CPRT

Business profile & competitive position

Copart, Inc. is a global online vehicle-auction and vehicle-remarketing platform classified in the Industrials sector under Specialty Business Services. The company sells vehicles primarily over the internet through its Virtual Bidding Third Generation, or VB3, platform, acting mostly as an agent for sellers. In fiscal 2025, insurance companies supplied 81% of the vehicles Copart processed, while buyers included licensed dismantlers, rebuilders, repair licensees, used-vehicle dealers, exporters, and the general public. Copart also acts as a principal in the U.K., Germany, and Spain, purchasing vehicles and reselling them for its own account.

Geographically, Copart operates in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Brazil, Canada, U.A.E., Spain, Finland, Oman, the Republic of Ireland, and Bahrain, with the U.S. generating 83.0% of fiscal 2025 revenue and international markets contributing 17.0%. Its reported 33.5% net margin and 16.6% return on equity point to a business with meaningful scale advantages, network density, and pricing power. Those figures are reinforced by the roughly 1 million registered members on its platform and the company’s expanding physical yard network, both of which make it costly for either sellers or buyers to replicate the matching and logistics service elsewhere.

Financial posture

Copart currently trades at $33.72, giving it a market capitalization of $31.2 billion and a P/E ratio of 20.8. That valuation sits alongside a 33.5% net margin and a 16.6% ROE, numbers that are unusually strong for an industrial services business and suggest the market is pricing in continued conversion of volume growth into profitability. A beta of 1.03 indicates the stock has historically tracked the broad market closely rather than amplifying its moves. From a technical perspective, the stock is trading above its 50-day exponential moving average of $31.22, and the relative strength index sits at 64.1, near the upper bound of neutral. Those inputs do not imply a directional call; they simply describe a large-cap industrial name carrying growth-quality profitability metrics.

Strategic priorities & outlook

According to its most recent 10-K filing, Copart’s near-term operational priorities center on four objectives: acquiring and developing additional vehicle storage facilities in key markets, including foreign markets; pursuing global, national, and regional vehicle seller supply agreements; expanding service offerings to sellers and members, including real-time data access and salvage management tools; and extending VB3 into new markets while applying Copart’s pricing, auction procedures, and cost-efficiency playbook at acquired facilities.

In fiscal 2025, Copart opened one new facility in the U.K., two in Spain, and three in the U.S. Revenues reached $4.6 billion and operating income was $1.7 billion. The 81% reliance on insurance sellers highlights the strength of those contracted relationships, but it also marks a customer concentration worth monitoring. The 17.0% international revenue share, meanwhile, leaves a long runway outside the mature U.S. business, where 69.8% of U.S. vehicles sold in fiscal 2025 were bought by members registered outside the state where the vehicle was located, underscoring the platform’s national, and increasingly global, liquidity.

Macro & geopolitical exposure

As a Specialty Business Services company in the Industrials sector, Copart is exposed to macro forces tied to vehicle markets, insurance loss frequency, logistics costs, currency translation, and trade policy. Used-vehicle and salvage pricing cycles directly affect buyer demand and seller proceeds, while severe weather and accident frequency can spike the flow of insurance-totaled vehicles. Because Copart operates across Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, foreign-exchange swings and local regulations governing salvage, recycling, and environmental compliance are relevant to reported profitability. Trade tariffs and cross-border shipping costs also matter because salvage vehicles are frequently exported to rebuilders and dismantlers overseas. In addition, interest-rate shifts can influence insurers’ capital deployment and consumers’ decisions about whether to repair or total a damaged vehicle. None of these are company-specific predictions; they are risks naturally embedded in the industry classification.

Recent developments

Recent headlines frame a stock waiting on its next catalyst. On September 1, 2026, Copart announced it will release fourth quarter fiscal 2026 results after the market close on September 10, 2026, according to businesswire.com. That report comes up against a consensus EPS estimate of $0.3832. On September 3, 2026, fool.com noted Copart shares ticked 4% higher on Thursday. The week before, however, price action was weaker: on August 26, 2026, zacks.com reported Copart fell more steeply than the broader market, and on August 30, 2026, seekingalpha.com characterized the stock as not doing well enough for an upgrade but not poorly enough for a downgrade. The back-and-forth fits a setup where expectations are already elevated and the market is looking for the next release to resolve the direction.

Earnings behavior & post-earnings drift

Over the last eight reported quarters, Copart has beaten the consensus EPS estimate five times, for a 71% beat rate, with an average earnings surprise of 2%. Despite that respectable hit rate, the average five-trading-day price move after those reports is -3.29%, classified as a downward drift. The last four quarters capture the disconnect clearly. On May 21, 2026, actual EPS of $0.43 beat the $0.4063 estimate by 5.8%, yet the stock fell 1.77% the next day and 4.74% over the following five days. On November 20, 2025, a 5.2% beat coincided with a next-day drop of 0.71% and a five-day decline of 4.97%. The September 4, 2025 quarter delivered a 13.5% beat versus a $0.3613 estimate, and still the stock slid 2.8% the next session and 2.14% over five days. Even the February 19, 2026 miss—actual EPS of $0.36 versus estimate $0.3925, an 8.3% downside surprise—produced a sharper one-day drop of 3.11% but a relatively contained five-day drift of -1.33%.

The pattern suggests that investors are not simply trading the headline EPS print. Beats are being used as liquidity events, with the market’s real expectation seemingly focused on guidance, margin trajectory, yard expansion progress, and insurance-seller volume trends rather than a binary beat-or-miss outcome.

For a deeper dive into institutional conviction, estimate revisions, and how sell-side models are positioned ahead of the September 10 report, review the full institutional verdict.