Who owns Copart? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Copart is one of the quieter giants of the American stock market. It runs the online auctions where wrecked, flooded, and written-off cars are sold, mostly on behalf of insurance companies, to a global base of dismantlers, rebuilders, dealers, and exporters. It is not a household name the way an online retailer or auction site is, yet it has compounded into a company worth tens of billions of dollars by owning the plumbing of the salvage-vehicle market.

Ownership is where Copart gets interesting. Most companies of this size are run by hired executives with token equity. Copart is still steered by the man who started it in a single California salvage yard in 1982 and by the son-in-law he handed the business to. That founder-family grip, layered on top of the usual wall of index funds, shapes how the company makes decisions, how it treats short-term earnings, and who ultimately calls the shots.

This article breaks down who owns Copart today: the founding family, the institutional investors, the people in control, and why that structure matters.

Copart was founded in 1982 by Willis J. Johnson, who opened a single salvage yard in Vallejo, California. The company went public on the Nasdaq in March 1994 under the ticker CPRT. Its headquarters moved from California to Dallas, Texas, in 2012, a relocation driven by Jay Adair as the business scaled nationally.

The business model is straightforward to describe and hard to replicate. Copart operates online auctions for salvage and used vehicles, connecting sellers to buyers through its VB3 internet auction platform. The bulk of the cars it sells are consigned by insurance companies that have declared a vehicle a total loss, and Copart earns fees on both sides of the transaction rather than taking ownership of most of the inventory. Buyers are a roughly one-million-strong base of members in more than 185 countries, including dismantlers, rebuilders, used-car dealers, and exporters. The company runs more than 250 physical storage yards across 11 countries, holding tens of thousands of acres of land, which acts as a formidable barrier to new competitors.

For the fiscal year ended July 31, 2026, Copart reported revenue of about $4.7 billion and net income attributable to Copart of $1.48 billion, or $1.55 per diluted share. Revenue rose only 0.4% because the prior year had been lifted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton; excluding those catastrophe volumes, revenue grew about 2.4%. The company's market capitalization stood at roughly $28.7 billion in mid-September 2026. Anyone trying to reconcile that valuation with the underlying cash flows can pressure-test it with a plain business valuation calculator.

Copart is a publicly traded company, so in the strict legal sense it is owned by its shareholders, and most of those shares sit with institutional investors. What makes Copart unusual is that the founding family never cashed out or stepped away. Willis Johnson and Jay Adair remain the two largest individual holders and the two most senior figures in the company, which gives a public company the feel and continuity of a closely held one.

According to Copart's most recent proxy statement, which measured ownership as of the October 10, 2025 record date against 967,834,374 shares outstanding, Willis Johnson beneficially owned 55,695,395 shares, or 5.75% of the company. A. Jayson "Jay" Adair, Johnson's son-in-law, held 30,561,732 shares, or 3.14%. Together the two men control roughly 8.9% of the outstanding stock, worth well over $2 billion at recent prices.

That stake is disclosed because both men are named executives and directors, so their holdings appear in the annual proxy. Copart has a single class of common stock and no dual-class structure, so the family's influence comes from the size of its economic stake and its board seats rather than from super-voting shares. All directors and executive officers as a group held 93,963,387 shares, or 9.60%, meaning the founding family accounts for the vast majority of insider ownership.

Figures are drawn from Copart's proxy statement, with holdings measured as of the October 10, 2025 record date.

The Vanguard Group is Copart's largest shareholder, with 99,099,835 shares, or 10.24% of the company, held almost entirely through index and mutual funds on behalf of ordinary investors. BlackRock is second, with 58,210,940 shares, or 6.01%, held on a similar passive basis. These are not activist positions. Vanguard and BlackRock hold Copart because it sits in the indexes their funds track, so their stakes rise and fall with the fund flows behind them rather than with any view on management.

The broader institutional picture reinforces the point: institutions collectively own roughly 84% of Copart's shares. That leaves the founding family, insiders, and a long tail of retail holders to split the rest. In practice, the passive giants supply the capital while the founding family supplies the direction.

Copart has split its stock several times as the share price climbed, keeping individual shares affordable. The two most recent were two-for-one splits effected in November 2022 and August 2023. These splits multiply the share count and lower the per-share price without changing any holder's proportional ownership, which is why comparing raw historical share counts can be misleading unless they are adjusted for the splits.

Willis Johnson is the founder and Chairman of the Board. He built Copart from one salvage yard into a national network before handing daily control to the next generation, and he remains the single largest individual shareholder.

Jay Adair is the chief executive officer. He is married to Willis Johnson's daughter, joined Copart in 1989 as a teenager, and rose to run the company. Adair served as CEO from 2010 to 2022, then as co-CEO, then as Executive Chairman. On July 31, 2026, the board brought him back as sole CEO, reversing the 2024 succession that had installed Jeff Liaw. This makes Adair the second-largest individual holder as well as the top executive.

Jeff Liaw joined Copart as chief financial officer in 2016, became president, then co-CEO in 2022, and sole CEO in April 2024. He stepped down as CEO and director on July 31, 2026, and now supports the company as a Special Advisor to Adair. Jane Pocock, who led Copart's UK business, was promoted to President of Copart effective August 1, 2026.

The board is chaired by Willis Johnson, and includes the senior executives alongside independent directors. What is confirmed is the family's dominant presence at the top of both the executive team and the share register. What is less clear from public filings is the internal reasoning behind the 2026 decision to unwind the Liaw succession, which the company framed as a return to Adair's leadership rather than a change in strategy.

Copart's supply of vehicles comes overwhelmingly from insurance companies declaring total losses, so its business is exposed to the decisions of a small number of large insurers. Copart and its rival split roughly 80% of the salvage market, and losing or winning a single major insurer contract can move volumes materially. Reporting in 2026 noted shifting behavior at large insurers, including Progressive, that put competitive pressure on Copart's share. That concentration is a structural risk that a company can track formally in a risk register template.

Copart's volumes rise and fall with total-loss frequency, used-car prices, and weather. Major storms are, counterintuitively, good for reported results because they flood the company with damaged vehicles to auction. Fiscal 2025 was lifted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which is precisely why fiscal 2026 revenue looked flat by comparison. That reliance on unpredictable catastrophe volume makes year-to-year results lumpy and complicates any straight-line reading of growth.

For years Copart and IAA operated as a comfortable duopoly. That changed in 2023 when Ritchie Bros. acquired IAA, folding it into what is now RB Global. The combined operator has invested in service quality and clawed back momentum, sharpening the competitive dynamic Copart had grown used to. Investors mapping the rivalry can lay it out with a competitive analysis template.

Running hundreds of yards that store wrecked and flooded vehicles carries environmental obligations, including the handling of fuels, fluids, and hazardous materials across large land holdings. On governance, the founding family's dual role as top executives and top shareholders concentrates influence, and the 2026 decision to reverse a publicly announced CEO succession underscored how much control still sits with Adair and Johnson rather than with an independent process.

The clearest consequence of Copart's ownership structure is a long time horizon. Founder-led companies with meaningful family equity tend to manage for durability rather than for the next quarter, and Copart's willingness to hold thousands of acres of reserve land, invest through cycles, and treat catastrophe capacity as a strategic asset reflects that mindset. When the people setting strategy own billions of dollars of stock, their incentives are aligned with long-run share value, not short-term targets.

That alignment cuts both ways. Because Willis Johnson and Jay Adair hold so much of the company and sit on the board, outside shareholders have limited ability to force change. The 2026 reversal of the Liaw succession showed that the family can reshape the executive suite on its own terms. Investors who buy Copart are, in effect, backing the judgment of the founding family, which has compounded value for decades but is not accountable to outsiders in the way a manager-run firm would be.

For the passive investors who own the bulk of the stock, this arrangement is mostly a feature. Vanguard and BlackRock hold Copart on behalf of index funds and are content to let an aligned, experienced family run the business. The founding family provides continuity and conviction; the institutions provide capital and liquidity. It is a division of labor that has worked, though it depends on the family continuing to make good decisions, since there is no activist counterweight positioned to intervene. Anyone weighing whether today's valuation still rewards that model can run the cash flows through a DCF calculator rather than taking the market's word for it.

For customers, buyers, and the insurers who supply the cars, concentrated ownership means stability. The people they deal with are not going anywhere, and the strategy is unlikely to lurch. The trade-off is that a company this central to the salvage market answers first to a family, and only secondarily to the wider shareholder base.

Jay Adair (A. Jayson Adair) is the chief executive officer of Copart. The board reappointed him as CEO effective July 31, 2026, reversing the earlier succession that had made Jeff Liaw sole CEO in April 2024. Adair had previously served as CEO from 2010 to 2022 and is the son-in-law of founder Willis Johnson.

Yes. Copart trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol CPRT and has been public since its 1994 initial public offering. It has a single class of common stock, and institutions own roughly 84% of it.

Willis J. Johnson founded Copart in 1982, starting with a single salvage yard in Vallejo, California. He remains Chairman of the Board and the company's largest individual shareholder.

The Vanguard Group is the largest holder at about 10.24%, followed by BlackRock at 6.01%. Founder Willis Johnson holds 5.75% and CEO Jay Adair holds 3.14%, so the founding family together controls close to 9% of the company. These figures are based on Copart's most recent proxy statement.

Copart's market capitalization was about $28.7 billion in mid-September 2026, down more than a third from a year earlier. The company reported fiscal 2026 revenue of roughly $4.7 billion and net income of $1.48 billion for the year ended July 31, 2026.

The founding family does not hold a formal majority, but its influence is decisive. Willis Johnson and Jay Adair are the two largest individual shareholders, occupy the chairman and CEO roles, and sit on the board. With no dual-class shares, their control rests on the size of their combined stake and their leadership positions rather than on special voting rights. A useful contrast is Carvana's founder-controlled ownership, where a family holds outright voting control through a special share class, and the pioneer of the online-auction marketplace, eBay, which is now widely held with no founding family at the helm.