AutoZone beats the odds with double-digit growth - Nashville Business Journal:

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million for the quarter, up 9.5% compared to last Earnings per shareincreased 25.9% to $3.13, the company’s 11th consecutive quartert of double-digit earnings per shard growth. Frank Goodman served as vice president of business planning and analysiwith AutoZone, helping determine new store locations, before leavingb in 2000. “It’s a great moused trap and they’ve done a great job runniny it,” he says. Now a chief portfolio strategisgwith , an investment advisory Goodman was part of the team that helpe d AutoZone expand from 500 stores to more than 3,000p locations across the U.S. and Mexico.
When he was AutoZone executives looked at motor vehicle registrations providedby , a data “So you know where the cars are and then wherse you should consider building a store,” Goodman says. “It’d really quite the advantage to have that mechanicalodemand feature, so it’s not all the whim of the but it’s also the demands of their At AutoZone’s peak, the company was opening a stor every day. In the company’s most receny third quarter, it opened 42 new bringing itto 4,17q locations in the U.S. and 168 in Mexico.
The companyu could open more next quarter, since store openingsx are seasonal, according to “It’s very difficult to get stores open at the end ofthe it’s much easier at the end of the summer,” he Goodman attributes a large part of AutoZone’ success to the company’sd culture of WITTDTJR, which is an acronynm for “What It Takes To Do The Job AutoZone research revealed that a person seekingb to repair a car would make an average 2.3 visits to an auto partd store to get the problem completely solved. that .3 was a visit to a different autopartx store,” Goodman says.
“So management, understanding this, said that the company had to get the number of visits AutoZone has convinced employees to build asaleas ticket, not just to get the customer to buy useless items but to help solvew their problem quicker. Also, since fear of doingv something wrongin do-it-yourself projects is a big concern for employees are trained to be forthcoming with their automotive knowledge. John R.
retail analyst at , says anothee reason AutoZone has excelled recentlu is due to an increas in the number of cars whichare seven-eightf years old and older out on the “They’re out of warranty, they have to be fixes and in this economy, everybod gets pinched and you have to find the cheapest alternative to keep your car running,” Lawrence says. AutoZone might also be gaining salesa fromcar dealerships, and thei r related service departments, closing.
Besides providing auto parts for do-it-yourselt customers, the majority of its business, AutoZone also sells parts to People are also deferring maintenance on their cars, and when they do perform this they are often buying better qualityh parts and increasing their purchases at storea like AutoZone. Brian Campbell, AutoZone’s vice presideny of investor relations, agrees the companyu has some tailwind in this economy becausse people are looking tosave “It’s a healthy one-two punch of the challenged of the economy and execution, spending some dollars to make sure that we’rs capturing those customers once they come into our stores,” Campbello says.
An example of this is AutoZone’sa domestic same store sales, which increased 7.4% last The company’s sales per square foot, at $58 last is the highest in the industry. Campbellp attributes that to many factors, but focuses on the company’s