Lithia Motors is leaning into “doing more with less.”
The megadealer chain, the largest in the United States, is reorganizing its hundreds of dealership sales and service departments, according to the latest Lithia earnings conference call.
The aim is to get more production out of the same number of people — and potentially, more production out of fewer people dedicated to each individual dealership.
“There’s all kinds of fun actions that are happening,” said Bryan DeBoer, president and CEO, in a conference call on April 29.
Like the other publicly traded U.S. megadealer chains, Lithia is counting on used cars, parts and service, and F&I to compensate for slimmer new-car margins. Lithia is also rolling out a new dealer management system and other technology to boost productivity.
At the same time, the company is redrawing its organizational charts.
In the conference call, DeBoer said Lithia is already working to centralize some dealership management and back-office functions that can be shared among multiple dealerships.
Lithia wants to combine some sales and F&I jobs, so that some employees can do both, DeBoer said. The group is also considering switching some positions that traditionally work onsite, like service advisors, to remote work.
“It’s job combinations. It’s re-architecting the sales departments and the service departments to remove layers and combine jobs. It’s managers and leadership overseeing multiple departments in multiple stores — which we’ve moved that quite nicely,” DeBoer said in the call.
“We’re up to almost 2.5 stores per office manager, and about 1.4 stores for a general manager — big moves, there,” he said.
As of Dec. 31, 2025, Lithia employed about 30,000 people worldwide, according to Lithia’s 2025 annual report. The company operates a total of 465 dealerships worldwide: 307 in the United States, 143 in the United Kingdom and 15 in Canada.
The global footprint highlights a complicating factor for the company: Lithia is digesting a lot of acquisitions while overhauling its dealerships’ structure, technology and focus at the same time.
“We have added over $27 billion in revenues over the last 6 years” through acquisitions, DeBoer said. Lithia’s total revenues for 2025 were $37.6 billion.
Notably, Lithia in 2024 purchased around 160 retail locations plus a large fleet business in the United Kingdom from Pendragon PLC, one of the largest auto retailers in the U.K.
In parallel with that acquisition, Lithia entered a deal with London-based Pinewood Technologies Group, which provides the dealer management system for the former Pendragon. The partnership includes an agreement to roll out the Pinewood platform to Lithia’s U.S. dealerships by the end of 2028.
Tina Miller, Lithia’s chief financial officer, said in the conference call that Lithia expects to have a Pinewood DMS pilot program under way in the United States by the end of 2026.
DeBoer said in the call that the Pinewood rollout is separate from the reorganization effort to redesign sales departments and service departments. He said, “Those are the things we’re doing today.”
Meanwhile, Lithia announced record first-quarter revenue of $9.3 billion for Q1 2026, an increase of 1% versus a year ago. Used-vehicle revenue was $3.5 billion, up 7.3% year-over-year. Parts and service revenue increased 6.1% for the first quarter, to $1.0 billion.
New-vehicle revenue was $4.4 billion, down 4.4% compared with a strong year-ago quarter. Across the auto-retail industry, the year-ago comparison was a tough one, because sales spiked last year as buyers rushed to beat new tariffs on imports.
In the first quarter of 2026, the U.S. market accounted for 75.6% of Lithia’s total revenue and 80.9% of total gross profit. The United Kingdom accounted for 21.4% of total revenue and 16.7% of total gross profit. Canada accounted for 3% and 2.4%, respectively.
