Sonic Automotive (SAH) · Q3 2026

S1Our Overall Take

Sonic Automotive runs about 107 franchise dealerships, selling brands from Toyota and Honda to BMW and Mercedes-Benz, plus 18 EchoPark used-car stores. Our data follows what happens on those lots: how many cars sell, at what price, and how long they wait for a buyer. This report covers July through September 2026.

The steadier side is used car sales. Franchise used sales rose 3.2% across all stores, and 0.5% at the stores Sonic owned through both years, while the North American used market fell 3.4%. EchoPark sold about 16,800 cars in our capture, up 22.1% from a year ago. Counting both, Sonic's used-vehicle revenue in our data rose about 9.1% to roughly $1.3 billion.

New cars held their ground on price, not on volume. New sales fell 2.2% across all stores and 5.4% at the stores Sonic owned through both years, against the market's 3.0% decline; stores added over the year held the all-store figure up (Section 3). The new average transaction price was $60,628, up 5.5%, and new cars sold 1.7% below sticker against 2.8% below a year ago.

The risk is the used lot. Used stock rose 15.0% to 10,872 cars, after setting aside 456 cars that had been listed more than 180 days at the same store, which we treat as service loaners (Section 12). Used cars that had waited more than 90 days at their selling store were 8.2% of that stock at September 30, against 4.8% a year ago. The gap between what Sonic asks for its unsold used cars and what its sold used cars fetched widened inside both luxury and mainstream stock. September used vehicles sold were down 5.5% from a year ago, after a strong July and August.

Why neutral: gross profit per car is the number that will decide this print, and our data cannot see it. A bigger used lot and a slower September could mean clearance pricing ahead, or simply stock bought ahead of demand. The data does not tell us which. Confidence is Medium because a quality check was waived this quarter: our counts run above the company's own reported units (Section 12).

S2The Quarter in Numbers

Every share move is below the 0.3-point level we treat as meaningful, so share was steady on both sides of the lot. The revenue read for the print: franchise vehicle revenue in our data rose 4.0%, carried by price rather than units. Adding EchoPark, total vehicle revenue rose 5.6%.

S3Inventory and Pricing Risk

New Market Days Supply sits inside the typical range for franchise dealers (46 to 80 days). Used Market Days Supply also sits inside its typical range (27 to 40 days), but it climbed from 30 to 35 days in a year. Used inventory figures throughout this report exclude cars listed more than 180 days at the same store, an interim rule for service loaners (Section 12).

The used asking premium (unsold stock's average list price against the quarter's average selling price) is above our 10% watch line. Unsold used stock tilted further toward luxury cars, and the premium also widened inside each class: luxury from 10.2% to 14.5%, mainstream from 7.5% to 13.2%. The new-car figure counts every advertised unit, including cars still on the way from the factory.

S4Electric Vehicles, Geography, and the Two Cases

Electric vehicles. New battery-electric sales fell 61.3% to 1,519, and the fully electric share of new sales fell to 4.4%, after the federal purchase credit ended on September 30, 2025 and pulled sales into the year-ago quarter. The whole market's new battery-electric sales fell 52.6%, so Sonic fell somewhat faster. Used battery-electric sales rose 24.4% to 2,363, against 11.9% for the market.

Geography. In the top three states by new volume, California rose 5.8% and Texas fell 7.0%, with Colorado down 3.8%. Georgia fell about 25% on new and 33% on used, mostly from stores Sonic sold in the first half. Nevada, Virginia and Missouri new sales each fell more than 20% with no matching store sale on record.

The positive case. Used is holding its ground in a shrinking market at the franchise stores and growing fast at EchoPark, and new prices are holding closer to sticker. Our used revenue for the combined used business is up about 9%.

The negative case. The used lot is bigger, older and priced further above what cars are selling for, and September used sales turned down. If that stock has to be cleared, used profit per car is where it would show. Our data cannot measure that profit.

01Overall Verdict and Confidence

This is a read on Sonic's North American vehicle-selling business only, not a rating on the company. Finance & Insurance income, parts and service, and Powersports are outside our data, and so is the gross profit Sonic earns on each car.

Why neutral: the signals point in both directions, and the factor that decides them is not observable. On the positive side, franchise used sales rose 3.2% across all stores and 0.5% at the stores Sonic owned through both years, in a used market down 3.4%; EchoPark grew about 22% in our capture, and new-car pricing held closer to sticker than a year ago. On the negative side, same-store new sales fell 5.4% against a market down 3.0%, and the used lot grew 15.0% while used sales grew 3.2%. The share of used stock listed more than 90 days at its selling store rose to 8.2% from 4.8%, the asking premium widened inside both luxury and mainstream stock, and September used sales fell 5.5% from a year ago. Whether that stock clears at full price or needs markdowns will show up in used gross profit per car, which our data cannot see.

Confidence is Medium, capped by a waived quality check: Compass counts above the company's reported units, described in Section 12.

02Signal Summary Table

03Detailed Sales Numbers

Why it matters: units sold times average price is a direct shadow of the vehicle revenue Sonic will report. Sonic bought and sold stores over the past year, so same-store figures lead here. The all-store figure is the revenue base.

New vehicles

New same-store sales fell 5.4%, and the same-store average price rose 1.6%. All-store new sales fell 2.2%: month by month, down 4.3% in July and 2.2% in August, then up 0.1% in September. The North American new market fell 3.0% over the quarter, so Sonic's stores owned through both years did worse than the market, and the stores added over the year made up the difference.

The average new price rose $3,180 from a year ago. About $1,600 of that came from higher prices within the same brands and about $1,540 from a richer brand mix, mainly more Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz and fewer Honda and Audi (our interpretation of the brand-by-brand calculation).

Used vehicles

Same-store used sales rose 0.5%, with the same-store average price up 3.5%; across all stores, used sales rose 3.2%. The North American used market fell 3.4%, so Sonic held its ground at the stores it owned through both years and gained with the stores it added. The monthly path matters: July +10.9%, August +4.3%, September −5.5% year over year.

Sonic's used buyers moved up the price ladder. Cars under $20,000 were 26.5% of used sales, down from 31.0%, and cars over $50,000 rose to 14.5% from 12.9%. Of the $1,357 rise in the used average transaction price, about $963 came from higher prices within brands and about $394 from brand mix.

The used cars Sonic sells are young: 38.0% were under three years old, against 27.6% for the whole market.

Same-store bridge. This quarter's same-store figures compare stores. Using the seller records carried in Compass, each sale is tied to the website of the store that sold it, and a store counts as comparable when Sonic had been selling through it since before July 1, 2025 and it was still selling in the quarter just ended: 115 stores, carrying 94.4% of Sonic's new sales and 91.6% of its used sales this quarter. Sixteen stores whose first Sonic sales in our data came after that date contributed 1,870 new and 2,366 used units this quarter with no year-ago equivalent: a group-level listing record, Sonic Automotive Concierge, first seen in August 2025 (1,419 units), Dave Smith GMC in Idaho from July 2026 (647), and the Southern California Land Rover and Jaguar stores (Land Rover Santa Monica and Pasadena from December 2025, Los Angeles, Newport Beach and San Jose from March 2026), with Audi Downtown Nashville from December 2025 and Vernon Chevrolet and Vernon GMC in Texas from July 2026; California (1,721 units), Texas (766), Idaho (707) and Colorado (403) lead. Five stores that sold a year ago but not this quarter (Mullinax Buick GMC in Alabama, Texoma Hyundai and Bonham Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Texas, Cook Chrysler Dodge Ram in Maryland among them) carried 400 new and 430 used units in the year-ago quarter. Two stores whose volume swung more than fourfold, Don Jackson CDJR North in Georgia and Ron Craft Cadillac in Texas, both sold in the first half of 2026, were left out of both quarters; they carried 410 new and 869 used units a year ago. Five Porsche stores whose websites were re-platformed in December 2025 and January 2026 were matched by seller name and kept as one store each. Same-store and all-store differ by 3.2 points on new and 2.6 points on used, consistent with the stores added. Store-level same-store approximation built from Compass seller identifiers, not the company's certified same-store comparison; stores acquired part-way through the year-ago quarter can add partial-period noise.

Attribution check. Five Southern California Jaguar Land Rover zip codes sold 1,139 new cars in Q3 2025 that our data did not tag to Sonic, and 1,133 this year that it did. Sonic's 2025 filings report acquiring Jaguar Land Rover stores in Los Angeles, Newport Beach, San Jose and Pasadena. If Sonic owned them for all of Q3 2025, the like-for-like all-store new figure is about −5.3% on units and −2.5% on revenue, close to the store-level same-store figure of −5.4%. This is why Land Rover new sales appear to have tripled (Section 4). The store-level panel treats these stores as acquired from the date the Sonic tag first appears, so the same-store read is unaffected.

By state

Georgia's decline matches the stores sold in the first half. Nevada, Virginia (−20.3% on new) and Missouri (−33.5% on new) have no matching sale on record. We read them as local softness at small stores, not a broad demand signal (our interpretation). Used sales rose in four of the five largest states.

3bEchoPark (Sonic's standalone used-car stores), reported separately

Why it matters: EchoPark sells about as many used cars as Sonic's franchise stores combined, and management has made its growth a centerpiece. EchoPark sales are not tagged to Sonic's dealer group in our data, so we identify them by EchoPark's own website. These figures should be read as captured volume, not company results.

Month by month: July 5,955, August 5,639, September 5,181 cars. EchoPark sold its September cars in a median of 26 days on market.

How complete is this capture? In Q2 2026, our data captured 16,306 EchoPark sales against 19,601 reported by Sonic, about 83%. A year earlier it captured about 94%. Our capture therefore understated EchoPark's Q2 growth: it showed about 3.5% where Sonic reported 17%. For Q3, the direction (strong growth) is more reliable than the exact size.

Sonic total used business. Adding EchoPark to the franchise stores, Sonic sold about 45,990 used cars in our data, up 9.3%, for about $1.3 billion, up 9.1%. EchoPark is about 36.5% of those units.

04Top Brands Sold

Why it matters: Sonic's mix is luxury-heavy, so a handful of brands drive its prices.

New

Toyota is the largest new brand at 20.6% of units and the fastest seller, at about a month. BMW, Sonic's largest luxury brand, fell 8.7%, and its share of the BMW market slipped from 6.7% to 5.9%. Land Rover's tripling is mostly the attribution change described in Section 3. Ford and Audi sold furthest below sticker; Ford, Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz took about three months to sell on the days-on-site clock.

Used

Used BMW is the engine of Sonic's used growth: 568 more units than a year ago, with BMW's share of the used BMW market up from 2.8% to 3.2%. Honda and Toyota used cars sold in under three weeks on the days-on-site clock.

05What's Sitting on the Lots (Inventory)

Why it matters: a car that sits costs the dealer interest every day, and its eventual selling price tends to drift down. A growing pile of older stock is tomorrow's clearance problem.

Used: the lot grew, and grew older. Active used units rose 15.0% from a year ago and 0.8% from June, while used sales rose 3.2%. Active units and Market Days Supply are near the top of Sonic's observed range since 2023, though still inside our benchmark bands. The share of used stock listed more than 90 days at its selling store rose to 8.2% from 4.8% a year ago and 5.4% in June; the average unsold used car had been on its site 35 days, against 27 a year ago.

The build is concentrated in luxury. Luxury cars were 49.6% of used stock, up from 41.6%. Luxury units rose 37.1% while mainstream fell 0.7%. Aging rose in both classes on the days-on-site clock: luxury stock over 90 days went from 7.4% to 9.7%, mainstream from 3.0% to 6.7%. BMW used stock rose 59.0% to 2,194 cars, though its share over 90 days on site eased to 7.4% from 9.0% a year ago. Land Rover (31.1%) and Porsche (17.2%) carry the oldest used stock, and Ford (13.7%) is next.

New: well stocked, inside the typical range. New units rose 8.9%, and the share over 90 days on site rose from 23.3% to 29.4%, with Mercedes-Benz (49.6% of 4,451 cars, against 35.6% a year ago) and BMW (36.0% of 4,661, against 17.6%) carrying most of the aging; Land Rover's share fell to 31.9% from 59.1%. New Market Days Supply remains inside the typical range (Section 7). The sport-utility share of new stock is 60.5%, and 68.3% is priced above $50,000.

06Price Position: Sticker, Asking Premium and Discounts

Why it matters: these measures show where Sonic prices its cars against the sticker, against what similar cars sell for, and against its own first asking price. None of them is a profit measure: they say nothing about what Sonic paid for a car or earned on it.

New, against sticker. New cars sold 1.7% below the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP, the "sticker"), against 2.8% a year ago and 1.8% last quarter. BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Land Rover sold at or slightly above sticker; Ford (−8.9%) and Audi (−8.0%) sold furthest below.

Asking premium on unsold stock. This compares the average list price of cars still for sale at September 30 with the average price of cars sold during the quarter. The two groups are different cars, so the trend matters more than the level.

The used asking premium is above our 10% watch line. Part of the rise is mix, because unsold stock tilted toward luxury. But the premium also widened by 4.3 points inside luxury and 5.7 points inside mainstream, so mix alone does not explain it. Unsold used cars are listed further above what Sonic's used cars are actually selling for than they were a year ago.

Discount from first listed price. This compares each sold car's final price with the first price MarketCheck saw on its listing.

Sonic's used discount from first ask was slightly shallower than a year ago and in line with franchise dealers overall. It deepened from the second quarter, as it did for franchise dealers (−2.7% to −3.7%). On new cars, the average discount from first ask was −1.6%, against −2.0% a year ago and −1.9% for franchise dealers.

6dListing Price Position (used)

Listing Price Position compares each used car's opening asking price with MarketCheck Price, MarketCheck's model estimate of the car's market value. A ratio of 1.00 means listed at our estimate of market value; 0.95 means 5% below.

Sonic opens its used listings below franchise dealers, and a little further below than a year ago: a median price position of −0.035 against −0.026. Fewer of its cars were listed well above market value (16.4% against 23.9%). Its cars still sell faster than franchise dealers', with 64.8% of its used listings sold within 30 days on site against 55.8%, and Sonic slowed less from a year ago (2.2 points against 6.2). This section is descriptive and does not feed the signal.

6eSelling Margin Pressure (used)

Selling Margin Pressure measures markdowns beyond the usual on cars that took longer than usual to sell. For each price band and vehicle age, Sonic's own previous 12 months set the usual time to sell and the usual markdown on cars that sold on time. A car counts when it took longer than usual and was marked down by more than usual; the excess, in dollars, is averaged over all used cars sold.

Sonic's Selling Margin Pressure was $1,128 per used car sold, down $29 from a year ago, against a rise of $3 for franchise dealers. Against the second quarter it rose from $935, as the market's did ($805 to $1,050). This describes selling behavior only. What Sonic paid for its cars and spent reconditioning them are not in our data, so the measure is not a gross profit figure and does not feed the signal.

07Days to Sell and Market Days Supply

7aDays on Site and Days on Market (how long each car takes)

Two clocks run on every car in our data. Days on site counts only the days at the current selling store or website and restarts whenever the car moves; it is the clock a store manages its own pricing and markdowns against, and it is the aging measure this report leads with in every section. Days on market counts from the first day the car was advertised anywhere and keeps counting if the car moves to another store or another website; it is the listing's full exposure to the market, and it is analyzed here and only here. Both are shown for cars sold during the quarter and for cars still unsold on September 30.

On the days-on-site clock, the cars that sold barely moved: new cars took one day longer than a year ago (59 against 58) and used cars the same time (28 against 28). The cars still waiting are where the change is. The unsold new stock is ten days older on site than a year ago and five days older than in June. The unsold used stock is eight days older on site than a year ago and four days older than in June, after setting aside the cars listed more than 180 days at the same store (Section 12); its median moved less (22 against 19), so the change is a lengthening tail of slow cars rather than the whole lot slowing. The days-on-market rows tell the same story with larger numbers: cars sold took two days longer on new and one on used, and the unsold stock aged ten days on new and twelve on used over the year. Where the two clocks differ in level is explained below.

What the gap between the two clocks tells us. Days on site runs below days on market by about six days on both new and used cars sold, and 23.2% of the new and 16.8% of the used cars Sonic sold this quarter were younger on their selling site than on the market; among the unsold stock the shares are 17.3% and 17.1%. Those gaps sit in the middle of the eight dealer groups we cover: Lithia, which syndicates its listings through a national website, shows the widest, and Carvana, which sells through one website, almost none. Physical movement between Sonic's stores explains little of it: only 0.01% of the new cars and 0.2% of the used cars on Sonic's lots at September 30 had changed selling store within their listing, and only 0.3% of new and 0.5% of used sales were followed by the same car reappearing at another Sonic store within 60 days (1.5% and 0.7% reappeared at the same store, and 0.3% and 0.9% at a dealer outside the group). Instead, 13.3% of the new cars and 14.3% of the used cars in stock were already younger on site than on the market on the first day we observed them. Our reading, which the Compass data cannot fully confirm, is that these are cars that reached the selling store after time advertised elsewhere, as dealer trades, auction purchases or trade-ins that had been listed before, or whose record switched to the store's website after first appearing under another listing (our interpretation). Sonic has no central website carrying a material share of its listings, so the gap is spread across its store websites rather than concentrated in one channel, and it is small enough that the two clocks tell the same story about Sonic's quarter.

7bMarket Days Supply (how long the whole lot would last)

Market Days Supply divides the cars on hand at September 30 by the average number sold per day in the 45 days ending that date (August 17 to September 30). The same 45-day window ends on June 30 for Q2 2026 and on September 30, 2025 for Q3 2025.

New Market Days Supply of 73 sits inside the typical range for franchise dealers (46 to 80 days). Used Market Days Supply of 35 sits inside its typical range (27 to 40 days), near the top of the range Sonic has shown since 2023. Used stock here excludes cars listed more than 180 days at the same store (Section 12); on the unfiltered lot the figure would be 37, the highest of the 15 quarters in our data for Sonic.

Coherence check. Sold days on site divided by Market Days Supply is 81% for new and 75% for used, against the ranges in which the two normally sit, 62% to 100% for new and 76% to 114% for used, derived on sold days on site over complete quarters since 2023; new sits inside its range and used sits just below the lower edge of its range. The used ratio is taken on the unfiltered lot (Market Days Supply 37 rather than 35), because the service-loaner exclusion does not enter benchmark comparisons. On the days-on-market clock the ratios are 90% for new and 90% for used against ranges of 69% to 108% and 82% to 124%, inside their ranges, so the inventory and sales figures agree with each other on both clocks.

Against franchise dealers, brand by brand. Each figure shows Sonic's Market Days Supply for a brand as a percentage of the per-make benchmark across franchise dealers, for the same brand at the same date and on the same 45-day window. 100% means Sonic is in line with franchise dealers of the same makes; below 100% means it carries less supply than they do.

Sonic carries less used supply than franchise dealers in every major brand, so its used build is from a lean starting point; the used figures exclude the same long-listed cars as the rest of the used inventory, while the franchise benchmark does not. On new, it runs slightly heavier than franchise dealers in Land Rover and Chevrolet, and in line with them in Ford and Mercedes-Benz.

08Electric Vehicle Sales

Why it matters: the federal electric-vehicle purchase credit ended on September 30, 2025, so buyers pulled purchases into the year-ago quarter. Year-over-year comparisons are against an inflated base.

New battery-electric sales fell 61.3%, faster than the market's 52.6%, and the fully electric share of new sales fell to 4.4%; and Sonic's share of the market's new battery-electric sales slipped from 1.5% to 1.2%. Cadillac (432) and BMW (378) led its new electric sales. Used battery-electric sales rose 24.4% against 11.9% for the market, led by BMW (705) and Tesla (514), and sold faster than a year ago.

09The Positive Case

Used demand at Sonic is holding up better than the market. Franchise used sales rose 3.2% across all stores and 0.5% at the stores Sonic owned through both years, in a used market that fell 3.4%, and Sonic's used unit share rose from 0.5% to 0.6%. EchoPark grew about 22% in our capture, ahead of management's full-year guide of 12–15%. Together, the used business's revenue in our data is up about 9.1%, to about $1.3 billion.

New-car pricing held. The new average transaction price rose 5.5% to $60,628, about half from higher prices within brands, and cars sold closer to sticker than a year ago. All-store new sales fell 2.2% against a market down 3.0%.

The used build starts from a lean position. In every major brand, Sonic carries less used supply than franchise dealers overall, and its used cars still sell faster than the franchise average (64.8% within 30 days on site against 55.8%). A bigger used lot may simply be stock bought for a fourth quarter that management expects to be strong (our interpretation).

10The Negative Case

The used lot grew far faster than used sales. Active used units rose 15.0% while used sales rose 3.2%, even after setting aside the cars listed more than 180 days at the same store, and the share of used stock over 90 days on site rose to 8.2% from 4.8%. Used Market Days Supply reached 35, near the top of the typical range; on the unfiltered lot it would be 37, the highest of the 15 quarters in our data for Sonic.

The aging is not just a luxury mix story. The asking premium on unsold used stock widened by 4.3 points inside luxury and 5.7 points inside mainstream cars, and mainstream stock over 90 days on site more than doubled to 6.7%. BMW used stock rose by about 59% to 2,194 cars. Clearing that stock would depend on price, and used gross profit per car is where any clearance would show. Our data cannot measure that profit.

Momentum faded through the quarter. Franchise used sales went from +10.9% year over year in July to −5.5% in September. New same-store sales fell 5.4%, worse than the market's 3.0% decline, and the like-for-like all-store new figure is close to that once the Jaguar Land Rover attribution change is allowed for.

11ADid Management Get It Right Last Quarter?

Sources: Sonic Automotive Q2 2026 earnings call transcript and Q2 2026 Form 10-Q (quarterly report). "Fact" claims describe the prior quarter; "Guidance" claims describe this one.

The used days-of-supply claim checks out, and EchoPark's growth is in line with the guide. The tension is between management's stated attention to days of supply and a used lot that grew and aged through the quarter. That divergence leads the negative case.

11BWhat to Watch on the Earnings Call

1. The aged used stock. Our data shows used stock up 15.0% after setting aside long-listed cars, with 8.2% of stock over 90 days on site. Was this stock bought ahead of fourth-quarter demand, or does it need clearing? Used gross profit per car, which our data cannot measure, is the reported figure to read alongside the answer.
2. The same-store bridge. Our store-level same-store estimate is −5.4% for new and +0.5% for used, against −2.2% and +3.2% for all stores, with 16 stores added and 5 departed over the year. Does Sonic's reported same-store comparison land near those figures? How much did the Jaguar Land Rover stores contribute to new sales?
3. The September used slowdown. Franchise used sales fell from +10.9% in July to −5.5% in September. Was that a supply choice, a pricing choice, or softer demand, and how has October started?
4. EchoPark growth and days of supply. Our capture shows EchoPark up about 22%. Did EchoPark's days of supply fall toward its 30–40 day target as management expected, and is the full-year growth guide being raised?
5. New-car pricing after the electric-vehicle base effect. New cars sold closer to sticker than a year ago, and new battery-electric sales fell 61.3%. How much new-vehicle profit compression did the quarter carry against the $2,850–$3,000 guide?

11CPost-Print Accuracy Summary (Sonic Automotive Q3 2026 Results, October 29, 2026)

What this section is: This section was added after Sonic Automotive reported third-quarter 2026 results on October 29, 2026. Everything above it is the report as written, unchanged.

Scorecard: Of 28 vehicle-transaction calls that could be tested against what Sonic reported, 14 were confirmed, 10 were partly right and 4 were missed. Another 4 could not be tested: two the report itself said our data could not see (EchoPark days' supply and the new-vehicle gross profit guide), and two for which Sonic gave no figure (monthly used sales and days on site). The Neutral verdict held. Sonic reported a mixed quarter: revenue flat at a record $4.0 billion, adjusted earnings per share down 8% to $1.30, franchise same-store new units down 7% and used units up 3%, and EchoPark retail units up 22%. As the report expected, gross profit per car decided the quarter: new gross profit per unit rose 2% on a deliberate decision to hold margins, and used gross profit per unit eased 2%.

What we got right: The verdict and its reason. We said gross profit per car would decide the quarter and declined to lean either way, and that is how management described it: Sonic chose to hold new-vehicle margins after the second quarter, and the call was about margin, service and expenses rather than units. Treating Sonic as two businesses paid off: EchoPark growth of about 22% in our data matched the 22% Sonic reported, and franchise plus EchoPark used revenue in our data (+9.1%) sat close to the company's +9.6%. Our same-store new figure (−5.4%) landed near the reported −7%, and the fall in battery-electric sales we measured almost exactly matches the 2,200 electric units management said were pulled into last year's quarter before the federal credit ended. The used price read (+4.3%) matched the company's +4% to +5%; part of any price change across spring 2026 reflects franchise dealers adding mandatory fees to advertised prices after Federal Trade Commission enforcement, and the size of that part is not estimated.

What we missed and why: The main risk in the negative case, a used lot growing far faster than used sales, did not appear in Sonic's own figures: its used days' supply was 34 days at both September 30, 2026 and a year earlier, inside its 25 to 35 day target, and used gross profit per unit eased only 2%. Our used stock count moved against Sonic's own measure within the quarter, and we should have tested the build against the company's days' supply before calling it a risk. The report also credited stores added over the year with holding up all-store new sales; Sonic's own acquisitions added only 382 new units, and most of what we counted as acquired was stores Sonic already owned that our data had not linked to Sonic a year earlier, plus a group-wide listing record. That same linking change made our all-store figures read better than Sonic's: our new-vehicle sales fell 2.2% against a reported 8%, and the report stated that figure as Sonic's sales rather than as what our data captured. Our capture of Sonic rose over the year, so our growth rates were likely to read high, and the used share gain in the positive case (0.5% to 0.6%, while the captured used market fell 3.4%) may partly reflect that rise rather than a real gain. On pricing, new cars moved 1.1 points closer to sticker, about the size of the spring 2026 fee-inclusion step, while Sonic's revenue per new unit rose only 1%; the margin held because of management's decision, not because of the evidence we cited. Our same-store used figure under-read Sonic's for the second quarter running.

Bottom line: Read this report for the shape of Sonic's quarter, a margin-led quarter with new units down, used steady and EchoPark growing fast, which held up, and for same-store new units and EchoPark growth, which landed close. Read its used-inventory warning as a description of our data, not of Sonic's lot, and read its all-store unit growth as what our data captured, which ran higher than Sonic's own figures this quarter.

12Methodology and Glossary

Where the data comes from

Primary data source: MarketCheck Compass parquet files were the primary data source: North American new and used retail sales and the daily inventory panel, filtered to Sonic Automotive's dealer-group ticker. Sales cover July–September 2026 (current quarter), April–June 2026 (prior quarter) and July–September 2025 (year-ago quarter). The inventory snapshot is September 30, 2026, the true quarter-end; the data run through at least October 9, 2026. Geographic figures reflect the physical location of the vehicle.

Compass totals, Q3 2026: new 34,113 units and $2.0B; used 29,217 units and $0.9B; combined $3.0B.

Basis line. Inventory basis: Compass panel for unit counts, list prices and Market Days Supply. Aging basis: days on site leads every aging figure in this report (Sections 3, 4, 5, 6d, 10 and 11); days on market is shown and analyzed in Section 7a only. Days on site: the Compass site counter, re-anchored at each observed reset. Sold and active days on market: measured from the opportunity start date. The over-90-day shares count cars with more than 90 days on site at the snapshot; on the days-on-market clock the same shares are 31.8% new and 14.6% used at September 30 (24.9% and 7.1% a year ago), and the brand and class shares are higher by a similar margin. Market Days Supply: active units at quarter-end divided by the average daily units sold in the 45 calendar days to quarter-end (ds_denominator = t45); baselines installed October 19, 2026. Sonic's own days of supply figures (Form 10-Q) are computed on the trailing quarter's cost of sales and count stock on the lot; ours uses the unit selling rate of the 45 days to quarter-end and counts every advertised unit. The two are compared directly in Section 11A with that difference in mind. New-vehicle Market Days Supply counts every advertised unit, including units advertised before they reach the dealership; company-reported figures count stock on the lot and are not directly comparable.

Market share denominator. Market share is computed against MarketCheck Compass-captured North American retail transactions for the same period, not against total US registrations or company-reported deliveries. Coverage of new-vehicle retail runs approximately 80–95% of the actual market and varies by brand, so these figures are a consistent relative measure across periods, not an absolute share of the true market.

EchoPark. EchoPark sales are not tagged to Sonic's dealer group in our data. EchoPark figures in Section 3b are identified by EchoPark's website. They are added to the franchise figures only in rows labeled "Sonic total".

Captured-basis reporting and the coverage record

Volume, revenue and share in this report are what MarketCheck captured, not the company's results.

These are the first coverage rates logged for Sonic. The gap should be assumed to recur; its size should not be assumed. On the store-level same-store panel used in this report, our Q2 2026 same-store used change reads +3.1%, against the +7% same-store used retail unit growth Sonic reported for that quarter (Form 10-Q); our Q2 same-store new change on the panel is +0.8%, with no reported same-store new change to compare it with. Compass counts a sale when a listing closes. Following Q2 2025's new-car sales for 15 months, 11.1% of those vehicles were sold again later. 3.9% reappeared as used cars at Sonic stores after a median 259 days and about 6,000 miles, the pattern of service loaners and demonstrators; that rate was 18.6% for Land Rover and 7.4% for BMW. The used excess is smaller than Sonic's 5,001 franchised wholesale units in Q2 2026, which fits listed cars that went to auction rather than to retail buyers (our educated guess).

Waiver disclosure 1: coverage above 1.00. Our franchise counts run above Sonic's reported units (1.2 for new and 1.1 for used in Q2 2026), which our methodology treats as a stop condition. The analyst waived it on October 12, 2026. The excess is consistent across quarters and largely explained by listing closures that are not retail deliveries, such as loaners, demonstrators and cars sent to auction. It means our unit and revenue levels overstate Sonic's reported retail figures. Growth rates are less affected, because the excess is similar in both years compared.

What our quality checks found

Same-store panel. Stores are identified by the Compass seller website; the dealer identifier was not usable across years because its numbering changed in January 2026. A store is comparable when its first Sonic sale in our data is on or before July 1, 2025 and it sold in the quarter just ended; stores first seen after that date are treated as acquired, stores with no sales this quarter as departed, and both are left out. Stores whose volume moved more than fourfold between the two quarters, with at least 150 units in one of them, are left out of both. Five Porsche stores whose websites were re-platformed in December 2025 and January 2026 were matched by seller name across the change and counted as one store each. Sonic has no central website carrying a material share of its listings. The company's own same-store comparison is built store by store on its own ledger; our quarter-level rule approximates it.

Inventory snapshot date. September 30, 2026, the true quarter-end; Compass inventory quarter-end: 28,329 new and 11,418 used, of which 10,872 used after the service-loaner exclusion.

Days-on-site basis for sold within 30 days. The Section 6d speed figure counts used listings started at their selling store between the first day of the quarter and September 3, so that every listing could be followed for 30 days before the data edge. A listing is sold within 30 days when its sale record carries 30 or fewer days on site, and not sold when the car reached a 31st day on site in the inventory panel; listings that disappeared unsold before day 31 are in neither count. The franchise comparator is built the same way over all franchise dealers. This cohort is not the listing-day cohort used for the price-position figures above it.

Service-loaner exclusion (interim rule). Dealers keep some cars for service customers to drive and advertise them while they do, and those cars should not count as stock for sale. Pending a company-wide definition of a service loaner, every used inventory figure in this report (units, list prices, aging, asking premium, Market Days Supply and the brand-level supply comparison) excludes cars that had been listed more than 180 days at the same store on the snapshot date, read from the days-on-site counter. That removed 456 used cars at September 30, 381 at June 30 and 287 a year ago. The cars set aside are a mixed group: at September 30 they averaged 312 days on market, a $43,456 list price and 64,456 miles, and 42.3% had under 10,000 miles, so the rule removes aged used stock as well as loaners, and the used aging figures are correspondingly gentler than on the unfiltered lot (active days on market 45 against 55; over-90-day share on site 8.2% against 11.9%; Market Days Supply 35 against 37). New inventory is not filtered: the 2,510 new units over 180 days on site average 159 miles and 247 days on market and are aged stock, not loaners. Sold figures are unchanged.

State notes. Nevada, Virginia and Missouri new sales fell more than 20% with no matching store sale on record. Same-rooftop continuity and MarketCheck coverage stability at those stores have not been independently checked.

Listing Price Position. Listing Price Position compares each used car's opening asking price with MarketCheck Price, MarketCheck's model estimate of the car's market value, at the listing's first recorded status change. It describes where the dealer set the price, not what the car sold for. The year-ago quarter lacks MarketCheck Price for its first four days.

Directional read for grading. Sonic listed its used cars further below franchise dealers than a year ago (−0.035 against −0.026). Under the grading rule, that is logged as a read for lower used gross profit per car. It is recorded for the post-earnings accuracy review only and does not feed the signal.

Lenses. Selling Margin Pressure (Section 6e) is descriptive and does not feed the signal. Brand equity erosion is not applied because no single brand dominates Sonic's mix.

What we cannot see

Outside MarketCheck's scope for Sonic: Finance & Insurance income; parts, service and collision work; the Powersports business; wholesale and auction sales; gross profit per vehicle; floor-plan interest and overhead; EchoPark's income and its inventory; and fleet sales not advertised at retail.

Sources of figures. Every figure in this report comes from MarketCheck data unless the text names another source, such as a company filing or management's comments on its earnings call. Only figures from those other sources carry a source label.

Plain-English Glossary

Prepared by MarketCheck Research using the Anthropic Claude LLM. This report describes North American retail vehicle transaction activity only and is not investment advice.

We welcome your feedback. To offer comments, suggestions for future coverage, or to inquire about licensing this report or the MarketCheck data behind it, including vehicle-level sales, inventory and pricing data, contact Bryant Sheehy at bryant.sheehy@marketcheck.com.