The pandemic was ultimately not the most complicated period. Carvana, the rising star of online used car sales, has just laid off 2,500 people – many of them by simply meeting on Zoom. The Phoenix (Arizona) company, which has shaken up traditional retailers like CarMax in ten years by promising fast and contactless transactions, is in the midst of a stock market rout, with a price divided by six since the start of the year.
One year ago, the “Amazon” of second-hand cars still had a lot of cards in hand: customers with purchasing power buoyed by pandemic stimulus packages, and a market for new cars dried up by the shortage of semiconductors. In 2021, Carvana’s turnover was multiplied by 2.3, to 12.8 billion dollars (12.1 billion dollars), with 425,000 used vehicles sold (+ 74%). Gross margin per vehicle, a key criterion for the company, jumped almost 40% in one year, to 4,537 dollars.