O'Reilly Automotive's CEO is not afraid of Amazon (ORLY)

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February 8, 2017 8:35 PM

'We've not seen much in our business that's led us to be very concerned about it.'

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"I mean, it's just a highly technical business. And then on top of all that, learning and developing the science to know what inventory you need in different markets takes time and experience, and that's — the reason that our company, one of the reasons we've done so well is because we've been so good at that, plus there's almost 36,000 parts stores in the U.S. It's very convenient to get parts and there's a high immediacy of need when you have a car problem."

Haslee sees difficulties for online retailers to penetrate the same market, in light of the valuable services provided by O'Reilly's employees:

"When I think about the relationships that we have with our professional customers and the dependency that they have on us to provide them training and guidance and access to tools and the equipment to keep their tools running and their equipment running. And how quickly they need parts and how if they're not sure maybe in a model year change where a car might take one of two parts, we'll send them both and bring the other one back. We'll match up parts for them. Just, the list goes on and on and on of the things that we do, plus we're making a distribution center inventory available to them. In many markets, six, eight times a day, which is — I think that the online retailers, while they'll — as they have proven over the years — they'll continue to take a little bit of market share here and there, I don't see them nearly as one of our most prominent competitors."

Here are the fourth-quarter results from O'Reilly Automotive:

The stock is up 4.36% at $273.61 a share on Wednesday afternoon.

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