CHARLOTTE, N.C. -

During its third-quarter conference call, Sonic Automotive highlighted several all-time records, including those set for new retail unit sales, pre-owned gross profit and third quarter total gross profit.

When asked if something was happening to separate Sonic from the pack during its strong quarter and used-vehicle sales increase of about 5 percent on the same-store side, Scott Smith, the company’s president and chief strategic officer, attributed the steady increase to his dealers’ consistent inventory levels, which have traditionally been light.

“I just think that with the great inventory management, our systems are running on a traditionally, versus the rest of the world, light day supply of 25-27 days,” Smith said. “If you go back and look at our performance, we just haven’t had those inventory pressures that caused those kind of adjustments. You’ve got to remember there are 42-45 million used cars sold every year and what makes a group go up and down, or a dealer go up and down, is just getting their inventory out of whack. We just haven’t had that kind of pressure here in a while.”

And, according to Smith, he doesn’t think they will face that kind of pressure again, due to his faith in Sonic’s digital inventory management systems. Smith also believes the sales will retain their consistency for the foreseeable future.

“I think the used-car business is pretty solid,” Smith said. “Our volume is decent. We sold 90 cars per rooftop, and we want to be at 100, but it wasn’t too bad. Our gross was good. Over $1,500 for us; that’s the highest it’s been in a while.”

When asked if they should be keeping higher inventory levels going into the coming months to drive sales, Jeff Dyke, Sonic’s executive vice president of operations, seemed to think that going into the winter months light is the way to go.

“You never want to have a heavy inventory coming out of July, August, September time frame,” Dyke said. “All the dealers start selling their cars in October, November and December, all the mom-and-pops and single dealership owners are clearing up inventory. You can see some of the bigger dealership groups doing that now, it’s a great time for us to buy. So you’ll see us push our inventory levels up in the fourth quarter.”

While remaining conservative with its inventory, and also continuing to test the waters with its EchoPark and One Sonic-One Experience, Smith remains optimistic, even hinting at further group growth.

“It wouldn’t surprise us at all that a couple more dealerships enter the Sonic family here in ’15,” Smith said. “That’s both from an acquisition and an add-point perspective.”