Justin L. Jude
Thank you, Joe, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call. As you all know, I have now been in the CEO role for a full year. The year has presented some macro challenges and some short-term operational obstacles, but also opportunities for longer- term value creation. Alongside my leadership team, we have made some tough but necessary decisions to fundamentally reshape how we operate and put us back to a path of consistent value creation. The decisions made are aligned with our overarching strategy, a multiyear transformation to simplify our portfolio, sharpen our focus and position us as a high-performing company centered on our core business segments. Our global team is laser-focused on growing our market share while driving productivity and efficiently managing our cost structure. At our September 2024 Investor Day, we set our strategic priorities, simplify our business portfolio and operations, expand our lean operating model globally with a focus on margin enhancement, invest and grow organically and pursue a disciplined capital allocation strategy. And so as we move forward, we are going to share how we are doing against each of these a scorecard, if you will, that makes it clear for the investment community to see how we are doing. I can't sugarcoat that today, the results are yet to show this progress and the macro headwinds necessitated our revised guidance. We are not where we need to be, and so we are going to push harder and move faster. To that end, we are focused on 2 immediate things. One, additional cost-cutting measures, primarily in Europe but also in North America with a goal of cutting another $75 million in costs; two, a heightened emphasis on the strategic review of our business units in operations that may result in the sale of assets that further accelerate our simplification strategy and capital allocation priorities. We are seeing a turn in the market for strategic activity with credit markets opening. Momentum behind midsized transactions and private equity actively seeking to deploy capital. While this will not be a linear process, I remain confident that we are on track to realize the full benefits of this strategy by 2027, as outlined at our September 2024 Investor Day. It is worth noting that we are doing these things at a time when there are broader challenges in the overall auto industry and macroeconomic environment. It is a dynamic and fluid environment. Given amongst other factors, the rising input costs and the uncertainties around tariffs are creating confusion. We are not alone in the industry in facing these challenges, but you can either complain and make excuses or focus on your business and operating model to deliver the best possible results. Our team has chosen to focus on executing our plan, controlling the things we can, such as being efficient in managing our costs and looking for opportunities to take advantage of the current dislocations and disruptions in our core markets to gain market share and expand margins. We know in a challenging earnings environment, cost discipline is paramount, which is why we've taken actions to remove $125 million of costs in the past 12 months without compromising our ability to execute and service our customers. This is just a first step. And as I mentioned, we are going to continue to scrutinize our cost structure and find additional ways to enhance our margins. Next, I will discuss our business segments, North America first. North America's organic revenue fell by 2.2% per day, which is less of a decline than the last 5 quarters and an outperformance of repairable claims by over 650 bps, well above our historical 450 bps outperformance. Importantly, our aftermarket collision parts business witnessed a slight growth in the quarter. We are still seeing consistent demand across our hard parts business in Canada and margin enhancement as we convert from 3-step to 2-step. Lastly, as an update to the issue of repairable claims resulting from declining used car pricing and rising insurance premiums, we previously said that the comps will start to ease as we progress into 2025. However, the June numbers were weaker than anticipated, and at this juncture, we think it is prudent to assume minimal market recovery in the back half of the year. Moving on to Europe. Europe's organic revenue decreased 4.9% or 3.8% on a per day basis, primarily driven by difficult economic conditions, increased competition in certain markets and some temporary headwinds due to operational challenges. We expect the economic conditions to continue throughout the balance of the year, along with the competitive pressures, which has led to price concessions. As an example, in the U.K., we've renegotiated several dozen national account agreements and resigned all but one, validating the strong value proposition we offer to our customers. Regarding the operational challenges impacting revenue in a nutshell, we unintentionally created negative customer experiences and ultimately top line erosion. We have resolved these service issues and are in the process of regaining the customers' confidence and ultimately our share of wallet back. One thing I would like to emphasize here is that Europe represents a significant opportunity for us. As I mentioned in the past, we need the right leaders in place to truly drive the change and achieve the benefits of scale that Europe represents. After recently making significant leadership changes, we now believe we have the right people. This revamped team is now focused on process and performance, both of which been lagged in certain areas of our European business. This lack of focus from previous leaders played a role in the underperformance in the quarter, and it will take some time to manage these legacy issues. However, we are confident that we are on track with the 3-year targets presented at our September 2024 Investor Day. I was in Europe the last week of June to meet with our management teams, and we will be focused on ensuring we are moving quickly to implement our strategy in that market. Europe is a competitive marketplace, and our focus is on key geographies where we have the ability to be a top player. We continue to make progress on our SKU rationalization goals. Our SKU rationalization project in Europe aims to reduce complexity and simplify our distribution network across all markets. We have reviewed over 70% of our product brands and reduced stocking by an additional 13,000 SKUs. Our private label penetration was flat sequentially, but up 20 bps year-to- date, keeping us on track to hit our 2027 target of 27%. In addition to our SKU rationalization, we are streamlining our operations and reducing costs through back office and systems rationalization programs as well as greater utilization of our global competency centers. Moreover, we believe we're now positioned to expand our market share, and we feel confident we can continue as the leading European player. We started executing on this goal as we recently announced our partnership with SYNETIQ Limited which is a critical building block in the development of LKQ Europe salvage channel, a market that will benefit from the full service salvage intellectual capital in North America. Moving on to specialty. Specialty has turned a corner and is seeing improved results. Specialty's organic revenue was largely flat year-over-year, which is the best quarterly year-over-year revenue performance since the fourth quarter of 2021. We are cautiously optimistic this segment is starting to show green shoots as our July revenue has continued to show positive trends we saw in June. Lastly, Self Service. Self Service's organic revenue was soft in the quarter from lower part volumes but still managed to deliver a 10% EBITDA margin. Disciplined vehicle procurement, combined with overhead cost controls continue to help drive profitable quarterly results in this segment. I want to stress that people are our greatest assets, ensuring we have the most talented and effective team is critical to our success. As a result, we have created an executive position focused on global talent development. We think this will be an important role, and we are excited about how it will support our overall business around the globe. A few facts that I think are important to share on talent. Since I took over the CEO role last July, we have taken difficult, bold and necessary steps to reshape our leadership team. Over 25% of the roles at the VP level and above have been refreshed with new talent or redefined responsibilities. This level of transformation reflects our commitment to building a high-performing agile organization. We're focused on getting the right people on the bus and just as importantly, ensuring they're in the right seats. These changes, while not without challenges, are foundational to driving sustainable growth and consistent performance, which yield long-term value creation for shareholders. Equally important is the strength of our talent pipeline. Over 50% of it now comes from external hires with a high focus on our European operations to lead us through business transformation. This infusion of fresh perspectives and different experiences is accelerating innovation, bringing a clear lens on growing the business, finding efficiencies and positioning us for the future. We're not just evolving. We're focused on fixing, repairing and building momentum. I'm going to hand it over to Rick now, but I want to emphasize the following. We have size, scale and an unmatched distribution network. We know the current results are yet to reflect the value we are creating, and we share your frustration. But we are solidifying our foundation and ensuring when the cycle turns in this sector that we will be in the strongest position to capitalize on it to deliver results for our customers, partners and importantly, our shareholders. That is our mission, and we are hellbent on accomplishing it.