A higher interest rate won’t slow down CarMax Auto Finance. The company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, Tom Reedy, told analysts to look at CAF’s past securitization deals and the benchmarks in them as a good estimate of where it is locking down long-term financing, during the company’s third quarter earnings call on December 19.
“If you look back at 2007, early 2008, to our securitizations that we did back then, we were running at a very similar spread between APR and cost of funds then, as we are today,” Reedy said. “And interest rates were 400 to 500 basis points higher than they are today. So we don’t believe a higher interest rate market precludes a finance company from making the kind of returns that we’ve been making recently.”
Reedy also said that CAF had benefited when rates fell, and felt pressure as rates rose, but overall, he believed that CAF can manage a market rate of return on the business.
CAF recently reported steady earnings for the third quarter, during which the company had $89.7 million in revenue, up 6.9% from the same time a year ago. The boost in income is attributed to the company’s growth in managed receivables, but was offset by a slight decline in interest. The company’s loan origination growth gave the company a 17.9% jump to $8.03 billion in average managed receivables.
