Participants

Jeff Liaw; Chief Executive Officer; Copart Inc

Leah Stearns; Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President; Copart Inc

Bob Labick; Analyst; CJS Securities, Inc.

Chris Bottiglieri; Analyst; BNP Paribas Securities Corp, North America

Bret Jordan; Analyst; Jefferies LLC

Alice Wycklendt; Analyst; Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated

Jash Patwa; Analyst; JPMorgan

Presentation

Operator

Please stand by. Good day, everyone and welcome to the Copart Incorporated first quarter, fiscal 2025 earnings call. Just a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. Before turning the call over to management. I will share Copart's Safe Harbor statement.
The company's comments today include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws including management's current views with respect to trends, opportunities and uncertainties in the company's markets.
These forward-looking statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties for more detail on the risks associated with the company's business we refer you to the section titled Risk Factors in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended July 31, 2024 and each of the company's subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statements are made as of today and the company has no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.
I'll now turn the call over to the company's CEO, Jeff Liaw.

Jeff Liaw

Thank you everyone for joining the earnings call for our first quarter for fiscal 2025. On our recent calls, we've been talking about some important themes about our business, including our recent growth with bank rental and fleet sellers. We talked about Title Express, a new offering -- we're offering the insurance industry.
We've talked about sustainability and we've talked about growth in our international businesses as well as in the heavy equipment space as well. Today, with the first quarter past us for this next fiscal year, we thought it would be a good opportunity to reflect specifically about our insurance business specifically.
There are two themes I wanted to draw upon today. First is our response to the recent hurricane activity in the southeastern United States. And the second is the longer term trends that we observe in the insurance industry more broadly. First, regarding the recent flurry of hurricane activity.
In late September of this year, category four, hurricane Helane made landfall in Florida. Severe flooding of course struck the Tampa St. Petersburg area and eventually caused significant damage elsewhere in Florida, Georgia and North and South Carolina, including areas not accustomed to dealing with storms of this magnitude.
Then less than two weeks later, category three, Hurricane Milton struck Florida again. The back to back nature of the storms added a level of complexity to our storm response that we hadn't previously experienced, including a brief evacuation of our own people in certain most dangerous areas.
In comparison to Hurricane Ian, a similarly scaled and located storm from just two years ago. Our advanced preparation and our team's execution this time around yielded still better results with approximately twice as many vehicles picked up in the first 10 days of these 2024 storms in comparison to Ian in 2022.
As always, our emphasis is on retrieving, processing and selling vehicles as quickly as we can to help restore the communities in which we do business back to their prior state and to assist our clients, the major insurance companies in resolving their claims with policyholders as quickly as they can.
To that end, by the end of October, just three weeks after landfall from Milton, we had sold approximately a quarter of all of the assigned vehicles we would ultimately receive from both Helane and Milton.
In fact, according to one third party source, three out of every four catastrophic units sold in Florida during the month of October were sold on Copart's auction platform, a reflection both of our presence as well as the speed of our execution.
This go around. Our proactive storm preparation was marked by three pillars. First, the dedicated owned storage capacity that we hold in reserve for storms of this nature, representing nearly 2000 acres nationwide and approximately 1,000 acres specifically for the Helene and Milton areas alone.
Second, our technology and logistics teams have deployed real time tools that serve both our own people as well as our third party towing network, as well as our own employed drivers in optimizing routing and optimizing dispatch for the rapid retrieval and movement of vehicles through our network.
And finally our industry leading contracted and full time towing and transport network, which we have steadily built up over the years was able to respond with unprecedented speed in this instance. I've already had an opportunity to do so face to face with many of the Copart employees. But we again want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the more than 1,200 folks and their families who sacrificed for days in some cases, weeks and months at a time to work in challenging conditions, to work long hours, to assist again, our clients, our people and our communities.
Turning our attention to our insurance business more broadly, our insurance business grew approximately 13% for the quarter in unit volume when excluding the effect of catastrophic events. We grew 9% year over year for the quarter.
Total loss frequency was certainly one of the major catalysts we experienced with the total loss frequency for the calendar quarter ending September 30 reported by CCC of 21.7% an increase of almost 2% year over year.
More broadly, though we wanted to pause for a moment to reflect on longer term industry trends there, as you know, has been a steady drumbeat in the news media and in various company announcements on accident avoidance, technologies and autonomous driving rollouts over the past decade plus.
And in addition, we've encountered a number of inquiries in recent days from investors and other interested parties on this subject as well. Our answer here will be especially US centric, but the takeaways I think are broadly applicable to the markets in which we do business.
We all of course draw inferences from our own empirical experience, the cars we drive, we now experience more of the safety technologies in the form of lane departure warning systems that buzz our steering wheels, rear cameras that we probably all use when we back up our cars nowadays and many of us have also taken rides in autonomous taxis within the geo fence areas in which they're operating today.
We think there's also insight to be derived. However, from multiple decade trends that we can absorb -- that we can observe in actual data. There are four factors I wanted to draw out today and then a secondary consideration I wanted to offer that inform our perspective on the long term organic growth trends in our business.
The first is simply population growth since 1,960 population in the United States has grown at 1% compounded, which sounds like a fairly modest growth rate. But over a time horizon of that scale, our population is almost doubled in the United States.
The second consideration is vehicle miles traveled which over that same Horizon plus or minus has grown at 2%.
As a result, vehicle miles traveled over that horizon has quadrupled from 1,960 to today, which is to say that ultimately, vehicle miles traveled as a country grows more populous and more prosperous as the United States has done generally outpaces population growth alone.
We're all aware of course of the anomalous, very well documented steep decline in vehicle miles traveled in 2020 courtesy of COVID 19. We are now above pre prepandemic peaks on this specific metric. If you were to look at a visual chart showing vehicle miles traveled over this 60 plus year period, I think you'd likely also conclude that we still have several years of return to work tailwinds ahead of us as more and more businesses implement those policies.
The third phenomenon I want to comment on specifically is accident rates and their long term trends downwards. So over the past 30 years, the Department of Transportation has published data on police reported crashes. There is one anomalous trend from the 2014 to 2018 period. I think marked likely by the proliferation of smartphones and the addictive apps that certainly afflict us all that caused accident rates actually to increase in certain years during that period.
But nonetheless, over the decades long horizon, we've seen a steady decline in accidents per miles driven. And in fact, today versus 1990 there are approximately one-third fewer crashes and fatalities per million miles driven.
But in absolute terms, that decline has only been 8% because of the offsetting effects of the growth in population and vehicle miles travel. Safety technologies penetrate gradually into new vehicle shipments and still more gradually into the installed base of drivable vehicles. And it is that fleet effect which causes the gradual decline in accidents relative to the perhaps more innovative technology deployments exhibited or implemented by OEMs today.
And then the fourth and most important driver of our business is total loss frequency itself. It has been the key catalyst in our growth now for decades and has grown more than fourfold since 1990. This again is a phenomenon that has exhibited a nearly monotonic increase over that period.
But for an anomaly in late 2021 and early 2022, when the pop and used car prices made total loss a relatively expensive settlement procedure for insurance companies briefly suppressing total loss frequency. We are yet again above pre pandemic highs on this specific metric.
The long term catalyst here is that vehicles become ever more complex including for reasons, safety technologies we've already talked about today and therefore more expensive to repair, rendering the repair path less attractive, while also the intrinsic value of these vehicles rise via our marketplace. We find still more buyers in places like Eastern Europe, Central and South America, Africa and elsewhere where their mobility needs are ultimately satisfied by our wrecked cars.
The proliferation of safety technologies that drive accident frequency down. And by the way, there have been multiple rounds of these technologies over the decades from antilock brakes in the 70s and 80s to the more sensor driven technologies of today.
But the proliferation of these technologies is not incidental to total loss frequency. But in fact, directly causal, these technologies tend to be enabled by sensors and chips often configured on the perimeter of vehicles, rendering them quickly and easily damaged in an accident and raising the cost of repair as a result, those cars in turn are still quite valuable to our destination markets as drivable contributors to the mobility in those markets.
One additional secondary driver I thought was worth mentioning today is the phenomenon of uninsured, underinsured and undercapitalized motorists, specifically. On the point of uninsured or liability only drivers, there is a very clear 30 year-plus trend downward meaning over time in a market like the United States insurance coverage generally becomes more robust.
We do how however observe cyclicality within that longer term secular trend driven in part by insurance premiums, the economic health of the country and so forth. In the past year or two in particular, the insurance premiums have generally increased at a pace -- at a rate outpacing other components of the consumer experience in part because of the natural regulatory lag in raising insurance rates.
As a result, then the liability only plus uninsured motorists combined are a greater share of the drivable fleet than they had been in prior years. Again, the long term trend here appears to be a secular trend downwards in any case.
The upshot of all of the above for us is that as we look forward on a 5, 10 and 20 year horizon, our baseline expectation continues to be of ongoing organic industry growth as population and the (inaudible) mile -- vehicle miles travel trends plus total loss frequency most importantly, of all, more than offset declining accident frequency as safety technologies penetrate new vehicle shipments and eventually a drivable fleet.
We do expect perhaps more volatility from contributors such as used car prices from severe weather events and the like on both fronts, then we're investing according accordingly to ensure that we have the physical technology and people capacity to serve our insurance clients under any conditions.
With that, I'll hand it over to our CFO, Leah Stearns.

Leah Stearns

Thank you, Jeff. I'll begin with our first quarter sales trends. During the quarter, our global unit sales and inventory increased 12% and 6% respectively from the year ago period and was a function of growth and total loss frequency and share gains.
Focusing on our US business unit growth was about 11% which reflects fee unit growth of 11% and purchase unit growth of nearly 6%. Consignment or fee units continue to constitute the vast majority of our US unit volume.
Our US insurance unit volume increased about 12% year over year and approximately 9% excluding cat units. We continue to grow our volume with non-insurance sellers by leveraging our core capabilities in outdoor storage via our real estate portfolio, a strong network of logistics solutions and a global liquid buyer base.
We are also seeking to optimize the mix of non-insurance units from a profitability perspective, as we continue to prune the low value unit volume. During the quarter, our blue car business which serves our bank and finance fleet and rental segment partners continued its strong trend of year-over-year growth of over 20%.
Our dealer sales volume a combination of our Copart dealer services division and National Power Sports auctions increased sales volumes by over 2% year over year. With CDS declining less than 1% and NPA increasing nearly 14%. And low value units including charities and municipalities declining 4%. On a final note, our partner in the specialty equipment space Purple Wave has driven double digit gross transaction value growth year over year for the trailing 12 month period ending October 31, which significantly outpaces industry growth in the equipment auction marketplaces they serve. This impressive growth demonstrates the value of our partnership and what it brings to the market.
Overall inventory levels in the US increased over 5% and decreased by about 1% when excluding low value in cat units. In turning to our international business, we saw unit growth of nearly 16% in the quarter including about 6% from cat units due to severe floods in the UAE in Brazil with fee units increasing about 16% in Q1 and purchase units increasing by just over 14% for the quarter. Our international business ended the quarter with inventory levels over 10% ahead of prior year.
Global ASPs declined by less than 1% for the quarter relative to the year ago period. Our US ASPs continue to show resilience and are significantly outperforming the used vehicle market more broadly. While the Manheim used vehicle price index declined by about 4% year over year. Our US insurance ASPs declined by only 1% over the same time period and had a slight increase of about 1% sequentially. Internationally, ASPs increased nearly 7%.
Turning to our financial performance. Global revenue in the quarter increased to $1.15 billion, representing growth of over $126 million or about 12%. Global service revenue increased nearly $127 million or about 15% for the first quarter, primarily due to increased volumes. US service revenue grew by about 13% for the quarter which included 2% attributable to cat units. And international service revenue grew by about 30%.
Global purchase vehicle sales for the first quarter decreased less than $1 million or approximately 20 basis points. While global purchase vehicle gross profit increased by about 72% in the first quarter. In the US purchased vehicle revenue was up about $9 million or about 12%, while purchased vehicle gross profit increased nearly $5 million or about 77% for the quarter.
Internationally, purchase vehicle revenue decreased by nearly $10 million or nearly 12%, and gross profit increased by $4 million or about 67% in the first quarter. The reduction in international purchase vehicle revenue accompanied by an increase in gross margin was primarily driven by higher ASP insurance vehicles in Germany which transitioned from purchase contract to a consignment model coupled with stronger purchase unit margins in the UK.
Global facility related costs which include facility operations, depreciation, amortization and stock based compensation increased $88 million or about 22%. In the US, facility related costs increased $74 million or nearly 22%. During the quarter, we recognized $29 million in incremental costs associated with Hurricanes, Helene and Milton.
This reflects noncapitalized costs associated with units sold in the quarter which is a change from our past cap financial disclosures, there remain $18 million in costs which were included or -- sorry, which were incurred and are currently capitalized on the balance sheet. These will be recognized as the remaining cat units are sold. Excluding the costs associated with the Hurricanes, facility related costs per unit increased about 4% from the prior year period.
This normalized increase in per unit cost reflects our ongoing investments and expanded operational capacity to support our continued growth. International facility related costs were up [$14 million], an increase of nearly 24% or approximately 7% on a per unit basis.
The increase in per unit costs was primarily due to growth in head count to support our business in the UK. During the quarter, global gross profit was approximately $512 million representing an increase of $48 million or about 10%. And our gross margin percent decreased by approximately 82 basis points to 44.7% in the quarter.
In the US. Our gross profit increased to $448 million, which was over 20 -- an increase of over $28 million or about 7%. And gross margin decreased 260 basis points to 47.2%. Our international gross profit increased to $65 million, about $20 million of an increase or 44% and gross margin increased over 740 basis points to 32.3% in the quarter.
Turning to our general and administrative expenditures which were $106 million in the quarter. This increase of $37 million reflects growth across the investments we have made into growing our specialty equipment sales team which covers both a geographic and sector specific coverage perspective. We expect to generate meaningful growth in specialty equipment gross transaction value over the next 12 to 24 months as a direct result of this investment.
In addition, the investments we're making in our platform, services, teams and systems which include our legal, compliance, technology, and our finance and people and culture teams have continued with support from third parties. We would expect these expenses to partially recede over the next 12 months and believe the business will be well positioned to generate strong operating leverage in the future.
As a result, first quarter, GAAP operating income increased by about 3% to over $406 million, which includes a modest headwind from the impact of Hurricanes, Helene and Milton.
And finally, first quarter, GAAP net income increased by about 9% to over $362 million or $0.37 per diluted common share. During the quarter, we did benefit from over $13 million of incremental interest income as we have actively invested our cash into treasury securities and for the quarter, our tax rate was 20%.
(technical difficulty) our capital structure as of the end of October, we had over [$4.9 billion] of liquidity which is compromised of nearly $3.7 billion in cash and our capacity under a revolving credit facility. For the quarter, we generated free cash flow of about $246 million, reflecting operating cash flow generation of $482 million in capital investments of about $237 million.
Our strong performance in responding to the Hurricanes during the quarter was directly attributable to the investments we've made in our teams, cat land portfolio, logistics solutions and technology platforms. We expect to prioritize the deployment of capital into these areas as we strive to continuously improve upon our service levels on behalf of our customers.
And with that, Jeff and I would be happy to take some questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Great. Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions)
Bob Labick, CGS Securities.

Bob Labick

Thanks. Good afternoon and thanks for taking our questions. Hi. I wanted to follow up on, (technical difficulty) frequency and salvage trends and whatnot. I think you said [21, 7] is roughly where total loss frequency is. So it's obviously really returned and gotten high you've mentioned on prior calls that this is obviously a combination of some of your customers, insurance companies well above that and then therefore some are below that as well.
So I was wondering if you could tell us some of the characteristics of the insurance companies that are at the higher end of that or at the lower end, are they the big ones are higher and small ones are lower. Is it tech savvy versus old school? How should we think about that? And then maybe more importantly, what are the reasons a company would keep, have a lower to total loss frequency? Is that intentional or maybe just I'll stop there.

Jeff Liaw

Got it. Bob a very fair question and for one for which there isn't a tidy one paragraph answer. The reality is if you even took one insurance carrier and compared them regionally against themselves, I think you'd find meaningful variation even within a given company. Broadly speaking, I think you highlighted a couple of axes on which our insurance clients can vary including their book of business where there are certain types of cars, certainly high end luxury automobiles for which some policy holders are less open minded about retaining a heavily damaged and now heavily repaired vehicle after the fact.
So for customer service accommodation reasons, sometimes those cars are totaled more readily than they otherwise would be. In terms of total loss practices, I think that some of the variations we'll see are literally the decision making criteria.
So at one end of the spectrum, you'll have folks who, if anything still have the statutory mindset for lack of a better expression, which is to say that in certain states, if damage exceeds X percent of the tax value of the car by statute, a carrier must offer the policy holder a total loss at least as an option.
And so some carriers to this day still adopt that a 75% threshold or whatever arbitrary threshold for the repair estimate divided by the intact value of the car to determine the absolute line above which all cars are totaled and below which none of the cars are totaled. Others are adopting a more like a more individual underwriting, so to speak on an individual claim.
So a claim comes in, what is the repair cost for this claim? How long will it take? What will the rental charges be on this repair while it's in the shop? How much can we generate for that car at Copart instead and then make an individual economic decision.
Every carrier somewhere on that spectrum. But as you noted, there's a huge dispersion among insurance carriers today and we certainly provide them with a number of tools to help them make that decision better and help them make that decision faster. I think we've made strides in that regard, but certainly with many years of progress still to come.

Bob Labick

Okay, great. And then just, one other question for me, obviously, a continued nice success with the Blue car, initiative there with the reduction but kind of near term current reduction in off lease vehicles which I know you don't participate in really.
But how does it impact the supply if at all of from your blue car customers? Because there's, less younger cars kind of going into the reconditioning market. Is this impacting the total loss frequency on the blue car area versus just the regular salvage cars or have you seen any impact thus far? Are you expecting any over the next couple quarters?

Leah Stearns

I'll take that one, Bob. Just in terms of how we see off lease volumes impact our non-insurance business. It's more impactful to our CDS business, more of our dealer services. It's just the overall volume impact the wholesale market and how that can influence pricing and unit availability. It's less impactful from a blue car perspective because again, remember many of those blue car units still have some level of damage.
And increasingly we're working towards being close to having lower damaged vehicles flowing through Blue car, but the office units are more impacting the overall unit volume within the wholesale market as a whole and that can impact pricing and availability for the broader dealer wholesale space.

Jeff Liaw

Well, I'd say for our business off lease volume is not per se a specific catalyst. It's just one contributor to the supply and demand dynamics for new and used vehicles overall. So it perhaps is somewhat softening the used vehicle supply but that's one variable amidst a large range of them that influence those used car prices.

Bob Labick

Okay, super. Thank you very much. I'll jump back in queue.

Operator

Chris Bottiglieri, BNP Paribas.

Chris Bottiglieri

Hey guys. Thanks for taking the question. Jeff, two for you. The first one I would ask about is the follow up the question from last quarter on insurance, uninsured motorist. I was wondering, what you historically seen when there's been changes, like from cat events, we have large Hurricanes.
On one hand, you think, the higher insurance costs afterwards could be problematic for insurance, participation. On the other hand, it might be a stark reminder that you need comp insurance because your losses go up when there's major cat. So just curious, if you saw that back in the past.

Jeff Liaw

Chris. I'd say the data we've seen. And I was going to give you the citation here as well. It's from, I think the Insurance Institute I believe and they tracked uninsured motorists back to call it the late 1980s plus or minus with an annual figure. The annual figure would be for the country overall. There are other sources from which we derive liability coverage also.
And I'd say given the nationwide nature of the data, trying to find that finely parsed question as to whether Hurricane Sandy led to changes in the northeast or Ian and Hilton and Milton and Helane cause changes in Florida. Harvey and Texas that I don't think we can quite see in the data, right. So when I look at 2017, for example, Hurricane Harvey major event, there's not per se an attributable change to the uninsured motorist population, then.

Chris Bottiglieri

Okay. That makes sense. It's tough. All similar question that's probably equally hard to answer and ask anyway, if you go back to the Trump tariffs, I know you don't have any direct impact. But I was just curious, your AP search then obviously a lot of factors Harvey and I think just changes out of charity vehicles but just curious, like, was there any noticeable impact on your business from the Trump tariff regime in '18, '19? Did you see any impact on ASP or to the law or anything else? We would it be obvious someone might see?

Jeff Liaw

Not, not when we could isolate? No. And I think even the natural, the nature of your question is probably looking forward what it means for our business. And I think there's certainly elements of this that are unknown. I would say that most of the countries I think, well, with which the administration has those tariffs in mind, China, for example, are not per se meaningful importers of cars to the United States nor are they particularly meaningful export markets for Copart either.
So could we -- we could face some, contradictory effects here in our own business. You can imagine scenarios in which the value of the cars we sell are certainly higher because they're already landed on US shores. And so they're now competing against vehicles or parts from overseas that may now face new tariffs.
You could also imagine a scenario in which it causes used car values to be higher than they otherwise would be, which could bring back some of the phenomenon we saw in late 2021 and 2022 in which demand for our services otherwise is suppressed relative to where it otherwise would be right?
Because [ACPs] are sky high, our unit economics are better but total loss frequency can also be softer as a result how that all plays out, over the course of the next 12 months, next four years. I don't think we know precisely, but I would say the last time around there was not a meaningful disruption to the business.

Chris Bottiglieri

Got you. Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Bret Jordan, Jefferies.

Bret Jordan

Hey, good morning, good evening, I guess. Question on the G&A, I think you said a lot of that $36 million was specialty sales team growth that might recede over the next 12 months. In the shorter term, do you expect to continue to build that up as you're focusing outside the -- into the incremental markets outside of salvage or are we sort of added G&A spend level that you see flat lining?

Leah Stearns

We'll be disciplined in terms of when we make those investments specifically attributable to your point around the specialty sales team expansion. We're being opportunistic and so to the extent that we find the right sales, team members will bring them on board and we have targeted areas that we're focusing on initially.
But if there are opportunistic hires that we can make -- that makes sense for us, we certainly will pursue that, that G&A investment that we've made, we've basically doubled the head count in our sales team since the acquisition. And so it's, it's a fairly sizable increase and we're likely to digest that for a period of time, but I don't want to take anything off the table and assume that we won't be pursuing hire to the extent that we find the right folks.

Bret Jordan

Okay. And then Jeff, you mentioned that three of four cars of cat cars in Florida were going via Copart, I guess, how does that compare to your market share in Florida? Is it an example that you are just pro collecting and processing cars faster and they're languishing on competitors lots, sort of how does that three of four cars?

Jeff Liaw

Yeah, I think that'd be, it's probably speculation. I'm not prepared to undertake at the moment, but I think it reflects yes, our market presence there and it does reflect speed. So I think our ability to process cars this time both retrieved and have the salvage titles issued to be fair Florida is one of the more efficient states among the 50 in terms of how quickly they issue salvage titles back to us. So it's a function of all of those things, but I think there -- We do perceive a competitive advantage in terms of how quickly we respond to catastrophic events.

Bret Jordan

Is Title Express playing a role in that salvage title or is it just the state is more cooperative than others?

Jeff Liaw

It can. So as you -- as I think we talked about last time, we're now managing the titles for approximately 1 million vehicles per year. So now it's a sizable portion of every of all the titles due process on behalf of insurance carriers.
The salvage title issuance is the speed with which the state responds to us once we submit the original title. Our title express team determines -- can help determine how quickly we retrieve that original title. So their ability to do so, yes, yield the competitive advantage, their ability to do so quickly yield an advantage in Florida and elsewhere.

Bret Jordan

Thank you.

Jeff Liaw

Thanks Bret.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Alice Wycklendt, Baird.

Alice Wycklendt

Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question. I think maybe the off lease discussion kind of touched on this a little bit but wanted to just hit on the dealer services side again. I think you said it was down just under 1%. Can you confirm that I have that number, right? And then if that's the case, maybe a little bit more detail about what you're seeing in that market as it seems like a slowdown from the kind of prior four quarter trend.

Leah Stearns

So Alice, I think what we saw in the first quarter was just a pause in September. Some slightly lower volumes related to some specific accounts, but we saw October come back. So I don't think it's a headwind that will persist, but we are obviously watching that closely. I think generally speaking, the wholesale space was a bit soft in September. So it was correlated with what we saw in the broader market.

Alice Wycklendt

Great. That's it for me. Thanks.

Jeff Liaw

Thanks, Alice.

Operator

Jash Patwa, JP Morgan.

Jash Patwa

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to follow up on your comments on the shift towards consignment models -- model units in Germany. Curious if you could elaborate on what you are seeing in the market there and whether we are arriving at a turning point with a broader shift towards consignment based units from the insurance carriers there. Thanks another follow up.

Jeff Liaw

Got it. I appreciate the question. I think as you probably know if you followed Copart for a while, It's often the case that when we enter new markets and enter new quote seller segments. For example, in the UK, when we first launched our business, we were largely a principal shop. So we'd buy cars from insurance carriers as we proved to the marketplace that we had a liquid auction platform.
And that in fact, the sellers could achieve better results by letting it ride, so to speak, by selling the cars at Copart auctions, we invariably migrate them over time to an auction like to a pure auction arrangement. And that is now true in the UK. In the US, the example would be there's certain cars we once would have bought from certain institutional sellers like charities and so forth that over time again, eventually migrates to an auction format instead.
In Germany, the journey has been much the same as you might imagine all of these progressions are gradual. So it's not an overnight snapping of the fingers, but that's certainly the direction in which we want to move the business as the direction in which the business should move as well, right.
It's the right economic outcome for us to all for us and our clients to be on the same side of the table rooting for the same outcomes. And that's ultimately why we want to achieve that destination. So we have made progress, there's still room to go in that respect.

Jash Patwa

Understood. That's very helpful. I also noticed, an uptick in CapEx spend relative to the run rate over the past couple years. Could you share any details around the nature of these investments? And if we should expect a similar run rate going forward, just any, granularity around the cost pockets, whether it's, primarily land oriented or any other investments that you're making. Thanks.

Jeff Liaw

I think it's fair to say that in this period and in virtually any historical period, capitalist ministers for Copart will largely be land and development and in technology really, those two or those three dimensions and they're a reflection of immediate need in reflection of growth expectations as well. I wouldn't read a whole lot into quarter to quarter variations.
You might imagine there are facilities that we have diligence and have been pursuing, have been negotiating for months in some cases, years and believe it or not, in some cases, decades that finally come to fruition and we don't schedule them right, so to speak, we buy the land when we can either land, we've already leased or land, we can immediately use or raw land, we then subsequently have to develop before we can use it ourselves.
All of those things are folded into that one number in capital expenditure. So it's hard to read a whole lot into it. But we are delighted to invest in land and capacity and in technology, we think it equips us to serve our insurance clients.
As I noted at the beginning of the call to support their growth, the industry's growth over time and to support industry volatility over time, I think requires us to invest more capital thoughtfully. Of course, always diligently, of course. But we're delighted to do it because we think it's necessary to serve our clients.

Jash Patwa

Thanks for all the call. Good luck.

Jeff Liaw

Great. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back to CEO, Jeff Liaw for any closing comments.

Jeff Liaw

Yeah. Thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you next quarter. Have a good afternoon.

Operator

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you again for your participation.