O'Reilly Automotive

O'Reilly's second-quarter results had a 6% comparable-store-sales increase and adjusted EPS of $0.86 (up 10.8%). Gross margin held at 51.4% as acquisition costs and distribution efficiencies offset professional mix pressure, while operating expenses rose by 9 basis points due to higher fuel prices.

Why it matters: We think this quarter reinforces our view that O'Reilly's dual-market strategy and hyperlocal delivery network continue to fortify its edge. While navigating a choppy consumer environment, O'Reilly's unmatched inventory availability helped capture professional services share. Professional comparable sales rose 10%, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, driven by mid-single-digit ticket count growth. We see O'Reilly's hub-and-spoke network as creating a fulfillment advantage commercial repair bays rely on, insulating it from digital disruption. Do-it-yourself comparable sales grew low-single digits as volume fell low-single digits due to delays from summer heat. We view this near-term pressure as temporary weather volatility rather than structural softness, backed by an aging US vehicle fleet (record 12.8 years average age).

The bottom line: We plan to raise our $89 fair value estimate for wide-moat O'Reilly by a low-single-digit percentage, primarily due to the time value of money. We forecast an 110-basis-point increase in operating margin by decade's end (to 20.6%) as SG&A leverage offsets commercial mix pressure. We view shares as fairly valued, and should they begin to trade at a discount due to near-term macro pressures or overstated long-term electric vehicle adoption concerns, we'd recommend investors build a position.

Long view: We expect O'Reilly to continue to increase its share of the fragmented $170 billion US automotive aftermarket toward 5% (from 4%) by decade's end. We believe elevated new vehicle prices and high financing costs serve as tailwinds for vehicle retention and repair and service levels.

We have raised our fair value estimate for wide-moat O’Reilly Automotive to $91 per share from $89, primarily reflecting the time value of money. In the second-quarter, the firm delivered a 6% increase in comparable-store sales and a 10.8% rise in adjusted earnings per share to $0.86. Performance was anchored by the professional channel, where comparable sales rose 10% (the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth) as O'Reilly's unmatched inventory availability and robust hub-and-spoke network captured outsize service demand despite a choppy consumer environment. Meanwhile, do-it-yourself comparable sales grew in the low single digits, pressured temporarily by summer weather delays rather than structural softness. Gross margins held steady at 51.4%, as acquisition costs and distribution efficiencies effectively offset mix pressures from the faster-growing professional channel, while operating expenses ticked up just 9 basis points on higher fuel prices. With these results reinforcing our long-term thesis, we maintain our 10-year explicit revenue CAGR outlook of roughly 7.1% and our expectation for terminal operating margins to expand to 20.6% by the end of the decade. Our updated valuation implies a fiscal 2027 EV/adjusted EBITDA multiple of roughly 19 times.

Top-line gains will remain anchored by steady domestic demand and ongoing geographic expansion. We model average US comparable-store sales growth of 3.9% over the next decade, fueled by balanced traffic and ticket gains. Further, aggressive physical footprint expansion, consisting of approximately 170 new store openings in the US annually and 25 new units per year across Mexico and Canada, should complement its growth prospects. This trajectory will bring O’Reilly’s total store count to just shy of 8,500 locations by the end of the decade. Backed by its superior hub-and-spoke delivery network, we forecast O’Reilly to grow its share of the highly fragmented US automotive aftermarket to roughly 5% by the end of the decade, up from 4% in fiscal 2025, continuing its historical trend of steady market share capture (up 140 basis points in 15 years).

The primary profit driver underpinning our outlook is a persistent shift in the revenue mix toward the professional channel, which we expect to gain roughly 90 basis points of share within the revenue mix annually. Because professional orders typically are sold at discounted wholesale rates compared with full-price retail transactions, this channel shift will pressure gross margins over the long term, pushing cost of goods sold as a share of revenue up by 120 basis points from a 48.4% baseline. However, we expect this drag to be more than offset by the operational efficiency inherent in O’Reilly’s commercial fulfillment network. Spreading these higher-ticket, predictable orders over O’Reilly’s expansive hub-and-spoke network yields robust fixed-cost distribution leverage, which we forecast will reduce selling, general, and administrative expenses as a percentage of sales by 230 basis points from a 32.1% baseline. Ultimately, this structural evolution drives margin expansion, causing consolidated operating margin to rise from 19.5% to 20.6% by the end of our forecast period.

We assign O’Reilly Auto Parts a wide moat rating, underpinned by a cost advantage and robust intangible assets. O’Reilly has carved out an unassailable position in the automotive aftermarket through its dual-market strategy, successfully servicing both the do-it-yourself (DIY) and professional (do-it-for-me, or DIFM) segments. Over the past decade, O’Reilly has generated an average return on invested capital of 31%, well in excess of our 7% cost-of-capital estimate. As the company leverages its unmatched supply chain and capitalizes on structural industry tailwinds, we forecast average ROIC to reach 36% over the next decade. We have high confidence that O’Reilly will generate excess returns for at least the next 20 years.

O’Reilly’s cost advantage is driven by its colossal purchasing scale. O’Reilly and AutoZone lead the highly fragmented US auto parts, representing about a third of the industry’s footprint. This massive scale endows O’Reilly with negotiating leverage over suppliers, which manifests in O’Reilly’s superior working capital dynamics. The firm operates with negative net working capital, maintaining highly favorable payable terms. Over the last decade, O’Reilly accounts payable-to-inventory ratio averaged about 1.2 times, in line with its scaled counterpart, AutoZone. O’Reilly turns over its inventory in about eight months, faster than the roughly 10 months it must pay its vendors. This immense financial leverage stands in stark contrast to smaller peers like its next largest competitor, Advance Auto Parts, which trails significantly with a 10-year average payable-to-inventory ratio of just 0.8 times. Further, Advance has been plagued by years of supply chain inefficiencies, resulting in compressed operating margins (2.5% in fiscal 2025, versus 19.5% and 19.1% for O’Reilly and AutoZone, respectively), slower inventory turns, and chronic stockouts that alienate customers. The efficiency of this model is evidenced by O’Reilly’s premier store-level unit economics. The firm generates $362 in sales and $70 in operating profit per square foot, essentially matching the performance levels of its primary peer, AutoZone ($374 and $71, respectively), but above Advance’s $237 and $6.

Further reinforcing its cost advantage is O’Reilly’s sophisticated, tiered hub-and-spoke distribution network. O’Reilly navigates this through 32 regional distribution centers, or RDCs, and 385 hub stores. While a standard local retail store carries 22,000 to 25,000 stock-keeping units, hub stores hold up to 110,000, and RDCs stock up to 160,000 unique SKUs. Hub stores essentially act as intermediate distribution nodes, dispatching heavy or rare parts to surrounding satellite locations multiple times a day through a dedicated commercial fleet.

O’Reilly’s localized inventory density constitutes a powerful intangible asset, especially in the DIFM segment. Because pure-play online retailers lack the hyper-local, decentralized inventory staging required to execute on-demand delivery for heavy, irregular SKUs, O’Reilly’s DIFM business is insulated from digital disruption, granting O’Reilly exceptional pricing power. The firm has delivered 33 consecutive years of comparable sales growth and maintains gross margins over 50%, dwarfing online competitors like CarParts.com (33% in fiscal 2025). O’Reilly’s pioneering dual-market approach maximizes this fixed-cost supply chain, blending two distinct but highly complementary margin profiles. The DIY segment yields structurally higher gross margins, per management commentary, which we posit is driven by full-price retail transactions and front-of-store maintenance fluids and accessory sales, though this cohort remains inherently sensitive to extreme weather and macroeconomic cycles. Conversely, the DIFM segment acts as the structural volume engine, generating massive, recurring transaction velocity. Crucially, O’Reilly captures this commercial market share (about 9%) not through high inventory turnover, but by deliberately absorbing the carrying costs of massive SKU proliferation, ensuring availability for high-velocity, routine orders.

Its formidable margin profile is increasingly supported by O’Reilly’s highly successful private-label program, featuring brands such as BrakeBest, Super Start, and Power Torque. Private-label penetration currently exceeds 50% of sales, representing significant expansion from around 30% in the early 2010s and even exceeding the less-than-a-third share at big-box retail peers, Walmart and Costco. O’Reilly’s owned brands deliver up to a 600- to 800-basis-point gross margin premium compared with national brand equivalents. This strategic shift enhances profitability and creates an exclusive product ecosystem that offers a compelling value proposition to both cost-conscious DIY shoppers and commercial garages. This penetration also generates proprietary data on failure rates, lifespan curves, and regional pricing elasticity at the vehicle identification number, or VIN, level, enabling preemptive high-margin inventory staging ahead of regional demand curves.

While the transition to electric vehicles represents a long-term industry shift, we view the immediate threat to O’Reilly’s aftermarket dominance as frequently overstated. S&P Global Mobility forecasts that internal combustion engine, or ICE, vehicles and hybrids will still account for roughly 92% of all US vehicles by 2030. Furthermore, the average age of a pure battery electric vehicle, or BEV, is just 3.7 years, meaning the vast majority remain covered under OEM warranties, which range from 8-10 years, and outside the aftermarket window. Because the US fleet takes roughly 20 to 25 years to turn over, and BEVs represented just 8% of new vehicle registrations in 2025, robust demand for traditional ICE components, in our view, is secured for decades, as Morningstar estimates 94% of US vehicles in operation, or VIO, will be represented by ICE and hybrid vehicles by 2030.

The aging US vehicle fleet, averaging over 12.8 years, could drive a faster-than-expected shift toward complex professional repairs, boosting DIFM revenue above our baseline forecast.

O’Reilly’s expansion into Canada and Mexico could unlock a much larger addressable market, allowing unit growth to exceed domestic limitations and fueling prolonged revenue upside.

Leveraging its dense hub-and-spoke network for rapid parts delivery could accelerate professional market share gains and yield outsize profitability, driving operating margin expansion beyond our 20% midcycle estimate.

Faster adoption of electric vehicles beyond our projected 6% US fleet share by 2030 could structurally compress aftermarket demand, as these vehicles require much fewer traditional maintenance components.

Rising wage, delivery, and insurance costs could erode store-level productivity, particularly as professional services require higher staffing and frequent route density.

Consolidation among aftermarket parts manufacturers could shift pricing power away from retailers, pressuring O’Reilly’s gross margins and limiting its ability to pass on cost increases to customers.