Certified pre-owned vehicles represented a larger slice of the sales pie,  and this helped bump up full-year transaction prices on used cars for the publicly traded dealer groups in 2014. 

That’s according to the latest blog post on dealer group activity by Cox Automotive chief economist Tom Webb, who also explained how these higher prices combined with several other factors to impact the auction business. 

Webb said in this post that the seven public retailers combined to move more than 1.3 million used-vehicle retail vehicles last year, which beat prior-year totals by 8 percent. 

Citing company filings, Webb indicated that the fourth quarter represented the 22nd straight time that same-store used retail sales for these groups increased. It also marked the heftiest sales-weighted climb (6.8 percent) for any quarter of the year. 

And while acknowledging the slimmer margins the industry has experienced, he pointed out that the fourth-quarter was essentially steady, year-over-year, in terms of sales-weighted gross margins, which came in at 9.2 percent.

“The average used-vehicle selling price for these dealer groups rose 3 percent to $20,775,” Webb said, referring to full-year prices. “This reflected a richer mix of units and a higher share of sales accounted for by certified units.

“Higher sales at higher prices and steady margins combined with increased operating efficiencies to produce record profits,” he said. “It’s those profit opportunities that kept dealers bidding at auction.”

Auto Remarketing followed up with Webb to get a ballpark figure on what kind of share CPO represented for these public dealer groups.

Bearing in mind that CarMax does not sell OEM CPO vehicles, Webb said certified pre-owned was north of 23 percent of franchised dealers’ used-car sales last year. 

Explaining his math, Webb said that figure (approximately 23.5 percent) is derived from taking the full-year CPO sales total via Autodata Corp. and dividing it by the total franchised dealer used sales that NADA reported. 

Comparatively, the ratio was 20 percent in 2011 and 15 percent in 2007, according to Webb.