America’s Group, which has been among the market leaders in auction M&A as of late, is aiming to boost its physical auction count to 60 in the near-term, says Chuck Tapp, CEO of America’s Group.

The auction group, which currently has 46 physical locations along with a handful of mobile auction sites, is eyeing “sometime in 2026” as a target timeline to reach that 60-facility mark, Tapp said.

But it’s not just expansion for expansion’s sake. America’s Group is meticulous and selective with its M&A plan, strategically pursuing purchases that not only meet certain criteria, but that benefit the group’s operations.

Asked how America’s evaluates potential acquisitions, Chris Elliott, VP of Merger and Acquisitions said, “We’re looking for auctions with a strong reputation, a good quality staff that’s had some longevity to their time there; an auction that is strong performer financially from the top line revenue basis and from margin perspective at the bottom line, as well.

“We’re looking for auctions that can either fill a geographic need, strengthen our market position, or expand our service offerings as well,” he said.

Six purchases in 2025 (so far)

As of press time, America’s Group has announced six acquisitions this year:

Its latest was in May, when America’s announced the acquisition of Western Wisconsin Auto Auction, its second location in the state.

Earlier that month, America’s Group announced the purchase of Augusta Auto Auction, located in North Augusta, S.C.

Additional other acquisitions this year have included North Bay Auto Auction in California, South Georgia Auto Auction, Car-Tech Auto Auction in New Jersey and auctionVcommerce, a tech platform provider in the auto auction space.

“We’ve been doing a lot of integration on the back end with that, with all of our, our software systems,” Elliott said of the auctionVcommerce purchase, which was announced in January. “That’s been an ongoing process, but it’s been going really well so far.

“We’ve been able to launch (the auctionVcommerce application) at more locations … and we’ve been able to build it out on the back end to make the processes run more smoothly for customers from an arbitration standpoint, the handshake between auctions, so that someone can sign up for one auction and be able to bid at multiple America’s locations,”
he said.

“So that centralized registration process, we’ve been rolling that out to all of our different locations, which is really helpful for the online buyer who might be buying in Birmingham and then now can go bid it somewhere else in America’s footprint,” Elliott said.

“We’ve been rolling that out to our locations over the last few months and will continue that process. And then we’ll continue the integration of it into the suite of auction platforms and software and services that we use.”

More benefits of acquired businesses

America’s Group has also realized significant benefits from the physical locations it has acquired this year.

For example, Tapp said, the North Bay acquisition gave the auction group its first presence in Northern California. Not only that, it’s situated between several metropolitan areas – from Sacramento to the San Francisco Bay area, from Napa Valley to Silicon Valley – giving America’s the ability to “pull from a lot of different spots.”

Meantime, the Car-Tech purchase in New Jersey not only strengthens the company’s presence in the Northeast, the auction itself is “pretty much a brand new facility” with new equipment and a new building.

And that’s just a couple of the litany of benefits to America’s physical purchases this year.

The acquisition of South Georgia Auto Auction, for instance, bulks up America’s presence in the Peach State. Likewise, North Augusta is located just over the state line in South Carolina.

The purchase of Western Wisconsin gave America’s a stronger foothold in the Badger State, where America’s now operates two auctions.

Having multiple auctions in the same state or geographic area can be beneficial to customers and America’s alike.

“From a customer standpoint, it gives them another option,” Tapp said. “It gives customers an option from a transportation standpoint. Maybe they were shipping some of their vehicles up to us in Atlanta.

“And maybe it makes sense to maybe ship some down to Albany,” he said “It gives customers another option there that to maybe cut down on transportation costs.”

And transportation is the biggest cost that America’s customers face, Elliott said.

“If we’re able to expand our footprint, even just a little bit in the same region, it gives customers who want to do business with Americas, an opportunity to potentially cut down on some of those costs and makes us more attractive as well from that standpoint,” he said. “And then it also just gives us the potential for a slightly different like service offering and different customer base.

“Some of these auctions are serving a type of customer that we might not be, or maybe it’s maybe just even in that region, we’re not serving that particular type of customer,” Elliott said. “And it gives us an opportunity to break into that market, so to speak, even though it’s in the same geographic market.”

In essence, America’s looks at expanding into regions it currently does not operate, but also considers growth in existing regions where an addition would be complementary to existing operations, Elliott said.

Full range of auction size

The group also considers a wide range of auction sizes when pursuing acquisitions.

“We definitely look at (the size of the auction), but we believe our operators are skilled at running all sorts of size operations. We have very large auctions like Birmingham and West Michigan. And then we have, you know, the smaller auctions such as an Erie, Pennsylvania that we’ve been able to grow significantly over the last few years,” Elliott said.

“And so it may be small when we buy it, but we foresee the opportunity to grow it, whether that’s increasing the dealer base, getting some larger commercial accounts in there, whatever that kind of strategy is for that particular auction, we see the opportunity to grow those, even if they are on the smaller side,” Elliott said.

“We look at, when we’re looking at those different auctions, is it a big auction, a small, a medium auction? But we believe we can run all of them and run them well and just get the right operators in there to help out and grow the team. And we’re really looking for a quality team, which is all the ones we’ve acquired, we believe had, and just giving them the extra support to reach the potential.”

What’s next?  

Looking forward, Elliott and the M&A team at America’s Group are anticipating a busy fourth quarter of growth.

“We’re going to continue to grow. It’s going to probably be a busy kind of Q4 for us (to close) the year. We’ve got some exciting things that are going to be hopefully closing here in the relatively near future across the U.S.,” Elliott said.

“We’re looking at traditional brick-and-mortar U.S.-based auto auctions. We’re also looking at things that are maybe not the normal auto auction (format), as well,” he said.

“We’ve expanded a lot into specialty lately. We launched a Vegas specialty sale recently, and we’ve done others throughout the country. So there’s some things on that horizon that we’re looking at as well from the specialty side,” Elliott said, adding that America’s is also exploring opportunities in the equipment space.

“And then expansion outside the U.S. is something we’re interested in as well, whether that’s in Canada, the U.K. It could be any of those kinds of opportunities as well.”

Lastly, when asked what folk should take away from America’s M&A growth strategy, Elliott said, “I would say that they should know that we are the acquirer of choice at this point, from our perspective. We’ve done 10 acquisitions since I’ve been here, the nine physical auctions plus auctionVcommerce and we’re continuing to grow.

“And I think one of the big selling points when I go to speak with auction owners is that we maintain that small town, family-owned auction flavor,” he said. “Our GMs drive the strategy at their local level, and they make the decisions there. But we provide the large corporate support that a large auction group as ourselves can from national sales teams, data, analytics, technology, things like that, that we provide that support to them.”

Elliott added that it’s not part of America’s M&A strategy to rip out and replace staff at auctions it acquires.

“We take great pride in maintaining the local staff and the legacy that those businesses had,” he said, “and just growing and improving on it.”