TIP845: COPART STOCK (CPRT): IS COPART NOW A BUY?

W/ DANIEL MAHNCKE & SHAWN O’MALLEY

TIP845: COPART STOCK (CPRT): IS COPART NOW A BUY? W/ DANIEL MAHNCKE & SHAWN O’MALLEY

09 September 2026

Daniel Mahncke and Shawn O’Malley revisit Copart (NASDAQ: CPRT), the online salvage auction giant that turns totaled cars into a global marketplace, connecting insurers with more than a million buyers across 190 countries. Copart owns over 250 salvage yards outright — land that’s increasingly difficult to permit today — and compounded earnings per share at over 20% a year for a decade. But the stock is down more than 40% from its highs, U.S. insurance volumes have fallen for four straight quarters, and its main competitor, IAA, has now outgrown Copart for six straight quarters.

Daniel and Shawn dig into what actually broke. Is the volume decline cyclical, driven by Americans dropping insurance coverage after premiums rose ~50% in three years — or structural, as Progressive becomes America’s largest auto insurer while sending three-quarters of its salvage to IAA? They also cover why founder-era CEO Jay Adair returned after four years away, why Copart just bought back $1.6 billion of its own stock after five years of nothing, and what a rumored acquisition of CCC Intelligent Solutions would mean for a company that has never carried meaningful debt. In the end, Daniel updates his valuation model and decides whether Copart earns its way back into The Intrinsic Value Portfolio.

SUBSCRIBE

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • What changed since our last episode on Copart
  • How Copart’s Moat Works
  • Whether Copart’s Moat still exists
  • Whether competition actually gained market share
  • What new CEO Jay Adair wants to change
  • How much Copart stock is actually worth
  • Whether CPRT will be added to The Intrinsic Value Portfolio
  • And much, much more!

Disclosure: This episode and the resources on this page are for informational and educational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. For full disclosures, see link.

TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

[00:00:00] Daniel Mahncke: Welcome back to The Investor’s Podcast episode 845. And Shawn, the last stock I pitched to you was Palantir. And that came as a surprise to many, but I was definitely surprised by the quality of the company, at least by the part that we could understand. And that wasn’t too technical for us.

[00:00:19] Shawn O’Malley: I’ve got to admit a little secret to you, Daniel. I still don’t really know what ontology means, if we’re being completely honest.

[00:00:25] Daniel Mahncke: Well, actually, the weekend after our recording, I listened to a five hour long German podcast, which also covered police work in Germany, and they mentioned Palantir, and that was quite fascinating.

[00:00:37] Shawn O’Malley: Daniel, five hours. Come on. I thought our breakdowns were getting a little lengthy. I’m guessing that you raced through it at like two times speed.

[00:00:45] Daniel Mahncke: 2.85 I actually got to say, I love that YouTube feature where you can manually set the speed instead of having these 0.5 jumps, and I’m not even sure whether that’s part of YouTube premium or just normal YouTube experience. But anyway, the podcast was about a police officer who talked about how it took him months to come up with a sort of mind map of a criminal organization and how if he would have been allowed to use Palantir, it would have simply taken him a couple of minutes.

[00:01:12] Daniel Mahncke: And that felt like a very tangible example of how just going through the databases of all of these agencies can simplify the day to day job of police officers, but also different security agencies. And that’s basically, you know, the mind map that we talked about, the ontology that Palantir uses. But that was just my off topic tangent on Palantir. So let’s go to today’s company, which is Copart.

[00:01:38] Shawn O’Malley: Away we go.

[00:01:43] Intro: Since 2014, with more than 200 million downloads. We have interviewed the world’s best investors, studied deeply the principles of value investing, and uncovered many compelling investment opportunities. We focus on understanding businesses and intrinsic value, investing accordingly and sharing everything we learn with you. This show is not investment advice. It’s intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. All opinions expressed by hosts and guests are solely their own, and they may have investments in the securities discussed. Now for your host, Shawn O’Malley and Daniel Mahncke.

[00:02:29] Shawn O’Malley: Perhaps we should start with our own history with Copart. You pitched the stock in October of last year, and at that point, Copart was already down 30 percent from all time highs. But as we know today, there was still some room for even more pullbacks beyond that. And we don’t try to time the market.

[00:02:47] Shawn O’Malley: And we didn’t sell because we speculated on where the stock was going to go in the next few months. But it did feel like the right decision to free up some capital by selling Copart to invest it elsewhere, and the stock has had a rough time since then, which makes the decision look prescient, even if it was mostly just random luck.

[00:03:08] Daniel Mahncke: I think it’s always random luck whenever we make buy or sell decisions. No. But jokes aside, I mean, Copart has been a two percent position back then when we bought it. And just for context, a two percent position usually means it’s sort of on probation.

[00:03:21] Daniel Mahncke: So we’re basically not yet completely sold on it, either because of valuation or simply because we have some quality concerns. And I think I could speak for the both of us when I say that with Copart, it was certainly the former. I think we all know the quality is quite high, but as you said, the stock was perhaps fairly valued, definitely not cheap at that point. And I feel like sometimes you also just need to zoom out and simplify so you don’t miss the most important things.

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