The pace of auto dealership buy-sell transactions remained healthy in the second quarter as tariff-busting auto sales buoyed blue-sky values and buyers flush with cash gained during the pandemic looked to grow.
Kerrigan Advisors’ Blue Sky Report puts the deals up 8% year-over-year in the first six months of 2025 to 220. Despite market challenges of trade tariffs, inflation and high interest rates, it forecasts more of the same for the second half.
There’s plenty of room to run from here. The sell-side adviser observed that more buyers than sellers are in the market as many sellers wait for their franchise values to rise above what’s considered the 2024 profit trough. Kerrigan’s Blue Sky Index is consequently up about 3% to 175.
Average blue-sky values are already 75% above prepandemic levels, though 17% off the 2022 peak, said the firm, which forecasts the index to approach 180 by the end of the year.
In the last two quarters, Kerrigan expects more localized buy-sell activity by private dealers, discounts of franchises requiring new facilities, and more transactions in states no longer subject to gas-powered auto sales curbs influenced by a California mandate that the federal government axed in June.
Buyers are, for one, less willing to take on facility improvements in an economy made less certain as U.S. trade policy remains in ongoing flux.
Kerrigan Advisors is the leading sell-side advisor and thought partner to auto dealers nationwide. Since its founding in 2014, the firm has led the industry with the sale of more than 300 dealerships generating more than $9.5 billion in client proceeds, including two of the largest transactions in auto retail history – the sale of Jim Koons Automotive Companies to Asbury Automotive Group and Leith Automotive to Holman. The firm advises the industry’s leading dealership groups, enhancing value through the lifecycle of growing, operating and, when the time is right, selling their businesses. Led by a team of veteran industry experts with backgrounds in investment banking, private equity, accounting, finance and real estate, Kerrigan Advisors is the only firm in auto retail exclusively dedicated to sell-side advisory, providing its clients the assurance of a conflict-free approach.
Kerrigan Advisors monitors conditions in the buy/sell market and publishes an in-depth analysis each quarter in The Blue Sky Report®, the industry authority on dealership buy/sell market trends and valuations and includes Kerrigan Advisors’ signature blue sky charts, multiples and analysis for each franchise in the luxury and non-luxury segments. To download a preview of the report, click here. The firm also releases The Kerrigan Index™ comprised of the seven publicly traded auto retail companies with operations focused on the US market. The Kerrigan Auto Retail Index is designed to track dealership valuation trends, while also providing key insights into factors influencing auto retail. To access The Kerrigan Index™, click here. To read the 2024 Kerrigan Dealer Survey, click here. To read the 2025 Kerrigan OEM Survey, click here. Kerrigan Advisors also is the co-author of NADA’s Guide to Buying and Selling a Dealership.
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