DALLAS -

Copart chief executive officer Jay Adair spent much of Wednesday’s quarterly conference call not talking about the first stanza of the 2013 fiscal year, but instead concentrating on how the company is handling salvage volume stemming from Superstorm Sandy.

The company is deploying resources to New York and New Jersey from as far away as New Mexico and California because as Adair put it, “Hurricane Katrina was the biggest I had ever seen. (Sandy) is far and away bigger; no comparison. You can’t even begin to compare the two. It is that much bigger an event.”

Before Adair made such a proclamation, he told Wall Street analysts the assignment volume figures Copart received after Katrina and so far following Sandy.

—After three days, Katrina: 359; Sandy: more than 6,000.
—After seven days, Katrina: a little more than 1,000; Sandy: more than 17,000.
—After 14 days, Katrina: more than 4,000; Sandy: more than 40,000.
—After 21 days, Katrina: a little less than 10,000; Sandy: more than 50,000.

“We have mobilized for the storm in a bigger way than I’ve ever seen. This is an unbelievable experience,” Adair said.

Adair indicated that Copart operated eight locations and created two sub-lots to handle the additional volume following Katrina. To handle Sandy’s impact, the company is pushing its 19 facilities in the Northeast to the maximum while adding 11 additional sub-lots to hold the units.

Copart shuffled personnel from facilities in places such as Albuquerque, N.M., Sacramento, Calif., and Portland, Ore., to move and process scores of vehicles that are arriving 24 hours a day. This manpower is working from mobile office sites running on generators with satellite links to Copart’s headquarters.

Because 80 percent of its Sandy volume is coming from New York, Adair said much of the transport is being done at night because of city traffic congestion. Still, he indicated the company is picking up about 2,000 damaged units daily.

Adair acknowledged Copart has spent at least $1 million to create storage lots, housing for additional manpower and more. Adair recollected that he was asked after Katrina if the disaster was going to present Copart with a profit-making opportunity. He addressed the issue in relation to Sandy again on Wednesday.

“We’re not focused on trying to make a profit right now,” said Adair, who shared he just returned from New York’s Long Island on Tuesday in time to conduct Wednesday’s conference call.

“We’re focused on making sure we exceed our customers’ expectations,” he continued. “I’ve never seen a storm like this in my life, but this is where Copart shines. This is what we do well. This is one of the reasons a lot of our customers do business with us on a regular basis. Every seven to 10 years when one of these superstorms hit, this is when we step up to the plate.

“I can’t express how impressed we are with the team, their effort and the work everyone is doing and how appreciative we are for everyone working night and day to get this done for our customers,” Adair went on to say about personnel who worked long hours even on Thanksgiving.

In light of ramifications from events such as Katrina and Sandy, Adair mentioned that Copart might establish a separate division to handle catastrophes.

“I feel like we think we’ve got it figured out and then we have a (catastrophe) like this, and we start the Monday morning quarterbacking process and talk about how we can do it better,” Adair said. “It’s getting to be where they’re so big that I think it’s going to be a division of our company that literally is waiting for the next superstorm.”

First-Quarter Performance

For the three months that ended Oct. 31, Copart reported that its revenue, operating income and net income came in $238.9 million, $74.4 million and $45.8 million, respectively.

The figures represented increases in revenue of $13.2 million or 5.9 percent; in operating income of $9.0 million or 13.7 percent; and in net income of $4.7 million or 11.4 percent compared to the same quarter last year.

The company noted fully diluted earnings per share for the first quarter were $0.36 compared to $0.31 for the same period last year, an increase of 16.1 percent.

Also, during the current quarter, the company repurchased 500,000 shares of its common stock at a weighted average price of $27.77 per share under its share repurchase program.

At the end of the first quarter, Copart had 47,713,218 shares available for repurchase under its share repurchase program.

Beyond the broad numbers, Adair culled out a few points connected with the approximately $48 million in capital expenditures Copart registered during the first quarter.

Of that figure, Adair said $13 million comprised a major lease buyout of a facility Copart used in California for more than a decade. He added the company also used the capital to acquire a new facility near Chicago and in Kentucky that will come online later this year. Copart also made another lease buyout in Columbus, Ohio, as well as an expansion in Tennessee.