Lithia Motors Inc. has bolstered its Florida presence with the purchase of two Audi dealerships.
Lithia this month bought Audi Fort Lauderdale and Audi Coral Springs from Qvale Auto Group, a Lithia spokeswoman said. The two luxury stores will add an expected $275 million to Lithia’s annual revenue, the retailer said Tuesday.
“We were excited when the Presidio team approached us about acquiring our first Audi franchises in Florida because we have had such great success with the brand in our other markets,” Lithia CEO Bryan DeBoer said in a statement. “This expands our footprint and offerings to consumers in the greater Florida markets.”
With the acquisition, Lithia said it has 12 dealerships in Florida. It also has nine Audi stores, including two dealerships in Canada.
Terms weren’t disclosed, but Lithia said it paid for the dealerships using existing balance sheet funding. The store names will remain.
So far in 2021, Lithia said it has acquired dealerships representing $6.5 billion in annual revenue.
Last week, Lithia entered the motorcycle business with the purchase Pfaff Harley-Davidson of Toronto. The Audi stores are Lithia’s first auto dealership acquisitions since September, when it bought Curry Honda in Chamblee, Ga., and Orange Coast Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge-Ram-Fiat in Costa Mesa, Calif.
Qvale Auto has two remaining Florida dealerships: Audi Lakeland and Volkswagen Brandon in Tampa.
In June, Qvale exited California when it sold five dealerships in the San Francisco area to Umansky Automotive Group.
In March, Qvale sold Jaguar-Land Rover Stevens Creek in San Jose, Calif., to US Auto Trust, a private dealership group owned by Edward Glazer of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Last year, Qvale sold three California dealerships to Swickard Auto Group.
The Presidio Group, an investment banking and advisory firm based in Denver and Atlanta, represented Qvale in the dealership sales to Lithia.
Lithia, of Medford, Ore., ranked No. 3 on Automotive News‘ most recent list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., retailing 171,168 new vehicles in 2020. But its April acquisition of Michigan’s Suburban Collection makes Lithia the second-largest group going forward.