time for me to be on the show today. And yeah, the latest July version, I did drop to beginning of this week. So it's available at automotive ventures.com. If anybody wants it, and it's free, it'll always be free. So the idea was two years ago that I started publishing this monthly report, and figuring that I was going to try to generate content that would be helpful to the entrepreneurs in the space, and help them understand what transactions are taking place who's buying what, what what valuations are being paid, etc. And then I found very quickly that there was a greater appetite than just invest entrepreneurs, and we have a whole bunch of entrepreneurs that really rely on it for the various frameworks we provide. But um, you know, a lot of car dealerships, were starting to subscribe, I was like, Oh, that's pretty interesting. I think they want to make sense of like the cluttered landscape of all the vendors out there, and stay abreast of like new technologies that are coming out, right. They're also interested in intrigued with, like, who's getting access, etc. And it's always finding frustrating to dealers, when they see a big exit from a company that where they were early adopter. And then the last segment, I would say, is like, the investors themselves started to tune in. And I started to see more subscribers from venture capitalists and private equity folks, and even corporate venture capitalists, who, again, are starting to look at the automotive space. And, you know, the good thing we've had over the last couple of years is a lot more people paying attention to automotive and automotive tech than in the past. I mean, we were always kind of stigmatized, was saying, you know, there wasn't a lot of automotive, a lot of technology being applied to automotive. And I think quite the contrary is true. Now. You know, there's definitely some archaic business practices that need to evolve, there's no doubt. But in many cases, now, we're seeing, you know, injections of new technology players that are fetching, you know, billion dollar valuations. And it's an exciting time. But I think part of the reason that we have so many subscribers, it's hard to stay abreast of that the pace of change, and the pace of the news cycle.

Kyle Mountsier  08:26

Yeah, it absolutely is. And when you and I love, you know, earlier this year, you kind of broke it into dealer tech, and you know, the retail automotive kind of stuff. And then and also now the mobility index, right. And they're running at the same pace at this point. And at some point, I think they're going to start to, to merge together a little bit more, but right now they're running parallel paces. And so I'm interested to see over the next year, how you kind of watched those kind of come into each other, because I think there's going to be a neat fold. And I think some of the things that we're going to talk about today, even just the way you're kind of crafting the conversation with a lot of how you lead this within your opening remarks are are kind of watching like that forward thinking forecasting of how all of these things start to lay in as as the fabric of automotive kind of shifts and changes.

09:19

Yeah, it's a great point. One of the hardest questions I have is, you know, when I when I get in front of a bunch of dealer owners, and they asked me, What does it look like in five years? Because it's really hard to tell. But we do know, it's like, the pace of change is accelerating. There's, so we're gonna get into today, there's a lot of changes going on that dealers need to stay a highly attuned to, but it's really hard to like forecast out and say, What does a franchise dealer model look like in five years? What's the percentage of Evie penetration? What are the implications of all this, you know, the OEM starting to position to sell directly to consumers and you own more of the control of the supply chain? We can kind of always work through like scenarios that might play out but it's hard To like declare, what does the future actually look like?

Paul Daly  10:02

Absolutely. It's impossible. Well, we're going to try to spend a few minutes on these five topics that you addressed in your, in your letter this week, or this month. So number one dealer valuations and what's driving them, agency model creep, OEMs, controlling lease and volume, the f&i headwinds that are upon us. And then finally, we're going to talk about the benefits of scale. And that's kind of an order as the way you've addressed them in the in the letter. So we'll try to give a little summary, first, dealer valuation has been a topic of conversation for the last I mean, really elevated over the last 24 months. What is dealer? What is driving dealer valuations right now? And what are the indicators? You're seeing that that might indicate that some changes on the way?

10:43

Yeah, so I would say that, you know, it's not too aggressive to say, we're in an environment where profits are higher than they've ever been. And valuations are higher than they've ever been for physical store. So when you multiply those two together, I mean, it's really hard for the average dealer to to afford, you know, buying dealerships right now. And I think that the guys that I talked to typically say, Yeah, but we're, we're looking at underperforming stores. Right? How many? How many of those are there? So everyone is I mean, lithium will say the same thing in their, you know, earnings call transcripts, Brian divorce, as you know, we're typically targeting underperforming stores where we can turn them around, yet they're buying like crown jewel stores, it seems, and I'm sure paying all the money for those stores. But I think that, to answer your question, Paul, I think that what's happening is dealers are flush with cash. And, you know, I think dealers kind of innately say, What am I going to do with my cash, I'm going to buy more stores, they haven't in the past, had the opportunity to diversify very much. And therefore I think their natural setting is to go and buy stores. So that's one. And I think that's supporting valuations. But I think most importantly, as I mentioned, Lithia, Lithium has been like ravenous to buy more stores. And you clearly been signaling to Wall Street for some time that their intention is to move into the number one slot, which they did in q1, we're the number one dealership in by size, at least in America, and that they're not going back now. And you know, to get to 500 stores, and then be able to be within like 95% of your tuner mile delivery radius of 590 5% of the US population. So I mean, at this pace, and they don't seem to be slowing down at all. I think they have another $15 billion in their pipeline of new revenue that they are sizing up now, according to earnings calls. And, you know, I think that, that, that that single handedly is supporting valuations, but then you've got, you know, the other dynamic where we're, you know, because there's effectively an imbalance between supply and demand. Any other dealer that's trying to buy stores, it's just really hard right now, because it's kept valuations very high. So one would think that, you know, with all the uncertainty on the horizon, you know, with sort of interest rates increasing, and some of the share prices coming down pretty dramatically for the publicly traded groups, we've seen a bit of a reset, doesn't seem like it so far, everything, all the the brokers of these, these physical dealerships are saying valuations are still as high as ever. And, you know, we know that watching profitability is as high as ever.

Kyle Mountsier  13:16

So my question here, and we'll kind of connect to this to the next topic, which is, is this is this OEM potential shift to the agency model that we're seeing heavily in heavily in Europe is, with all of this by selectivity and with the larger, you know, publicly traded companies, growing market share by purchasing dealerships and profitability, what what is their perception of this, this shift to a potential agency model, and how leveraging purchasing other you know, brick and mortar rooftops actually sets them up for this potential agency model? Because, like, my perception is, the single 123 rooftop groups probably have the most kind of, you know, you know, eyes alert for the agency model. But it seems like there may be something that this has kind of a play to, to make sure that they're hedged against any disruption in the franchise model. And how is how are those like buy sell? How's that buy sell activity? You know, looking at this future of potential agency model?

14:23

Yeah, it's very astute observation. I think there's naturally a hedge to use your term, which is a good one, a hedge against the agency model, the bigger that I am. And if I've got different branded OEM brands within the family, that if one particular OEM gets very aggressive, like a couple have recently, then it kind of allows me to diversify away from having too much exposure to one brand. I think that just having larger dealerships, and more volume pumped through as dealerships is more likely to have me have a seat at the table, you know, OEMs are less less likely just to push over me Eat Right? and knock knock me over on the way. I think that the biggest anxiety I see are these multi generation groups, sometimes only having one or two or three rooftops, where they're like, wow, you know, I'm not diversified. And if one of one or more of my OEMs decides to push for this model, it's going to have a huge effect on me. And, you know, they're hoping to pass this on to the next generations, right? It's not a private equity backed group that wants to get out. In five years, they have a much longer time horizon. And I think that's where it's creating the most eggs. But yeah, the natural hedge is, can be a conference through scale, and having a bigger potential seat at the table. And you know, as you're larger, I mean, the OEMs. In some cases are going to be like Kingmaker, they're going to decide the dealerships that they want to invest in the most. And it's likely going to accrue to the largest dealerships, which happened to be the public groups, in most cases.

Paul  15:57

Do you think there's a there's a benefit to like just being a great operator like say, you know, family owned Ford dealership, Ford, obviously, is one of the ones being the most aggressive in, in the agency model space, or at least talking about that. And what we're going to talk about next, as far as lease and volume, how much do you see like being just an amazing operator playing into that if you don't have size? Like, does that bring a lot of value to the OEM?

16:23

Yeah, tons. I mean, if you're amazing operator, typically, you're gaining market share and getting bigger and bigger, and therefore having more of a seat at the table, it doesn't help anything with the exposure to one particular OEM. And if they decide to make a dramatic change towards more of an agency model and control inventory and profitability and such on that channel. But yeah, Paul, I think it's a great point. One of the slides that I I built out for this month's Intel report contrasts how the the average year is dealers SG and a they're selling general and administrative costs versus the public groups. And you can see clearly there I mean, it's very sort of Stark, in terms like the public groups have a huge advantage from a cost structure. And of course, they do their centralizing costs on the back end, you know, they've got their own tech teams that look for inefficiencies and ways to automate, they get more leverage with their vendors to drive down costs. There's a whole slew of ways that bigger groups find costs. But the bigger you are, whether you're one store that grows over time and gets really big, or especially if you're, you know, a larger group, there's definitely math behind the scenes of finding efficiencies and the efficiencies give you, I think, I call it in the report this week, like dry powder, that gives you a margin of error, right. So if my costs are less than the guy across the street, then I could use it to discount cars, or I can sit there and say, I've got more profits every month, I can reinvest those profits into things that are going to hedge me by either buying more stores or finding more scale or whatever it might be. And I think it's a natural kind of hedge to scale as a natural kind of hedge because not the least of which is you take out costs, operating costs and centralized operating costs.

Paul  18:02

You know, I'm looking at that slide right now, I wish I had a way to throw it on the screen. But it says the NADA average is 71%. And then this other six that you list, the highest one is group one, sick or Penske at 66% 66.7. But like auto nation is 58.1% as opposed to the average of 71%. So that's a vast, vast amount of resources available, because of the scale and efficiencies of operation. That's pretty Yeah.

18:29

And all of that flows through to the bottom line, right, and is thus, you know, additional profit that they can use for whatever purpose that they want.

Paul Daly  18:38

Alright, so as we're talking about that, we kind of touched on a number of things, because I think it's an indicator that all of these issues are so intertwined. And we talked about this merging together. Um, let's talk about the OEMs controlling lease and volume and Ford announced that when you lease through Ford credit, you can no longer buy the vehicle off lease, Ford is going to absorb that back into the 40 ecosystem, largely citing battery material concerns. I've never even thought of or heard of, or even thought that anybody would ever do something like this. What's your perspective and take on? Why it's coming up? Obviously, the battery materials being one, but what are the other complexities that you see playing out

19:14

here? Yeah, so it wasn't lost on me that like about two months ago, Tesla announced the same thing. Yeah. So I don't think that was cited too much in the press. No, it wasn't when Ford does it, it affects the dealers and we hear about it on the front page of automotive news. But I mean, I think that it's it's very interesting move right and a bit of a head scratcher for me until you until you start to think about it. You're like, Okay, well, one is any sort of extensively, they said, we're gonna be able to reclaim the batteries because there is this worry. I know, I know. You've talked to Brian benstock about this, you know, China controls a lot of the rare earth minerals and you know, we've we're going to be beholden to international players. As you know, Edi penetration increases, driving up the inputs, and they're trying to figure out how do we get independency from like, some of these battery suppliers and the raw inputs like that's Definitely one of the dynamics No, no doubt, I mean to reclaim all those battery inputs and not have to worry about mining additional materials makes sense to me. But I think there's there are other things right. So one is we're gonna see a proliferation of a whole bunch of new Evie models. And you know, we when I was at TrueCar, we owned ALG, which does most of the residual value forecasting, it's really hard with a new when new model comes out to forecast what it's going to be worth in three years. And that's what you know, at least is predicated on that residual value. And given we're gonna see all these new EVs they're all not going to be as hot as an F 150, lightning or a Hummer. Right, right. So some of them are going to be duds, and the OEMs are going to have a heck of a time setting residual values on new EVs. And by not letting them come back into the secondary market, they're going to be able to control for that and effectively price the the the payment on the vehicle wherever they want. So that's number one. Number two is it's not lost on me that you know, GM launch car Bravo, and your forest launch blue, blue advantage, and they're setting up their own secondary marketplaces. And now they're gonna have, you know, supply that no one else has, there will be unique vehicles that come back, but the only place to get them could potentially be on these other competing OEM owned secondary marketplaces. And you know, the who knows that the dealers will have a crack at buying these vehicles at all. They may go directly to the consumer from Ford on these third party marketplaces that are owned by the OEMs. So I think that's pretty interesting. And then I think the other thing that I mentioned, it's, I think it's frustrating for the OEMs to see this current dynamic, where cars are coming back at five $7,000 over residual value. And who makes money in that case? Well, the consumer, hopefully, if it's an unsuspecting unaware consumer, the dealer makes a ton of money because they can just wholesale the car right away. But definitely, the OEM doesn't have a sort of call option on making that additional money right now. And it's got to be very frustrating for the OEM. So that can cut both ways, because they could definitely mispriced the residual value and be underwater by 1000s. of dollars. Yeah, we've seen lots of that. There's lots of that in the past, and they will be taking that risk if they buy back every car. But I think this gives them a lot more flexibility to control the secondary market.

Kyle Mountsier  22:19

You know, what's interesting about this is, is that there have been a lot of people to kind of talk about, just the way that and I talk about that a lot the way that phone technology, phone renting, and the way that that service and software and hardware linked to like a person's mentality on the monthly payment or like ownership, and how that might shift that a similar type of shift might happen in automotive to where we think about cars as two to three year items that were never in a purchase mode, because technology is moving so fast. And when when I like extrapolate that into this scenario, that's one place that like phone providers have actually done well, to, to push out the like repurchasing and the trading, essentially, the trade and valuations on these other providers, whether it be you know, the phone, you know, the phone platform provider, or you know, the Best Buy or wherever you purchase or trade the phone. And so it's interesting to me to see like the rest of Eevee kind of looking looking like a phone. And this is the one place that we've been doing it right for a long time. And if we get it and if we got it right, but now pulling that back to the OEM to manage AI as an OEM, it would be the scariest proposition ever. Because right now, like you are, you're taking the bet on all the residuals. My the better play here, in my opinion would be to, like leverage some level of profit sharing potentially on on that next on the next turn of the vehicle, if it was if it was shared over so yeah, but no one's gonna listen to me on that.

23:58

No, no, I think there's a couple of things in what you said that we should unpack because one is your loyalty. You know, I'm an iPhone guy. And I love the fact now whether I lose my phone, or my phone sort of like starts to deteriorate from a battery standpoint, they can literally like real time pored over my entire experience with a new phone. And I don't miss a beat. And you can imagine that a consumer who gets all their car customized, I buy, you know, a Maki, like a Mustang and then I want to get into the newest Mustang and they can port all my, all my preference is over. And it's like it's totally seamless, it may drive a lot more loyalty and people less likely to defect. And then the second thing is you look at how much of Apple's revenue is through the App Store and collect 30% of you know, app revenue, anybody who wants to play in there, like walled garden ecosystem, and I would think that it's to be determined totally other issue and you know, as the OEMs offer up subscription services post sale, what the revenue split will be between the OEM and the dealer. that'll get negotiated on a, an OEM by OEM basis. But I mean, this this, that should all be very high margin revenue that can be split between the OEM and the dealer. So whereas there's a lot of uncertainty in the market, there's a lot of hope as well that there will be brand new revenue streams available to dealers and OEMs that haven't existed. And I think we should continue to use the analog as you are of the of the phone. Because it's like, I don't really think about too much about who my carrier is. I'm loyal to I'm very loyal to the manufacturer, but it's more about the services than it is the hardware, the hardware is secondary. It's like, like, do you use the term vehicle, it is a vehicle to get me the high value stuff, which is all the apps that are running on the vehicle, it's everywhere you're trying to go right,

Kyle Mountsier  25:45

all the rest of the experience, right. And that's, that's, that's, like, the dealership should be thinking about that the OEM should be thinking about that both separately in how they can leverage that technology and jointly for revenue streams, because that is that's like, you know, everyone's losing their mind about, you know, invoice matches, retail price, right? And I think, yes, there's, there's something to be said about that. But we lost money on new cars for years and years, this is the first time where we even cared that invoice and MSRP were the same thing, right. And so, you know, to like, go back to 2018. And remember, when you were losing that money, you know, before before house money, and think about like, if you had additional revenue streams at in 2018. To put on top of that as a subscription service, whether that be f&i products, or experience products or anything like that, that you either did solely as a dealer, develop your own, or partner with the OEM to create revenue streams. It's so much more lucrative because it's, it's it, you become a SaaS company, as opposed to a transaction company. And that's a totally different model. And actually, it's more attractive to outside perspectives, looking at the revenue streams of like, I mean, you deal in venture capitalism all the time. Like, you know, you go from you, you move into SAS model to FinTech and like everything moves, and so if we can, if we can look at dealerships in that same way, the multiples actually might increase with money from outside of auto looking to get at some of these some of these mid to large size groups.

Paul Daly  27:20

You know, Kyle and I something we say quite a bit and have been saying it find ourselves saying it more and more, whether we're in front of people or on the show is that the entire industry right now should be focused on and the savviest players are solving the customer experience. And not all of these little lanes that run within that highway of customer experience, like jumping to the end and saying, How can we make that great, because we know that there's money to be made, and there's value to be had, and there's loyalty to be had when we're solving for the customer experience. So like all of this, and I know some people might be listening to like, Alright, you're flying way up in the clouds right now. It's kind of it's kind of the nature of like focusing on future and technology, right? Like, we get to say, well, you know, in five years, not not so much like a politician will be like, you know, by the year 2040. We're gonna do this who's with me, right? I'll be retired or dead. It's a little different than that. The last thing I think we have time to cover before we go, you mentioned f&i, headwinds, or I call them headwinds, things that are happening in f&i, whether it's regulation or OEM control, online selling, that are going to change the game and are changing the game that has been a very staple of the profit center, especially of used car departments, but new car departments as well. What do you see shifting and going on right there. And what would your advice be to like the f&i manager today? You know, I want to bring it back down to the ground for a minute.

28:40

Yeah, sure. So I mean, pay attention to, you know, this news around the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, and what they announced last week, right. So there was a lot in that. And I think, you know, we need more smart industry people to kind of unpack it and opine, because the document itself is very heavy and very long. But at a high level, you know, we saw with Trump coming into power, you know, the CFPB, which up into that point was kind of warning, hey, they're gonna like cap dealers ability to make profit off finance. And they might start looking here, f&i products, etc. You know, under the previous Republican government, in the White House, I mean, that was really defamed. Right? The CFPB wasn't dissolved. But I mean, a lot of the power was taken away, and there wasn't a lot of emphasis. Well, it seems like we've reenergized this now through the FTC. And the FTC is looking at not only f&i products and disclosures, and you know, what they were they're calling a low value or junk fees and their terms, right, that are providing no value to consumers, f&i products, but also, there's a lot in there on advertising products, too. And truth in advertising. And, you know, there's language in there that a dealer may have to keep a track record of all their advertising for the last two years, which as you guys know, it'll be very hard in a digital medium to keep track of every single impression that you've had every single advertising unit that you've, you've served up so I mean, we'll have to keep an eye on this but At a high level, it's concerning. Because, you know, it seems like the government is looking at potentially getting into into the f&i department and starting to scrutinize you know, the lower value. We're in their words, no value f&i products that are being sold, and then ensuring that, you know, the consumer is presented at the time of purchase a clear indication of what the car would be the price would be without and with these f&i products, right, so no more moving shells around and trying to confuse the consumer. And, you know, we could see a wave of new sort of regulation coming in as a result. So I don't know, to your point where your question Paul has anything to do right now. But if I'm in f&i manager, I need to stay abreast of this. Because downstream, there's going to be implications. I think that you know, there's going to be a 60 day comment period, it'd be very interesting. And I'll do my best to stay on top of like, as much as they disclose whatever public comments are out there. But there is going to be change coming. It seems that the f&i department, and probably not not a lot of it positive net net for the profitability of that function within the dealership. Kyle, any

Paul Daly  31:05

any closing words, as we wrap? I know we've done a little longer than we usually do, but well, well worth it. And yeah, we'll ask questions. Final words before I wrap us,

Kyle Mountsier  31:13

look, here's the thing, if one, if you're listening to this, and you're not subscribed to the automotive ventures Intel report, at that minimum get that because this was something that back two years ago, when I first subscribed, it really just like opened my eyes to thinking bigger when I was at the dealership, and then now outside of the stores. It it really gives you a clearer perspective. But But also recognize that everything that has a horizon also has a now. And like Steve just said like there are things that you

31:49

quote, Paul, Paul, get that quote. Oh, we got it all.

Paul Daly  31:55

Also has now

Kyle Mountsier  31:55

Yeah, so the idea is like, you can look out on the horizon and pull it back to what you what you have to be doing now to start thinking about the horizon and activating your business mentality because car dealers, software providers are great business operators. We're not We're not discounting that fact. And so approach new business mentalities, New Horizons with that same great, like energy and momentum that you have always as dealers and industry partners, and that will keep us sustaining and not just sustaining but thriving in this industry.

Paul Daly  32:31

Steve, parting word from you. We're just we're just dropping gems?

32:35

Well, I don't know that I can actually add anything. I think, you know, dealers need to be on their best game and state state highly attuned to what's going on. This pace of the news cycle is crazy right now. And like literally every new every week, we're getting new new news out there that could potentially have really big impacts on the dealer body. So, you know, you know, I think what you guys are doing for the good of the industry, kudos to you. And I think that dealers that are tuning in, need to be tuning in and paying attention. Well, thank

Paul Daly  33:03

you very much, ladies and gentlemen, Steve Greenfield automotive ventures.com to get the report, follow the ban on LinkedIn because he's got 28,000 followers, because there's a reason they're not just doing it for their health. You don't I'm saying we'll see you tomorrow.

33:16

Right

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