Sonic Automotive, Inc. 401(k) Plan: Principal
Sonic Automotive, Inc. · Charlotte, NC · EIN 562010790 · Plan 001 · Form 5500 for plan year 2024
Principal is the recordkeeper named on this filing, the company that keeps the account records for this plan. Where to log in, and who to call.
What Sonic Automotive put into the plan, per active participant
$977
Sonic Automotive, Inc. put $977 into this plan for each of its 8,427 active participants in plan year 2024. That is the whole employer side, matching money, profit sharing, non-elective and safe-harbor contributions and reallocated forfeitures together, because the Form 5500 reports them on one line, so it is not the match rate.
Sonic Automotive put in less per active participant than 73% of plans with 5,000+ participants. The middle plan in that group of 2,268 reported $2,556.
What this figure cannot separate: how much Sonic Automotive pays, and how much it puts in
This is dollars, not a rate. A Form 5500 carries no payroll, so the figure reflects both how much the employer puts in and how much the employer pays: two plans running the same formula report different amounts when one pays better. Crossing the peer group with industry holds most of that difference still, and none of it disappears.
This is one plan year, not an average. A true-up, a plan merger or a one-off contribution moves a single year on its own.
Source: Form 5500 filing for the plan year ended December 31, 2024, received by the DOL September 23, 2025 · Read the filing (PDF) ↗
What the plan cost, per participant
$42.27
The plan paid $42.27 per participant in plan-paid administrative expenses in plan year 2024, cheaper than 63% of plans with 5,000+ participants. The middle plan of that size paid $54.84.
Why a plan this big pays less per person before anything else
Bigger plans pay less per head by construction, because the same negotiated bill divides across more people. That is why this ranking sits inside the plan's own size cohort and is never taken across all plans.
Schedule H reports only what came out of plan assets. Fees the sponsor pays directly, and fees taken inside fund expense ratios, never appear here, so this is a floor and not the all-in cost.
401(k) Monitor Score
38 out of 100
Where this plan stands against plans of its size and industry on two amounts its Form 5500 reports: employer money in per active person, and plan-paid cost per person. It reads no match formula, no vesting schedule and no fund lineup, because a Form 5500 states none of them.
- What the employer put in, per active participant: $977. Lower than 73% of plans with 5,000+ participants.
- What the plan cost, per participant: $42.27. Cheaper than 63% of plans with 5,000+ participants.
On this page: who holds your account · where the match terms are stated · what to check next · every figure on the filing · late deposits · fees itemised · the plans this one is ranked against · service providers
Who holds your account
Schedule C of this filing reports Principal, filed as “PRINCIPAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY”. That is the company paid to keep the account records: what is in an account, what went into it, and usually the site a participant signs in to. The trustee that holds the plan’s assets can be a different company, and this filing does not name it.
5,239 plans on file name Principal as their recordkeeper, at a median of $170.05 per participant.
Participants log in at Principal ↗. 401(k) Monitor is not affiliated with Principal or with any other recordkeeper, and takes nothing for this link. It is here because that is where the account is.
| Recordkeeper | Principal |
|---|---|
| Recordkeeper EINThe provider's own employer identification number, as the filing states it. | 420127290 |
| Plan sponsor telephoneThe number Sonic Automotive, Inc. filed on the Form 5500. It reaches the employer, not the recordkeeper. | (704) 566-2470 |
The match and vesting terms, from a Form 11-K
The match formula and the vesting schedule are stated in a Form 11-K, which is filed only by employers whose plan holds company stock. A Form 5500 reports neither.
What Sonic Automotive puts in
Not in public filings for this employer
We have no SEC Form 11-K for this employer, and the Form 5500 this page is built from does not report match terms.
Two places state the terms in full: your plan’s Summary Plan Description, which your employer must provide on request, and your recordkeeper’s site, which for this plan is Principal ↗.
What you contribute to collect all of it
Not in public filings for this employer
The rate that collects the full match is part of the match formula, which a Form 5500 does not report.
Vesting score
Not scored
The vesting schedule is stated in a Form 11-K, and we have none for this employer.
A schedule this cannot read at whole-year anniversaries is left without a number rather than given a middle one.
What the plan costs, against plans of its size
37th percentile
$42.27 per participant in plan-paid administrative cost, cheaper than 63% of plans with 5,000+ participants.
What to check next
Your own numbers are not on this page
Every figure here is the whole plan for plan year 2024, taken from one filing and divided by headcounts. Your own contribution rate, your balance and the fees taken from your account are on your recordkeeper’s site, which this filing names as Principal ↗. What you may put in during a year is set by the IRS and not by the plan: this year’s limits ↗.
Key figures
| Total plan assets, end of year | $548,319,562 |
|---|---|
| Net assets | $548,319,562 |
| Participants, beginning of year | 10,147 |
| Of which active | 8,427 |
| Plan type | Single employer |
| Size cohortThe peer group we rank fees against. | 5,000+ participants |
| Automatic enrollmentForm 5500 line 8a carries a code for automatic enrollment, 2S, and this filing does not tick it. Across this dataset 25,364 plans do. | Not ticked on this filing |
| How the filing meets the 401(k) nondiscrimination rules, plan year 2024Schedule R part VII, as ticked. The rule compares what the higher-paid put in with what everyone else puts in, and the boxes say which method the plan used for this year. A plan can tick a different box next year, so this is an answer for one year, not a label. | Current year ADP test |
| Employer share of the money that went in, plan year 2024The rest came from employees, who put in $35,202,619. The share falls when employees save more, so a plan whose staff contribute heavily reads lower here through no act of the employer. It is printed as a fact and it is not part of the score. | 19% |
Late deposits of employee contributions
Schedule H line 4a of this filing is answered yes, and reports $655 of money withheld from participants’ pay that reached the plan later than the law allows, for plan year 2024.
Schedule H line 4a asks whether any money withheld from pay reached the plan later than the law allows. A yes here most often means the employer found the delay itself, put the money in along with the earnings it would have made, and reported the correction to the Department of Labor under its Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program. The filing instructions also require the same amount to be reported again every year until the year after the correction is finished, so this figure is not necessarily money that was late during this plan year. It does not mean participants lost money.
It is a common answer: 13,904 of the 55,904 plans that answered this line answered yes, and half of them reported less than $33,100.
Plan-paid administrative expenses
The plan paid $428,863 in administrative expenses in plan year 2024, across 10,147 participants: $42.27 per participant.
| Contract administrator fees | $376,363 |
|---|---|
| Professional fees | not reported in filing |
| Investment management fees | $52,500 |
| Other administrative fees | not reported in filing |
These are plan-paid expenses from Schedule H only. Fees the sponsor pays directly, and fees embedded in fund expense ratios, never appear here. This figure is a floor, not the all-in cost, and a low number is not “free”.
The plans this one is ranked against
Fees on this page are ranked against the 5,000+ participant cohort, where the median plan pays $54.84 per participant. The sponsor files from North Carolina, one of 1,489 plans on file there, at a median of $118.65 per participant. Its business code places the plan at auto dealers, one of 1,543 on file, which run to a median of $146.54.
Plans of a similar size in North Carolina
| Plan | Participants | Cost per participant |
|---|---|---|
| Martin Marietta Savings And Investment PlanMartin Marietta Materials, Inc. | 11,141 | $62.69 |
| Sealed Air Corporation 401(k) And Profit Sharing PlanSealed Air Corporation | 10,220 | $64.01 |
| Red Hat, Inc. 401(k) And Profit Sharing PlanRed Hat, Inc. | 10,074 | not itemized |
| State Employees' Credit Union Retirement Savings PlanState Employees' Credit Union | 10,008 | $48.74 |
Service providers (Schedule C)
| Provider | Service codes | Direct comp. ($) | Indirect comp. ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Principal Life Insurance Company | 64, 50, 37, 13 | 431,038 | 0 |
| Investment Research & Ad | 50, 27 | 52,500 | not reported |
Useful links
- Find a 401(k) you left at an old job ↗
The DOL's Retirement Savings Lost & Found. Free and official.
- Read this plan's Form 5500 as filed (PDF) ↗
The document every figure above was read from, served by the DOL. Acknowledgement ID 20250923141643NAL0002601587001.
Source
Everything this page reports about the plan itself was read from one document: the Form 5500 annual return that Sonic Automotive, Inc. filed with the US Department of Labor for the plan year ended December 31, 2024. Nothing here is estimated, modelled or supplied by the employer to this site.
Where the page compares this plan with others, the comparison is computed from the same Form 5500 release across the peer group each figure names. The filing is below, and the identifiers under it find it again without this page.
Read the filing as submitted (PDF, dol.gov) ↗
| Document | Form 5500 annual return for plan year 2024 |
|---|---|
| Filed with | US Department of Labor, EBSA (through EFAST2) |
| Filed byAs spelled on the filing | SONIC AUTOMOTIVE, INC. |
| Employer EIN | 562010790 |
| Plan number | 001 |
| Filing ACK_ID | 20250923141643NAL0002601587001 |
| Received by the DOL | September 23, 2025 |
| Bulk dataset | DOL EFAST2 Form 5500 bulk data (FOIA) |
| Dataset last refreshed | July 28, 2026 |
Bulk dataset at askebsa.dol.gov ↗ · Search EFAST2 by EIN and plan number ↗
401(k) Monitor is not affiliated with Sonic Automotive, Inc., with the Department of Labor or with this plan’s recordkeeper, and publishes this page without their involvement. It republishes a public filing and says where it came from.
Filings lag by design: a plan can file up to 9½ months after its year ends, so this is the newest data on file. Why filings lag
Cite this page
401(k) Monitor, "Sonic Automotive, Inc. 401(k) Plan: Form 5500 facts", from DOL EFAST2 filing 20250923141643NAL0002601587001, plan year ended December 31, 2024. 401(k) Monitor Score 38 out of 100 (exact value 37.86).
