Can AutoZone Stock Jump 30%?

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The case for a 30% jump in AutoZone (AZO) stock starts with a business you may not think of first: the parts the company sells to professional mechanics and repair shops. A 30% rise would still leave the shares below their highest close of the past three years on September 11, 2025, which sits 37.9% above the latest close. The stock has done it before: in eight of the ten calendar years from 2016 to 2025, it rose at least 30% from one close to a later close in the same year. The stock fell 17.2% in the year to October 28, 2026, while the S&P 500 gained 14.0%. You probably still picture AutoZone as the store where people buy parts to fix their own cars, but that is where sales slipped in fiscal Q4 2026. So how big has AutoZone’s repair-shop business become?

Repair Shops Account For 29% Of AutoZone’s Sales

AutoZone recorded $1.9 billion in domestic commercial sales to repair shops during fiscal Q4 2026, the quarter ended August 29, 2026. Those sales grew 8.6% from a year earlier, while same-store sales to do-it-yourself customers in the U.S. fell 0.6%. Across all U.S. customers, same-store sales grew 1.6%. Repair-shop sales made up 29% of AutoZone’s total sales in the quarter.

Domestic commercial sales reached just under $5.8 billion for all of fiscal 2026, growing just under 11%. So their 8.6% growth in the fourth quarter was slower than the pace for the full year. Management said the growth came from better parts availability in its stores, more hub and Mega Hub coverage, its Duralast brand and faster delivery to professionals. By management’s own count, there is room left to expand: AutoZone holds a 5%-6% share of what it called a business approaching $100 billion.

Can AutoZone Grow While Store Sales Stay Flat?

Management expects AutoZone to keep growing its repair-shop sales even as its U.S. same-store sales stay close to flat. For fiscal 2027, the company expects domestic same-store sales to be flat to up low single digits, and domestic commercial sales to grow high single to low double digits.

The store counter is the weak spot. Management said transactions are soft as customers face high inflation, and it sees evidence of deferrals and trade down among do-it-yourself buyers, particularly the most financially challenged. While management expects same-store sales in fiscal Q1 2027 to be relatively flat, it also expects the fall in do-it-yourself transactions to ease back toward its long-run pattern.

The repair-shop business answers part of the worry, but not all of it. Repair shops are still the smaller part of AutoZone, and the company as a whole still needs its do-it-yourself customers to come back.

What Could Go Wrong With AutoZone’s Repair-Shop Push?

The main risk is that AutoZone pays for the growth before it arrives. Management plans to invest around $1.65 billion in capital spending in fiscal 2027, and said most of its investment goes into faster store growth, including hubs and Mega Hubs. AutoZone now has 172 Mega Hub stores and targets about 300 over the next three years.

Management assumes a new store earns roughly zero return on its capital in its first year, and said its returns on capital have been pressured as the company sped up store growth. It also said it will hold its overall return on invested capital in the mid-30s area, and that its new stores are slightly ahead of expected sales and EBIT. If its sales to repair shops slowed toward the pace of the store counter, AutoZone would be paying for its Mega Hub expansion without the commercial growth management counts on it for.

AutoZone’s repair-shop business is growing while its store counter stalls. Growth in AutoZone’s domestic sales to repair shops is the number to watch when the company next reports, expected in December 2026. That report will come after a change at the top of finance: AutoZone said on October 26, 2026, that Chief Financial Officer Jamere Jackson has resigned, effective November 25, 2026, and it has begun an external search for a successor.

How To Act On AZO?

Not necessarily on AutoZone alone, if your goal is long-term wealth. Wealth is built by owning the companies that keep outperforming, the leaders of their industries, wherever they are. Here are two companies from AutoZone’s own industry that have beaten it. Over the five years to October 2026, O’Reilly Automotive stock rose 117% and Penske Automotive stock rose 127%, while AutoZone stock rose 77%.

Finding companies like these takes comparison across industries and sectors, and that is what the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio does. It holds 30 quality companies in equal weight and, since its inception in September 2020, has returned more than 105%, ahead of a benchmark that combines the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap and Russell 2000. See how we find the leaders.

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