Copart Q4 Revenue Beats Estimates but EPS Misses, Stock Jumps on Acquisition News

Copart closed its fiscal year with a quarter the market read as mixed. Revenue of $1.15 billion rose 2.4% and edged past the $1.14 billion consensus, while diluted earnings per share of $0.35 came in three to four cents light depending on the provider, against $0.38 at FactSet and $0.39 at Investing.com. Profitability moved the wrong way on both lines: net income fell 17.4% to $327.4 million and gross profit fell 5.5% to $481.4 million.

The larger news arrived a minute after the earnings release, in a separate filing, and it is a signed deal rather than a rumor. Copart has entered a definitive agreement to acquire ACV Auctions for $10.50 per share in cash, an implied equity value of about $1.9 billion and a premium of roughly 45% to ACV's unaffected closing price on August 10. The transaction is all cash with no stock component, carries no financing condition, and Copart intends to fund it from cash on hand, with closing expected by the end of calendar 2026. That structure matters for how the earnings miss reads, because the balance sheet is doing the paying: cash fell from $2.78 billion to $1.91 billion over the fiscal year while the company repurchased $1.63 billion of stock.

The full year itself was close to flat. Revenue rose 0.4% to $4.7 billion, diluted earnings per share slipped 2.5% to $1.55 from $1.59, and the company issued no forward guidance alongside the release. CPRT closed the regular session at $30.75, down 4.0% on the day and down roughly 37% over the trailing twelve months, before rising about 7.9% in after-hours trading.

Two threads are worth keeping separate as this trades. Some coverage attributes the after-hours move to the revenue beat alone, but at least one outlet making that attribution did not mention the acquisition at all, and a one-cent revenue beat is thin fuel for a move of that size. SentiSense's own post-earnings drift data also cuts against the immediate reaction: Copart has closed lower after each of its last six earnings reports, and after eight of its last nine. From here the things to watch are the regulatory path to a year-end close on ACV, whether the deal stays earnings-neutral this fiscal year as secondary reporting suggests, and whether the expense growth behind this quarter's margin compression persists once integration spending begins.