Company: GPI
Filing Date: 2025-02-14
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001031203-25-000013
Chunk: 112

Company: GROUP 1 AUTOMOTIVE INC
Filing Date: 2025-02-14
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 7
Chunk 112
---
 signed a series of executive orders. Through these executive orders, the Trump administration, among other initiatives, directed the U.S. to formally withdraw from the Paris Agreement, eliminate the EV mandate, put forth a federal energy policy to support traditional energy exploration and production, declared a national energy emergency to expedite energy and infrastructure projects, issued a regulatory freeze on all executive departments and agencies to review pending and existing laws and regulations and froze the hiring of federal civilian employees in the executive branch. The executive orders also rescinded certain previous executive orders of the former Biden administration. The impact of the Trump administration’s executive orders on our results of operations cannot be predicted with certainty.

On August 1, 2024, we completed the acquisition of Inchcape Retail automotive operations in the U.K. The Inchcape Acquisition, comprised of 54 dealership locations, certain real estate and three collision centers, substantially increased our portfolio across the U.K. Refer to Note 3. Acquisitions within our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for additional discussion of our acquisition of Inchcape Retail.

On June 19, 2024, we were informed of a cybersecurity incident experienced by CDK, which resulted in service outages on CDK’s dealers’ systems. CDK provides clients in the automotive industry, including Group 1 dealerships in the U.S., with a SaaS platform used by dealerships in managing customer relationships, sales, financing, service, inventory and back-office operations. The CDK Incident temporarily disrupted our business applications and processes in our U.S. operations that rely on CDK’s dealers’ systems. Despite the CDK Incident, all Group 1 U.S. dealerships continued to conduct business using alternative processes until CDK’s dealers’ systems were available. On June 26, 2024, CDK restored service to us for the core DMS, at which time, subject to certain modified procedures, we resumed processing transactions through the CDK DMS. The overall impact of the CDK Incident did not have a material impact on our overall financial condition or on our ongoing results of operations.

The global economy experienced elevated levels of inflation beginning in 2022. In response to higher than historical average inflationary pressures and challenging macroeconomic conditions, the Federal Reserve, along with other central banks, including in the U.K., maintained interest rates at elevated levels throughout 2023. In 2024, inflation began to return to historical norms. As a result, during the Current Year, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England lowered their interest rates