AZO Shareholder/Stockholder Letter Transcript:
2025 ANNUAL REPORT
Notice of Annual Meeting of Stockholders and Proxy Statement
Corporate Profile
AutoZone is a leading retailer and distributor of automotive
replacement parts and accessories in the Americas. Each store
carries an extensive product line for cars, sport utility vehicles,
vans, and light duty trucks, including new and remanufactured
automotive hard parts, maintenance items, accessories, and
non-automotive products. In the vast majority of stores in the
United States, Mexico, and Brazil, AutoZone has a commercial
sales program that provides prompt delivery of parts, products,
and commercial credit to local, regional, and national repair
garages, dealers, service stations, fleet owners, and other
accounts. AutoZone also sells automotive hard parts,
maintenance items, accessories, and non-automotive products
through AutoZone.com, and commercial customers can make
purchases through AutoZonePro.com. Additionally, AutoZone sells
the ALLDATA brand of automotive diagnostic, repair, collision, and
shop management software through ALLDATA.com. AutoZone
also provides product information on Duralast products through
DuralastParts.com. AutoZone does not derive revenue from
automotive repair or installation services.
7,657 stores (6,627 stores in 50 states in the U.S.,
883 stores in Mexico, and 147 stores in Brazil)
6,098 domestic Commercial programs
16 Distribution centers (13 in the U.S., two in Mexico,
and one in Brazil)
130,000 AutoZoners
Selected Financial Highlights
(Dollars in millions, except per share data)
Net Sales
2025
2024*
2023
2022
2021
$18,939
$18,490
$17,457
$16,252
$14,630
$3,610
$3,789
$3,474
$3,271
$2,945
$144.87
$149.55
$132.36
$117.19
$95.19
After-Tax Return on Invested Capital
41.3%
49.7%
55.4%
52.9%
41.0%
Domestic Same Store Sales Growth
3.2%
0.4%
3.4%
8.4%
13.6%
International Same Store Sales Growth**
9.3%
10.2%
17.5%
19.2%
20.7%
Operating Margin
19.1%
20.5%
19.9%
20.1%
20.1%
Cash Flow from Operations
$3,117
$3,004
$2,941
$3,211
$3,519
Operating Profit
Diluted Earnings per Share
* FY2024 includes a 53rd week of results
** Based on constant currency. Excludes impacts from fluctuations of foreign exchange rates.
The AutoZone Pledge, est. 1986
AutoZoners always put customers first!
We know our parts and products.
Our stores look great!
We ve got the best merchandise at the right price.
Dear Customers, AutoZoners, and Stockholders,
I want to thank our more than 130,000 AutoZoners across the globe for their hard work, dedication, and commitment
to customer satisfaction each and every day. I am honored to update you on our progress during Fiscal 2025 (FY25)
and our plans for Fiscal 2026 (FY26) and beyond. With the start of our new fiscal year, we recently announced our
operating theme for FY26, Driving The Future Together. We are excited about this theme, as it represents a call
to action and a focus on our top priority, our customers. As you might expect, we plan to leverage our unique and
powerful culture to exceed the expectations of both our retail and commercial customers needs. It also directs
us towards our goals of accelerating our growth in the Americas. We are accelerating our store growth in the
United States (US), Mexico, and Brazil while we continue to invest in our culture, in training AutoZoners, improving
inventory assortments, and deploying technology so AutoZoners can say Yes to more customers. We are fortunate
to compete in an industry where the demand for our goods and services is robust and growing.
In 2023 we stated our intentions to increase our investment in new stores, distribution centers, and information
technology to support this growth. In FY25 these investments accelerated as we opened two new distribution
centers (DCs) in the US and are nearing completion on our new DCs in Mexico and Brazil. These DCs add significant
capacity to enable future store growth and are the most technologically advanced DCs we have ever opened.
This past year marked our 46th anniversary since our first store opened in Forrest City, Arkansas in 1979. This year
marked record sales growth and near record store openings both domestically and internationally. We are very
excited about where our future is headed.
As a long term AutoZoner, I am proud of what we have accomplished, but I am even more excited about what we
will accomplish. By focusing on developing our AutoZoners skills, talents, and striving to always say Yes to our
customers, we are strengthening our position for continued success.
Fiscal Year 2025
FY25 continued to be a year of transformation. Our domestic same store sales of 3.2% showed a nice increase versus
the previous year, but that number doesn t tell the whole story. With an improving trend in transaction counts and
average ticket growth, our do-it-yourself (DIY) business experienced same store sales of just over 1%. Our domestic
commercial business grew both traffic and ticket versus the previous year resulting in almost 9% growth on a
52-week basis. We are encouraged that our domestic commercial sales accelerated in each quarter, ending the
fourth quarter with 12.5% on a sixteen-week basis. FY25 had the additional challenge of navigating tariffs which
will have a significant impact on our business. It took the majority of our year to understand what kinds of costs
we would incur from tariffs. Thus far, I believe AutoZone has done a good job of mitigating the negative impacts
from tariffs, but we continue to learn as we work with our vendors to understand where we can reduce costs going
forward. On the international front, we experienced another solid year. We grew our international same store sales
on a constant currency basis of 9.3%, and we were north of 10% last year.
Fiscal Year 2025: A time for prudent investment
Under the current macro environment, we are confident this continues to be the time to invest our capital for
future growth. We have confidence in our industry with the average age of the car parc approaching 13 years, more
vehicles on the road, and miles driven continuing to increase. On the technology front, we continue to invest in our
proprietary systems that support our DIY and commercial business across all countries where we operate. These
technology investments are focused on making AutoZone easier to do business with. We are pleased to report that as
we rolled out many of these new enhancements, our sales and customer service levels have improved. Additionally,
we are making arguably the largest commitment to store growth that we have ever made. We have established an
annual target of opening approximately 500 stores globally by Fiscal 2028 (FY28). We are targeting to open 300
domestic stores, and roughly 200 international stores, annually. As these are significant goals, considering we have
historically opened around 200 stores globally, we had to ramp up our store development resources. This year, we
opened an amazing 304 net new stores. We have plans to open more over each of the next three years as we strive
for our stated goal by the end of FY28. As part of these new store openings, we are committed to ramping up both
our mega hub and hub store openings. We continue to target 285 mega hubs and over 300 hubs, domestically, once
our buildout is complete. Lastly, we have continued to invest in ALLDATA, our subsidiary, which is second to none in
the global marketplace for original equipment (OE) diagnostic and repair information. With EBIT growth north of 10%
this past year, we remain committed to growing ALLDATA in the coming years. As previously discussed, while our
initiatives are very exciting, they will take time to develop, and they come with some near-term cost headwinds. Our
capital expenditures in FY25 were at an all-time high, exceeding $1.3 billion and roughly $300 million higher than
the previous year. As we continue to ramp up our store openings, we expect to spend approximately $1.5 billion on
capital expenditures in FY26.
Summary of FY25 results
During FY25 we had many successes. We delivered a record $18.9 billion in sales, up 4.5% over Fiscal 2024 (FY24)
on a comparable 52-week basis, and we opened a record number of new stores.
Below are key highlights:
Expanded our domestic store base by 195 net new stores
Opened 200 net new domestic commercial programs, continuing to be in 92% of our domestic store base
Opened a record number of stores in Mexico, opening 89 new stores, and ending with 883 stores
Opened 20 additional stores in Brazil, for a total of 147 stores
Opened 40 additional domestic hub stores, finishing FY25 with 367 hubs (including 133 mega hubs)
Continued our relentless focus on Return On Invested Capital (ROIC), reporting 41.3% for FY25
Generated a record $3.1 billion of operating cash flow
Repurchased more than $1.5 billion of our shares over the year
What was different in Fiscal Year 2025
Our story continues to be about evolution and not revolution, as we are well positioned to begin FY26. With arguably
the best brand of products in the automotive aftermarket, Duralast, we continue to expand our parts coverage.
10/28/2025 Letter Continued (Full PDF)