Transcripts

Copart, Inc.'s management answers for the business every quarter. These are the exchanges that explain it best — verbatim, from the call transcripts preserved in Sources. Each link opens the full transcript at that page in a new tab.

Q3 FY2026 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2026

The most recent call and the clearest single walkthrough of how the marketplace actually works — the total-loss-frequency growth algorithm, crossover buyers, pure-sale liquidity, and the whole-car spectrum. · Open the full transcript →

The core growth algorithm — and why Copart drives total loss frequency rather than passively riding it.

Jeffrey Liaw (CEO): We believe the long-term growth algorithm for our insurance business remains very much intact, that over many years, we've observed modest gradual declines in accident frequency, which are then more than offset by increases in total loss frequency. Total loss frequency is, in turn, a function of everrising repair costs, but more importantly, the differentiated returns that Copart generates by finding the highest and best use for a car globally, which is often full restoration back to roadworthiness. […] Although we always report this metric, it sounds like we described it as an industry metric, we are very much not passive beneficiaries of an increase in total loss frequency. We have helped to drive it upwards, and we view it as our ongoing responsibility to drive ever better auction returns, which then increases the attractiveness of the total loss pathway to insurance carriers

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Pure sale isn't contractual — insurers 'voted with their feet' because they can't escape the auction's liquidity.

Jash Patwa (JPMorgan); Jeffrey Liaw (CEO): It's not contractual. So our insurance carrier partners maintain the discretion to manage the auctions as they see fit. In comparison to where we were even 7 or 8 years ago, many more insurance carriers have moved to effectively a nearly 100% pure sale approach […] If you were to watch one car transact at Copart, you'll see buyers in Poland bidding against buyers in Oklahoma, Maine, Canada, Ecuador. You'll see it happen in real time. So they recognize that there is no real way to escape the liquidity at Copart. […] Buyers tend to gravitate to pure sale items. And you tend to generate better outcomes and faster outcomes when buyers are excited to participate.

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Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2025

The most recent full-year call: management makes the case for the auction-liquidity moat, lays out capital-allocation discipline for a ~$4.8B cash pile, and reframes the addressable market. · Open the full transcript →

The moat in one passage — uniquely digital, uniquely global, with a deliberately fragmented buyer base.

Jeff Liaw (CEO): First, I would note that Copart's auction is uniquely digital. We have been exclusively an online auction platform since 2003, almost two decades before our competitors followed suit and only when they were compelled to do so by the COVID-19 crisis. By extension, we are also uniquely global. We have some 300,000 paying registered members at Copart from virtually every non-sanctioned country around the world. […] International members account for approximately 40% of all vehicles sold at Copart's U.S. auctions, comprising almost half of auction proceeds because international buyers generally purchase vehicles that are more valuable than those acquired by domestic buyers. […] As context, the top 10 individual buyers of vehicles at Copart collectively purchased a low single-digit percentage of all the vehicles we sell at U.S. auctions.

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Why catastrophe response is a loss-leading service: Copart is 'the insurance provider for the insurance industry.'

Jeff Licht (Stephens); Jeff Liaw (CEO): Catastrophic events are surely not se profitable for Copart. It's a service offering we provide for our insurance industry. They know that we are the backstop. So we are the insurance provider, so to speak, for the insurance industry themselves. We bend over backwards and acquire land that sits idle for years until a major storm arrives, some owned trucks and employee drivers to make sure that we have the flexible capacity to address their needs at that time.

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The hardest question — is salvage share tapped out? Liaw reframes the rival as the repair shop, and the market as 5x larger.

Josh Bapla (JPMorgan); Jeff Liaw (CEO): We view our opportunity and our threats much more expansively than that. […] the actual number of auction mediated vehicles that are sold in The United States per year is multiples of that. It's 5x or more of the volume that we sell per year. […] So in many respects, we compete with the repair shops. The higher the returns we generate, the more we can win the rights to resolve that claim versus the repair industry. And the lower the returns we generate, the more we lose head to head again through repair shops as well. So there are a number of competitive threats that we face on any given day.

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Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2026

Management lays out a five-indicator framework for measuring auction liquidity and works through the total-loss-frequency and international-buyer mechanics in unusual depth. · Open the full transcript →

Why international buyers set the price: as winner or 'push' bidder on most U.S. lots, they favor cars worth the freight.

Chris Bottiglieri (BNP Paribas); Jeff Liaw (CEO): if the institutional buyer wins the vehicle, and that speaks for approximately half of our U.S. auction value is going to an international buyer. Or they are the push bidder, they're the second high bidder, which helps to dictate the ultimate sale price of the vehicle. […] the average car bought by an international buyer is 38% more valuable than the average car bought by a domestic buyer. That is largely because, yes, they favor the higher end. You can imagine that if you are incurring the freight costs to move a car from here to Poland, it has to be worth your while, right? You're not moving a $400 vehicle that's mostly just its metal, right? That will never be worthwhile to move halfway across the world.

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Q4 FY2022 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2022

The landmark strategy primer: Liaw sets aside the quarter to state Copart's durable operating beliefs — owning land in perpetuity, ambivalence to used-car prices, episodic buybacks — and fields a sharp market-share/antitrust challenge. · Open the full transcript →

The four durable operating beliefs that guide every decision, stated in place of the usual quarterly recap.

Jeffrey Liaw (President & Co-CEO): we'll focus our prepared remarks on a more durable operating beliefs and principles that guide our decision-making, namely that we will, one, invest in our physical infrastructure, technology platform and customer service offerings to improve auction, liquidity, and returns for our sellers. We will collaboratively engage with our sellers, both day to day and through catastrophic events to protect them and their policyholder relationships. We will actively expand our addressable market by growing our volume of lesser damaged and whole cars from both insurance and noninsurance sellers. And finally, that will continue our expansion into international markets around the world.

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The land moat: ~16,000 acres, ~90% owned 'in perpetuity,' $2B invested in five years, on a deliberately conservative balance sheet.

Jeffrey Liaw (President & Co-CEO): owning our facilities enables us to control our own destiny, ensuring the sustainability of our business for our customers. We are not just participants in our industry, we are stewards of it. Today, we operate on nearly 16,000 acres of land worldwide and own approximately 90% of it, controlling it in perpetuity. Over the last five years alone, we've invested nearly $2 billion in land acquisition and development. Similarly, we have maintained a conservative balance sheet since our founding.

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Why the post-COVID dip in total loss frequency is temporary — the 40-year trend is unambiguous.

Jeffrey Liaw (President & Co-CEO): Total loss frequency for the second calendar quarter in 2022 was approximately 16.9% in comparison to 19.7% for the same quarter a year ago. If vehicles had been totaled at the same rate as last year, we would have observed insurance industry volumes 15% higher than what we actually experienced. In simple Layman's terms, in a world in which replacement vehicles are harder to come by, total loss settlements are a less attractive resolution to an auto accident claim than they otherwise would be. While total loss frequency has declined over the past year and a half or so, the 40-year trend is unambiguous. We believe firmly that the market will revert to the historical norm of steadily rising total loss frequency in the months and years ahead.

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International expansion as market conversion: turning Germany from a listing model to a liquid auction, carrier by carrier.

Bret Jordan (Jefferies); Jeffrey Liaw (President & Co-CEO): The model that we offer is a liquid auction as opposed to a listing service model that exists there today. And we're working with the insurance carriers to effectively convert the market to a different way of doing business. So it's not per se head-to-head competition against the Copart like market participants, but instead a changing of the market altogether. Today, we are selling cars on an agency basis on behalf of seven of the top 10 insurance carriers in Germany.

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More calls

Q2 FY2026 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2026 · 10 pages · Go here for Liaw's clearest argument that fees matter less than total economic returns when winning consignments, plus a disciplined read on land-capacity needs and why Copart stays a 'builder' rather than an acquirer. · Open →

Q4 FY2024 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2024 · 10 pages · The fiscal-2024 annual call is the best explainer of catastrophe-response economics ('we mobilize in advance because that's what we owe our customers') and how Title Express became a share-winning moat after COVID. · Open →

Q4 FY2021 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2021 · 35 pages · Liaw's early-CEO framing of the liquidity flywheel, and the self-hedge insight that high vehicle values suppress total loss frequency — so a fall in used-car prices would lift Copart's consignment volume. · Open →