BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. -

Penske Automotive Group’s quarterly conference call highlighted company records and third-quarter used sales increases. The group’s chairman, Roger Penske, also revealed some forward-thinking plans regarding company expansion and inventory strategy.

“Today, we’re 69 percent, our business, in the U.S., and 31 percent international,” Penske said. “I think you’ll see us, as we go forward, we’ll tend to go probably 60/40. I would say if you looked at over the next 12 to 24 months you could see that.”

Penske also believes that the current quarter will prove to be the time to get good deals on the wholesale side to fuel the company’s used sales.

Looking to the fourth quarter, the group took steps to cut its days' supply from 42 to 39. Doing so was "key," Penske said, "because we’re in the premium luxury side, and we have a number of the off-lease vehicles coming back.

"Our sale price, our cost of sale, is probably higher than the peer group … we wanted to move these vehicles from the standpoint of inventory, because traditionally, we know in the fourth quarter prices do deteriorate because a lot of the wholesalers are dumping a lot of their inventories,” he added. 

As we move into Q4, I think, in our case, we think it’s an opportunity for us; with more used cars on the market price, we’ll buy at market, and we’re going to try to sell at a point where we get a fair margin. Then we’ve got the F&I opportunity and the internal opportunity from a remand perspective,” he added.

Elsewhere in the company's operations, while also outlining hopes that the commercial vehicle side of his business will grow 5 percent to 10 percent over the next two or three years, Penske also hinted at the wealth of opportunities presenting themselves overseas.

“The vision, obviously, is to grow more internationally,” Penske said. “I think that that gives us balance, so that when we look at Spain, and when we look at Italy today, right out of the box they’ve been performing well, and we think there’s more opportunity there. Every manufacturer has knocked on our door in Europe now to say, ‘hey, we have an opportunity.’”

Penske said that he would like to keep his business focused on the premium/luxury side, but gestured that the company may have plans for further domestic expansion.

“I would say this, strategically, there might be, if we look at certain domestics here in the U.S., there are some domestic opportunities that have popped up for us that we’ll look at,” Penske said. “But to me, we’re going to pretty much stay in line as a premium/luxury line, volume foreign player and there’s no question that service and parts, when you think about commercial vehicles, will play a key part going into the future.”