Latest / Best of Business / Todd Hunter: Turners Automotive CEO on the company's record net profit of over $63 million

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Todd Hunter: Turners Automotive CEO on the company's record net profit of over $63 million · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
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  Speaker 2: Turners as in Cars and Finance have shown once again
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  Speaker 2: the model they run as a winner. Record normalized net
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  Speaker 2: profit up sixteen percent. They're now tracking towards one hundred
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  Speaker 2: million dollars profit. That's their target by twenty thirty one.
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  Speaker 2: Todd Hunter's the CEO of that particular business, and he's
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  Speaker 2: back with it's Todd very good morning to you, morning Mike.
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  Speaker 3: All divisions so no call Ferrari stories. Saw you from me?
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  Speaker 2: Oh that's the show. You don't drive a Ferrari light
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  Speaker 2: you chairman. What a shame? He did say to be
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  Speaker 2: fair and I shouldn't say this. I did ask him
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  Speaker 2: about you are fair and he did speak very highly
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  Speaker 2: of you. So you'll be pleased to know that.
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  Speaker 3: Oh it's very kind.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly anyway, all divisions seem to be working, Is that fair?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. The businesses performing very well. I think
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  Speaker 3: when we last spoke in November, we'd come off the
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  Speaker 3: back of a pre hard first half and things sort
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  Speaker 3: of slowly improved through that second half. In fact, we
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  Speaker 3: had a record quarterly performance for our last for our
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  Speaker 3: last quarter, so you know, really some strong momentum kind
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  Speaker 3: of carrying into that March period.
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  Speaker 2: Has the walk cur tailed That certainly dented consumer demand,
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  Speaker 2: I think, but that is the beauty of this business.
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  Speaker 3: We've got some diversification and some natural stabilizers. So yeah,
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  Speaker 3: the finance company is performing extremely well at the moment.
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  Speaker 3: They grew lending sort of fifty percent over the prior year,
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  Speaker 3: and the insurance business is going really well. So yeah,
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  Speaker 3: for us, we've started the year with a different composition
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  Speaker 3: of earnings, but still running ahead of the prior year,
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  Speaker 3: which is which is great.
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  Speaker 2: I know, your risk profile is lower than the industry generally,
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  Speaker 2: in other words, fewer people default. What do you do
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  Speaker 2: that others don't?
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  Speaker 3: Well, credit qualities are non negotiable for us, so we
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  Speaker 3: take quite a granular sort of approach to our risk pricing.
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  Speaker 3: And yeah, we've varied deliberately building that book with the
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  Speaker 3: higher quality segment of the market, and that gives us
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  Speaker 3: great operating leverage when people pay you back. We've kind
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  Speaker 3: of grown that loan because I said fifty percent, and
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  Speaker 3: I think we added two people during the year, and
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  Speaker 3: the beauty of that is we kind of leand the
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  Speaker 3: money out and touch base with those customers sort of
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  Speaker 3: through the period, but we're not having to chase them constantly,
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  Speaker 3: not have resource kind of doing that. So that's where
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  Speaker 3: that's where we get our operating leverage from.
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  Speaker 2: We talked to Grant a bit about the model yesterday.
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  Speaker 2: Is it just convenience that you offer At the end
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  Speaker 2: of the day, I'm buying a car and while I'm here,
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  Speaker 2: I'll have some insurance and I'll finance it. So in
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  Speaker 2: other words, you take a load off me. Therefore, why
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  Speaker 2: wouldn't I Is it like that?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a big part of it. But I think
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  Speaker 3: the biggest part of it is that we're an organization
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  Speaker 3: that delivers an exceptional customer experience, and I suppose in
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  Speaker 3: the end it stands for trust and generally a market
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  Speaker 3: that stands for the opposite of that. If you think
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  Speaker 3: about used cars, trust is not normally a word would
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  Speaker 3: associate with that that market, and that is something that
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  Speaker 3: we treasure, that we've built up over a long period
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  Speaker 3: of time and will continue to do.
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  Speaker 2: So what sort of cars you sell? I mean, what
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  Speaker 2: what typically do people buy?
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  Speaker 3: We we're such a broad church markets, you know, we're
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  Speaker 3: selling sort of roughly forty percent of the cars we
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  Speaker 3: sell would be X sort of lease and company cars,
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  Speaker 3: so that the three to four year old cars probably
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  Speaker 3: average price of sort of twenty five thousand, and then
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  Speaker 3: the other sixty percent would be generally less than that,
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  Speaker 3: So our average price kind of runs, you know, somewhere
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  Speaker 3: between fifteen and twenty thousand dollars. But now, really people
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  Speaker 3: come to Turners because they can find the thing they
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  Speaker 3: want and that can be anything from a six or
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  Speaker 3: seven thousand dollar car right through to you know, expensive
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  Speaker 3: kind of European cars orhever it might be. So yeah,
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  Speaker 3: it's a it's a it's a very broad church in
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  Speaker 3: terms of appeal.
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  Speaker 2: Well it's working for you, And congratulations again Todd Hunter,
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  Speaker 2: who's the CEO of Turners. And if you missed the
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  Speaker 2: connection from yesterday's program, apter right, Grunt Baker the entrepreneur.
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  Speaker 2: He is the chairman has been for sixteen seventeen years
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  Speaker 2: of Turners. The two Tube interviews just turned out to
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  Speaker 2: be entirely coincidental.
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