Another major publicly traded auto retailer has found an accounting issue related to an acquisition.

Asbury Automotive Group Inc. “has not maintained effective internal control over financial reporting” at Larry H. Miller Dealerships and Total Care Auto, acquired in December 2021, auditor Ernst & Young said last week.

Despite the imperfect processes, the results in Asbury’s most recent earnings report report are accurate, Ernst & Young said.

Minor accounting problems sometimes crop up after an acquisition and can be quickly remedied. In October, Sonic Automotive Inc. said it identified an accounting error at a recently acquired dealership. Analysts described the issues as minor.

At Asbury, the insufficient information technology controls relate to the design of user access reviews and appropriate administrative access for certain applications, Ernst & Young wrote.

Glenn Chin, an equity analyst at Seaport Research Partners, said Asbury’s issue is not serious.

“A lack of internal controls, while never a good thing, is easily rectifiable (particularly this one, which was the result of a lack of segregation of duties),” he said in an email to Automotive News.

The company told Automotive News that it expects to have the matter resolved this year.

Sonic Automotive in a federal filing in October said it had found faulty accounting for certain fleet transactions at one of the stores acquired in December 2021 as part of RFJ Auto Partners Holdings.

Sonic said it should “have applied net accounting to certain fleet transactions where our previously issued financial statements accounted for the transactions on a gross basis” in first and second quarter filings.

The retailer said it overstated new-vehicle fleet revenues and associated cost of sales and subtotals in the quarterly filings.

Sonic said the error in its unaudited financial statements didn’t affect gross profit, net income, liquidity measures or compliance with financial covenants of debt obligations.

Sonic corrected the statements with amended filings in October.

Daniel Imbro, an equity analyst with financial services firm Stephens, said the matter was not serious.

“This is not uncommon when companies integrate larger acquisitions,” he said in an email to Automotive News.  “Just as they looked over financials, they realized some things were previously represented incorrectly, so they updated it.”

Asbury, of Duluth, Ga., ranks No. 5 on Automotive News‘ list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., with retail sales of 109,910 new vehicles in 2021.

Jack Walsworth contributed to this report.

Note: An earlier version of this story misspelled Glenn Chin’s name in some instances.