Comment

Comment by Mark Dubis on March 12, 2015 at 12:58pm

Let’s look at some facts about TrueCar & the Auto Industry

• Latest NADA and Urban Science stats said new car dealerships sold approx. 16.5 million new and 9.9 million used (retail) vehicles in 2014
  
  
• Consumers bought over 600,000 vehicles from TrueCar dealers in 2014. That means using numbers from above; they were directly or indirectly responsible for only 2.3% of vehicle sales last year from new car dealers.
  
  
• 97.7% of  new and used vehicles sold by new car dealers are NOT sold via TrueCar
  
  
• While they run the auto buying program for USAA some articles have shown that more than 66% of USAA members buying cars do not use TrueCar
  
  
• Scott Painter, CEO of TrueCar also was the founder of CarsDirect who offered consumers a “better way to by cars. Their financial statements showed they lost about $250 on every vehicle sold.  Someone figured out that was not a sustainable business model and the company was sold.  It is now a classified auto shopping website.
  
  
• TrueCar’s Income Statement indicates they lost $48.43 million in their last fiscal year.  So their 600,000 unit sales brought in $206 million but they burned through over $250 million to get their $48 million loss.   Their losses during each of the last three years totals $148 million.   This track record should be sending up red flags to shareholders and auditors of this company.    http://biz.yahoo.com/e/150312/true10-k.html
  
  
• TrueCar’s website has 4.2 million visitors a month, but with only 50,000 sales a month from their network they have a visit to sales conversion rate of only 1.16%. 
  
  
• Invoicing issues are still a problem and they issued 8,779 credits to dealers in 2014 which is down from the 17,664 credits issued in 2013.
• Auto dealers and even publicly owned auto dealer groups did a bit better last year. Lithia had a profit of $135 million, Penske Auto Group profits were $305 million, Sonic shows $98.2 million, AutoNation shows $419 million and Group 1 Automotive shows $89.3 million.  Clearly some businesses know how to make money. 
  
  
• While TrueCar indicates they have 9,000 dealers history tells us that not all of them are active in any given month or year
  
  
• TrueCar exists because auto manufacturers and retailers do not have the will to initiate a concerted effort to improve the reputation of our industry or the customer experience and marketing process.   Studies still show that 92% of the public do not trust auto salespeople. 
  
  
• Unless there is a systemic change TrueCar and other auto shopping sites will continue to exist and provide value to auto shopping consumers.