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
Copart's clearest recent walk-through of its own growth algorithm — total-loss frequency, international and crossover buyers, pure-sale liquidity, and the whole-car runway. · Open the full transcript →
The growth algorithm: modest accident-frequency declines more than offset by rising total-loss frequency Copart itself helps drive.
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.
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The crossover-buyer journey: arrive for a whole car, then migrate outward in concentric circles into insurance salvage.
Jeffrey Liaw (CEO), replying to Jash Patwa (JPMorgan): And naturally, it's often the first car you explore Copart is one that could theoretically be driven off a Copart lot or close to it. Those are the cars that most intrigue them at the outset. Then when they begin bidding, when they begin engaging on the platform, they discover that there's an insurance vehicle that was a theft recovery, perhaps it was never damaged at all, that might be in their sweet spot as well. […] So you can imagine that a given buyer comes for one type of car and then once he or she realizes the breadth of inventory available to them, they migrate outward in concentric circles from that Lexus to other insurance Lexuses, then to Toyotas, then to BMWs, then to cars further away geographically from where they originated.
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Sizing the whole-car runway: a 15 million-plus annual non-insurance TAM Copart earns its way into over time.
Jeffrey Liaw (CEO), replying to John Healy (Northcoast Research): So eventually, the total addressable market, when you consider all of the auction-mediated vehicles that are not from insurance companies in the United States, that's 15 million plus. Not all of them are day-one addressable for us. But as total loss frequency rises and as we earn the right to sell more of those cars from the noninsurance sellers, with each passing year we earn the right to sell more of those cars as well.
p. 8 · Read in context →
Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2025 (full year)
The annual call, framed around the moat: 'uniquely digital, uniquely global' auction liquidity, plus the capital-allocation and technology playbook. · Open the full transcript →
The liquidity moat: online since 2003, ~300,000 global members, with international buyers ~40% of units and nearly half of proceeds.
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. The result of that is unmatched global breadth. 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.
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No concentration risk in demand — the top 10 buyers together are only a low-single-digit share of U.S. volume.
Jeff Liaw (CEO): 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. The nature of the vehicle wholesaler and rebuilder economy is of frequent disruptions, exits, and new business formations. And we invest in the resource to ensure that we continue to maintain a deep pool of demand for our vehicles.
p. 2 · Read in context →
Why EVs help the model: perimeter sensors and calibrations make them total more easily, with strong auction returns.
Jeff Liaw (CEO), replying to Bob Labick (CJS Securities): In broad strokes, the returns on EVs are very strong. They total, if anything, more easily. But I think that's in part because of all the technology tends to come with it. So I don't know that it's the battery necessarily or the drivetrain. But electric vehicles tend to have next-gen sensors on the perimeter of the vehicle, tend to have the adaptive headlights, rear cameras, lane departure sensors, etcetera. Make your car pretty easily totaled because of any kind of damage on the perimeter often requires advanced calibrations and reprogramming and so forth.
p. 5 · Read in context →
Capital allocation: buybacks as the long-run return mechanism; M&A only if they'd 'write our own personal checks.'
Jeff Liaw (CEO), replying to John Healy (Northcoast Research): What I would tell you is that over the long haul, say over the course of the past ten years or so, we have consistently returned cash to shareholders via buybacks. […] we have a twopronged approach to any M and A activity. One is, is the investments on a standalone basis itself compelling? Meaning if John, Leah and I, you and Leah and I were sitting here in a room, we would we be willing to write our own personal checks in support of a given investment if we were to hold it as a private company? And then the second question is, does it enhance fundamentally what Copart is?
p. 6 · Read in context →
Q1 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2025
The definitive long-term bull case — a four-factor framework for organic growth — set against Copart's back-to-back Hurricane Helene and Milton response. · Open the full transcript →
Back-to-back Hurricanes Helene and Milton: ~2x Ian's 10-day pickup pace, and 3 of 4 Florida CAT units sold on Copart.
Jeff Liaw (CEO): 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 even 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. […] 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, reflecting both our presence as well as the speed of our execution.
p. 1 · Read in context →
The crux of the bull case: safety tech that cuts accidents is 'directly causal' to total-loss frequency — up fourfold since 1990.
Jeff Liaw (CEO): The fourth and most important driver of our business is total loss frequency itself, which has been the key catalyst of our growth now for decades and it's grown more than fourfold since 1990. […] But the proliferation of these technologies is not incidenta to total loss frequency; it is 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, thus raising the cost of repair as a result.
p. 2 · Read in context →
The 20-year baseline: population, miles driven and total-loss frequency more than offset declining accident frequency.
Jeff Liaw (CEO): The upshot of everything I've discussed toda is that as we look forward over five, ten, and even twenty years, our baseline expectation continues to be ongoing organic industry growth. As the trends of population growth, vehicle miles traveled, and total loss frequency most importantly more than offset the declining accident frequency as safety technologies penetrate new vehicle shipments and eventually the larger drivable fleet.
p. 2 · Read in context →
How insurers decide to total a car — from a statutory damage threshold to claim-by-claim economic underwriting.
Jeff Liaw (CEO), replying to Bob Labick (CJS Securities): 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 intact value of the car, by statute, a carrier must offer the policyholder a total loss, at least as an option. […] Others are adopting a more like 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?
p. 5 · Read in context →
Q1 FY2022 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2022
A window into the 2021 used-car-price boom that briefly suppressed total-loss frequency — and Copart's CAT response and export thesis under that stress. · Open the full transcript →
The catastrophe playbook after Hurricane Ida: years of investment in land, trucks, drivers and a dedicated CAT team.
Jeffrey Liaw (President & CEO, North America): Having learned from those experiences and a litany of catastrophic events between then and now, we were better prepared for this event than any in our history, due to our very substantial investment over the years in land, in technology, in company-owned trucks, company employed drivers, heavy equipment and most importantly our dedicated CAT team who deployed at a moment's notice.
p. 4 · Read in context →
The mechanism stated plainly: total-loss frequency is negatively correlated with used-car prices — set to reverse as prices fall.
Jeffrey Liaw (President & CEO, North America): The important note here is that if and when used car prices do fall, we expect a corresponding increase in assignment volumes. Total loss frequency is negatively correlated with used car prices. The more a car is worth before the accident, the more prone it is to being repaired.
p. 6 · Read in context →
During the used-car boom total-loss frequency was 'impaired'; rising repair and rental costs are what tip it back.
Jeffrey Liaw (President & CEO, North America), replying to Bob Labick (CJS Securities): I think your statement is accurate and the total loss frequency I think had been impaired all else equal, because of high used car prices. And your question as to then, what tips the balance in the other direction? I think it is a combination of repair costs as well as rental car costs. The repair pack, so to speak, for an insurance carrier is also onerous and expense – is onerous and expensive today relative to what it was two years ago.
p. 13 · Read in context →
The multi-decade export thesis: fast-growing, car-poor economies keep pulling U.S. salvage abroad — 'a 50-year trend.'
Jeffrey Liaw (President & CEO, North America), replying to Daniel Imbro (Stephens): if you compare long-term GDP growth rates and have that on one axis, on the other axis have vehicles per capita, the very fastest-growing economies in the world tend to be the ones with a fewest cars and vice versa. […] And so there will be a 50-year trend of more of our used, wrecked, damaged vehicles moving overseas where they are meaningful contributors to economic and physical mobility there.
p. 19 · Read in context →
More calls
Q2 FY2026 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2026 · 10 pages · The February 2026 read on insurance-volume softness (global units down ~9%, ~4% excluding prior-year catastrophe units) and management's cyclical-not-secular framing of the pullback. · Open →
Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2026 · 11 pages · Fiscal 2026's opening call, with a dedicated walk-through of the key drivers behind Copart's auction returns alongside early-year insurance and non-insurance trends. · Open →
Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2025 · 9 pages · A clean read on rising total-loss frequency (22.8% in the U.S.) against roughly flat insurance unit volume, once adjusted for the extra leap-year day. · Open →
Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2025 · 9 pages · Management details the 'proactive levers' it controls — including AI-enabled image-recognition tools that help insurers total cars more accurately and vertical service extensions. · Open →
Q4 FY2024 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2024 (full year) · 10 pages · The FY2024 wrap: how declining used-vehicle values feed assignment growth, with insurance seller volume up about 6% for the year. · Open →
Q3 FY2024 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2024 · 9 pages · Color on the 24th Annual U.S. Insurance Advisory Board and how client feedback shapes Copart's service offerings and technology deployments. · Open →
Q2 FY2024 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2024 · 9 pages · Management works through year-over-year catastrophe comparability (Hurricane Ian) and introduces recent senior-leadership additions. · Open →
Q1 FY2024 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2024 · 12 pages · The clearest telling of total-loss frequency rebounding off its 2022 used-car-boom trough (~17%) back toward 19%-plus. · Open →