WeBuyCars sold a car a minute on Black Friday

From 24 to 30 November, WeBuyCars sold a car for every minute that it was open for trade. On Black Friday alone, 864 cars were sold.

The company attributed this to consumers becoming more money-wise and would rather buy a used vehicle than pay more for a new car.

“Some consumers turn to expensive solutions such as big balloon payments, which often leads to problems down the line when wanting to trade in a car and finding that there is more owned on the car than what the car is worth,” Rikus Blomerus, chief marketing officer, at WeBuyCars said. 

As a result, consumers are turning to the used car market instead. 

“The shift towards the used car market is evident in WeBuyCars’ performance, and the Black Friday statistics prove that our offerings resonate with consumers,” said Blomerus.

This is also reflected in WeBuyCar’s strong performance in the last financial year, revealed in Transaction Capital’s results for the year ended 30 September 2023. 

WeBuyCars is the feather in Transaction Capital’s cap, with earnings of R658 million and the main profit driver alongside Nutun.

Transaction Capital revealed that WeBuyCars added 1,759 bays to its national footprint in the first half of the year. This brought the national capacity to 10,339 parking bays.

“Given the focus on leveraging existing strategic infrastructure investments, no further branch expansion has occurred in H2 2023,” it said.

The number of vehicles bought and sold continued to increase, with an average number of vehicles sold monthly of approximately 12,000 in the second half of the year.

Overall, the number of vehicles sold by WeBuyCars increased by 13% to 141,851 units in the 2023 financial year.

The increase in sales volumes over the past year has primarily been driven by sales to private individuals, facilitating an increase in finance and insurance income.

“Finance and insurance income will continue increasing as WeBuyCars evolves its offering through Gomo and other third-party providers,” it said.

Business-to-business sales via WeBuyCars’ eCommerce platform fell from 21.1% of total sales in 2022 to 15.4% of total sales in FY2023.

The decline, Transaction Capital explained, was due to the impact of the challenging economic environment on smaller dealerships.

In contrast, business-to-consumer online sales continue to grow and now account for 7% of total sales, up from 6.1% last year.

Transaction Capital said it is considering unbundling WeBuyCars and listing it separately on the JSE.

Transaction Capital CEO Jonathan Jawno revealed the possibility of a separate WeBuyCars JSE listing during the company’s results presentation on Tuesday.

He said they are exploring the unbundling in partnership with WeBuyCars founders Faan and Dirk van der Walt.

“We are exploring the merits of unbundling Transaction Capital’s shareholding in WeBuyCars with its subsequent listing on the main board of the JSE,” Jawno said.