Lithia could soon be No. 1 dealership group, based on acquisitions

Lithia Motors is poised to overtake AutoNation as No. 1 on Automotive News' list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S. if both companies keep up their current patterns around acquisitions.

Lithia added 69 dealerships last year and retailed 260,738 new vehicles, a 52 percent sales gain from the year before and less than 2,000 new vehicles behind AutoNation, according to the Automotive News Research & Data Center, which compiles the list. That sales increase — fueled partly by Lithia's April 2021 acquisition of the 34-store Suburban Collection, No. 21 on last year's list — moved Lithia from No. 3 on the list to No. 2, pushing Penske Automotive Group, the longtime occupant of the second-place slot, down to No. 3.

For Lithia, it's part of a larger growth journey that began nearly a decade ago when CEO Bryan DeBoer started aggressively acquiring dealerships. And Lithia's expansion boom is nowhere near over.

"It's just the beginning," DeBoer told Automotive News late last year.

DeBoer is aiming for Lithia to reach $50 billion in revenue and own 500 U.S. dealerships by 2025. He has even flirted with the idea of acquiring other public dealership groups.

Lithia's 2025 goal represents nearly twice the 2021 revenue of AutoNation and more than double Lithia's revenue last year. And it would nearly double Lithia's current U.S. franchised dealership count of 268. Lithia reported having 278 dealerships at the end of 2021, but that number includes 13 stores in Canada, plus Lithia has both acquired and divested stores so far in 2022.

While AutoNation and Penske have made recent acquisitions, they are not buying stores at the pace of Lithia or even other top 10 competitors.

Only Asbury Automotive Group Inc., which moved up a spot to No. 5 on the list, added more stores than Lithia last year, gaining 71.

Asbury bought last year's No. 8 group, Larry H. Miller Dealerships, for $3.2 billion in December, giving it 54 more franchised stores and a total of 162 at year end.

AutoNation added 21 stores last year and retailed 262,403 new vehicles, up 5.1 percent from 2020.

Group 1 Automotive, which in November acquired Prime Automotive Group, No. 18 in the 2020 ranking, remained at No. 4.

Lithia, long the smallest of the industry's main six public groups, has seen a striking rise in the rankings in recent years. It entered the list at No. 79 in 1997, shortly after its 1996 initial public offering. It jumped to the top 10 by 1999, then was mostly ranked either eighth or ninth for the next 15 years before DeBoer jump-started Lithia's acquisition surge with the 2014 purchase of DCH Auto Group.

Lithia has steadily climbed the top 10 since, and its 2021 new-vehicle retail sales were nearly 35 times their level in 1997.