CarMax reports fiscal Q2 2027 results before the market opens on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, with management’s call scheduled for 8:00am ET. The stock has already pulled back roughly 4.3% over the past week to around $60.21 as of September 19, and options are pricing implied volatility in the mid-40s heading into the print. The setup here is not really about whether CarMax beats or misses. Last quarter it beat by 36% on earnings per share and the stock still fell.
- CarMax (KMX) reports fiscal Q2 2027 results before market open Tuesday, September 29, 2026, with an 8:00am ET conference call
- Stock trading near $60.21 (as of September 19, 2026); September-cycle options implied volatility sat around 44-45% on both puts and calls
- Two numbers matter more than the headline comp-sales figure: the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index (wholesale pricing CarMax buys and sells against) and CAF’s loan-loss provisioning trend
- Last quarter’s lesson: a 36% EPS beat and a revenue beat still produced a 2.44% stock decline, a reminder that beat size does not determine direction
- Educational breakdown only. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold KMX or any option on it
When CarMax Reports and What the Options Market Is Pricing
CarMax confirmed the September 29 date and 8:00am ET call time in its own investor announcement, corroborated independently by Nasdaq’s and Investing.com’s earnings calendars. This is fiscal Q2 2027, covering the quarter that ended August 31, 2026.
Analyst consensus heading into the print sits around $0.71 in earnings per share on roughly $6.94 billion in revenue. As of September 19, 2026, KMX traded near $60.21, down from a prior close of $60.57 and off about 4.3% for the week as positioning ahead of earnings picked up. Implied volatility in the September options cycle was running around 44% on puts and 45% on calls, moderate rather than extreme for an earnings event.
The standard way to translate that IV into a dollar-and-cents expected move is the at-the-money straddle in the expiration that captures the earnings date, in this case the weekly expiring closest to October 2. Add the call premium and the put premium at the strike nearest the current stock price, and that combined price is roughly what the options market is pricing as the move by expiration. Pull this fresh the morning of the print since IV expands into the event and the straddle price will move with it; a number pulled today will be stale by the 29th.
What Actually Moves This Stock: Two Numbers Analysts Watch
CarMax’s comp sales number gets the headline, but two other figures have driven the stock’s reaction the last several quarters more than same-store sales growth has.
The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index. This is Cox Automotive’s wholesale used-vehicle pricing benchmark, and it matters directly to CarMax because the company buys inventory at wholesale-adjacent prices and resells at retail, so the spread (and the risk of holding depreciating inventory) tracks this index closely. The index sat at 207.4 in mid-August 2026, down 1.2% from July and roughly flat year over year. A stable-to-softening wholesale market is generally a neutral-to-mild-headwind signal for CarMax’s gross margin per unit; a sharp drop between now and the print would be the kind of macro data point that shows up in the stock’s reaction even if CarMax’s own execution was fine.
CarMax Auto Finance (CAF) credit quality. CAF is CarMax’s captive lending arm, and its loan-loss provisioning has been the more consistent stock-moving line item over the last year than the headline retail numbers. In fiscal Q1 2027 (reported June 17, 2026), CAF’s provision for loan losses was $95.6 million, down from $101.7 million a year earlier, but that improvement included a one-time $25.1 million reserve release tied to loans reclassified as held for sale, not a straightforward credit-quality improvement. Total interest margin expanded 20 basis points to 6.7%. More telling: the allowance for loan losses climbed to 2.95% of auto loans held for investment as of May 31, 2026, up from 2.78% three months earlier. That rising allowance ratio, not the smaller headline provision number, is the trend worth watching in the Q2 release. If it keeps climbing, it signals CAF still sees deteriorating credit in its back book even as the topline provision looks better.
The Lesson From Last Quarter: A 36% Beat That Still Sold Off
CarMax’s fiscal Q1 2027 results, reported June 17, 2026, are a useful before-and-after case study for anyone framing a pre-earnings options trade. The company posted $1.31 in earnings per share against $0.96 consensus, a beat of roughly 36%, and revenue of $8.01 billion against $7.39 billion expected. By the numbers alone, that is a blowout quarter. The stock fell 2.44% the same day, from $52.11 to $50.84.
The market’s focus was on profitability quality and forward guidance rather than the size of the beat itself. CAF’s growing role as the company’s largest source of financing exposure, combined with questions about how sustainable the earnings beat was against a softer used-vehicle pricing backdrop, outweighed the headline numbers. For anyone pricing this quarter’s options, that is the operative lesson: a big beat does not guarantee an up move, and a modest miss does not guarantee a down move, when the market has specific credit and margin questions it wants answered on the call.
Two Illustrative Ways Traders Structure Around an Earnings Print
The examples below are hypothetical and for educational purposes only. They are not trade recommendations, and nothing here should be read as a prediction of which direction KMX moves after the print.
| Structure | View expressed | What it needs to work | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iron condor around the ATM straddle range | The market’s priced move is roughly right or too wide (premium selling) | Actual post-earnings move stays inside the short strikes | A move larger than the market priced (like a surprise on the CAF allowance ratio) blows through a short strike |
| Long strangle at the front-week strikes | The market’s priced move is too narrow given the CAF/Manheim uncertainty this quarter | A move larger than implied volatility currently prices, in either direction | IV crush after the print erodes both legs even if the stock does move somewhat |
A hypothetical trader who sold an iron condor last quarter, with short strikes wider than the eventual 2.44% move, would have collected the full credit as the position expired inside its range even after a blowout headline beat, since the actual stock move was smaller than a typical pre-earnings implied move for this name. That is the core appeal of premium selling around earnings: you are not betting on direction, you are betting the market’s priced range is wide enough to hold. The core risk is the same as always: a move that outsizes the priced range still produces a loss on the short strikes, regardless of which direction it goes.
Traders building and backtesting these structures often use a platform with modeling tools built for exactly this kind of premium-selling setup. tastytrade includes a probability-of-profit calculator and historical backtesting that can model how an iron condor at specific strikes would have performed across past CarMax earnings cycles, which is a useful sanity check before sizing any position (options-selling-focused, verified 2026-08-06).
What Would Change the Picture
None of the following is a directional call, but they are the specific data points worth watching on the call itself rather than just the headline EPS and revenue lines:
- The allowance-for-loan-losses ratio. If it moves meaningfully above the 2.95% reported in Q1, that is a credit-deterioration signal independent of the headline provision dollar figure.
- Same-store used unit sales growth relative to the Manheim trend. If CarMax grows units while wholesale prices are soft, that says something different about market share than growing units during a rising-price environment.
- Any commentary on financing mix. CarMax has leaned more on its full-spectrum (subprime-adjacent) lending growth in recent quarters; management’s tone on that mix shift matters for how the market reads CAF’s margin durability.
Bottom Line
CarMax reports fiscal Q2 2027 results before the open on September 29, 2026, and the options market is pricing a moderate move rather than an extreme one. The headline EPS and revenue numbers matter less than what CAF’s credit metrics and the Manheim wholesale trend say about margin durability, a pattern last quarter’s 36% beat and 2.44% stock decline already demonstrated. Whatever structure a trader considers, size it around the actual priced move pulled fresh the morning of the print, not a number that is already a week stale.
FAQ
Q: When exactly does CarMax report fiscal Q2 2027 earnings?
A: Before market open on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, with a conference call at 8:00am ET.
Q: Why did CarMax’s stock fall last quarter despite a 36% earnings beat?
A: The market focused on profitability quality, CAF’s growing share of the financing picture, and forward guidance rather than the size of the beat itself. This is a common pattern: a beat does not guarantee a positive stock reaction when the market has specific unresolved questions.
Q: What is the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index and why does it matter for CarMax?
A: It is Cox Automotive’s benchmark for wholesale used-vehicle pricing. CarMax buys and sells against this pricing environment, so a sharply falling index can compress the margin CarMax earns per vehicle, independent of how many cars it sells.
Q: How is an options-implied expected move calculated?
A: Add the price of the at-the-money call and the at-the-money put in the expiration that covers the earnings date. That combined premium is roughly what the market is pricing as the stock’s move by that expiration. Pull it fresh close to the event, since it changes as implied volatility shifts.
Q: Is an iron condor guaranteed to profit around an earnings event?
A: No. It profits if the stock stays within the short strikes through expiration. A move larger than the market priced, in either direction, can still produce a loss. This article does not recommend any specific strike or trade.
For more on how implied volatility behaves around earnings and why premium can collapse even when a stock barely moves, see IV Crush Explained with Real Examples.