car gurus

I know what I can do wholesale, what I can do retail. An example of that is us putting the price points now into the dealers' CarGurus dashboard. So we're now opening up capability for dealers to see, I've got this product on the market today.

It's at retail, hoping to sell for this price point, $20,000. And I think when you think about that, you take it one step further to the last question Dan asked, which is, how do consumers play in that? We know that 10 million plus transact consumer to consumer.

Here's another great way to say how does the deal or participate and compete with some of those big box retailers or some of the other players in the marketplace to get action and get into the inventory a consumer is willing to sell to them. You put those pieces together, and those are pillars of what digital retail and digital wholesale really becomes. With the stated goal of being "your ultimate solution for buying and selling new, certified, and used cars," autotrader.com offers a number of benefits. We at KBB.com provide pricing information in our partnership with Autotrader. On each car listed for sale you'll see a badge with "Good Price" or "Great Price," letting you know if that specific car is at or below the Kelley Blue Book Fair Market Price Range.

You can see a more detailed breakdown of this pricing information on the actual page that details the specific car you're viewing. Dan, I can't be more excited about the CarOffer business and what they're bringing to the market. Number one, they're an instant trading platform, which is completely different from all the players in the market, even the ones that you mentioned, newly public players. What they do is they don't require a buyer at a dealership to watch vehicles going across the screen or figure out is that one I may want to buy? It is built as an instant trading platform, much like a stock exchange. The automation is there completely for inspection, for transportation, for transactions.

And what it's leading to right now is hundreds and then many more than hundreds of dealers saying, I've got to have this solution right now. It is solving the biggest problem in the marketplace, and transactions going from thousands to many more than that on a monthly basis that are really driving the success of this business. It is exceeding all of our expectations, and it's doing that, just like the quote from our dealer partner is, I just have never seen anything like this in the marketplace. I wish I had it earlier at a time that inventory is challenged. And it is growing that business tremendously, as I said, in multiples.

As you'll see in the dealer presentation Scott put together, dealer acquisition going through the roof, and even more so here in the second quarter, and transactions lifting that business from a revenue perspective even further. The one thing I'll say -- you asked a good question on consumer transactions. I think our dealers are saying, if you can put this capability in front of consumers who want to sell their vehicles and we as dealers can participate in that marketplace, I can't wait till you launch it. But that will be the next phase that you might think about as an incredible next stage of that business opportunity.

Moving on to digital retail, we continue to see growing traction of our digital retail strategy. As a reminder, digital retail is not a single capability. Rather, digital retail brings various elements of the car purchase onto our site so that consumers can execute any and all portions of the car buying process that they'd like online.

For most consumers today, that means some combination of searching, financing, trade and valuation, and adding other warranty and insurance products on our site, and then, completing the purchase over the phone or in the dealership after a test drive. For a small but growing set, that will include completing the entire purchase with a few clicks. We offer many of these capabilities already and are seeing growth in adoption among both consumers and dealers. But we still intend to improve the experience, so we are increasing our efforts to offer the full spectrum of retail capabilities. As evidence of that growing adoption, the combined year-over-year revenue growth from Area Boost and consumer financing, two initial features of digital retail, was 70% in Q1. Car shoppers interested in learning more about these award-winning vehicles can read their reviews on CarGurus.com, and those looking for great deals on these cars, or any others, can search the millions of car listings on CarGurus.com.

CarGurus analyzes these listings every day and then ranks organic search results based on the best deal from top-rated dealers. Additionally, CarGurus.com shows shoppers essential, transparent information such as vehicle history, dealer reviews, days on market and vehicle price drops. Thank you very much, Josh, and thank you to all those joining us today. I'm thrilled to share that CarGurus generated strong results in the first quarter in both our core listings and digital retail businesses, as well as the CarOffer business.

We are leveraging our market-leading automotive marketplace to continue expanding our digital retail capabilities, as well as to catapult CarOffer's digital wholesale platform. Emerging from 2020, we are now a stronger, more efficient company, and investing even more to build the single best digital platform for consumers and dealers to buy and sell cars. CarGurus is an automotive research and shopping website that assists users in comparing local listings for used and new cars and contacting sellers.

CarGurus uses algorithms to analyze and compare prices and features on cars for sale. Users can search for specific cars in their local area and compare listings by price, features, and dealership reputation. The company also offers a discussion platform for car enthusiasts and automotive experts, who submit questions, offer insight, gather and share information, and provide reviews. The company operates websites in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and Germany. CarGurus, Inc. is an online automotive marketplace connecting buyers and sellers of new and used cars. Using proprietary technology, search algorithms, and data analytics.

The Company's marketplace empowers users with unbiased third-party validation on pricing and dealer reputation as well as other information that aids them in finding Great Deals from Great Dealers. In addition to the United States, the Company operates online marketplaces in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The Company's products include Consumer Marketplace, Dealer Marketplace, Dealer Dashboard, Dealer Advertising and Customer Acquisition Products, Auto Manufacturer and Other Advertiser Products. We do want to mention that we are witnessing the inventory and pricing volatility from the macroeconomic chip issue that is impacting many industries, including ours. While consumer demand was very strong in Q1 and has continued, dealers are realizing higher gross margin per unit but struggling to maintain inventory levels and may continue to face inventory challenges for several more months. With heightened demand and reduced inventory comes the potential for marketing spend headwinds by both dealers and OEMs.

Despite those temporary issues, which we expect will normalize later this year, we are so pleased with the progress building the platform for dealers and consumers to buy and sell any automobile. As our pillars mature and gel, we will have a platform fueled by our market-leading audience, industry-leading dealer network and unrivaled data to inform intelligent retail and wholesale transactions. Founded in 2006 by Langley Steinert, co-founder of TripAdvisor, CarGurus is a leading online automotive shopping destination focused on bringing transparency and efficiency to the car research and shopping experience.

The site uses technology and market data analysis to help millions of automotive shoppers search for cars and quickly identify great deals from top-rated dealers in their local area. Today, the site serves more than 23 million unique monthly users and ranks #1 among car shopping websites in the U.S. by daily unique visitor traffic. CarGurus also has sites in the UK, Canada, and Germany. Total first quarter non-GAAP operating expenses were $98.9 million, down 18% year-over-year. Non-GAAP sales and marketing expense fell 28% year-over-year to $65.4 million and represented 38.2% of revenue, down from 57.6% of revenue in the year ago period.

The improved sales and marketing leverage is primarily the result of efficiency gains in our traffic acquisition and deliberate reductions in spend as a result of macroeconomic conditions. Our first quarter non-GAAP product, technology and development expenses grew 13% versus the year ago period to $19.4 million. The investments we are making in our technology team impact multiple initiatives, including supporting our core marketplace business in both our domestic and international markets, in addition to our growing efforts in digital retail and wholesale. We continue to allocate resources as needed to manage near-term business needs and support longer term growth initiatives. And they have done things like trade in value estimation, do some financing and other F&I offered by the dealers, get a penny-perfect set of numbers and economics for the deal and set an appointment.

And we've had a ton of interest from dealers on that because, as I said, what it does for the dealer is, it saves them a lot of time. And what we've proven is that by marketing all of their products, they are able to cross-sell as much as they can if the person were in the store, and so they may hold on it. So we have a lot of dealers who are signing up for it. We also have evidence now that consumers really want it because a very good and growing percent of consumers interacting with that dealer's VDPs are going through different aspects of this Convert set of features. We've always said that we do this to make the dealer hold.

And so, much like our pre-qual consumer finance product where we make economics from the lenders because we're delivering value to them, I would think of Convert as the same way. We are giving this -- all of this sort of enhanced lead capability to dealers for free and making them hold on it. It's a win for consumers because it lessens -- they're able to do more things earlier on, on our site versus spending several hours in a dealership. And it helps us because it differentiates us from other marketplaces where you can't get some of these features.

And as I said in my prepared remarks on digital retail, these are -- Area Boost and pre-qualifications were sort of Phase 1. And then, we're increasing our investment to bring more of those purchase elements onto our site. You had said you had maybe heard there was concern among large franchises. We have very large national groups that are eager to get on board with us for this. CarGurus works to provide a better car-shopping experience using technology. According to the company's website, CarGurus is the most visited automotive shopping website in the U.S.

It claims to have more car listings than any other major online marketplace including Autotrader, Cars.com, and TrueCar. At the time of writing, CarGurus advertised more than five million listings. Cargurus is a parasite site that feeds off other paid sites so stream then try to extort money from the dealers by bombarding them with fake leads. Dealers don't even know their ads are being stolen and abused.

No "buyer" from cargurus EVER responds which is how you know for sure that they're fake because anyone interested enough to reach out, always replies with at least a "thank you". They have bots that generate auto names and usually the reply is "please send carfax" because of course they sell carfax reports. The fake names are ridiculous like Joseph Abdallah and Mary Mohammed or Tom Barahanakulanakruga.? In any case, they send a few leads then start calling for your $1000 a month because they claim to be worth it due to the great leads you're getting LOL. For buyers, find out where the car is being sold and contact them directly because Cargurus will never allow you contact with the dealer without them getting a cut.

Even Facebook is creating fake profiles now to send fake leads to dealers. We've only just begun illustrating the combined power of listings, retail and wholesale, and believe that dealers are recognizing it as well and consumers will soon enjoy more benefits as a result. You might think that based off of the brand name and your familiarity with their advertising, AutoTrader is the clear winner as the preferred online marketplace for cars. CarGurus uses shoppers' dealership ratings as well as comprehensive valuation analytics to help shoppers search their local marketplace and find great car deals from top-rated dealers. In just over a decade, CarGurus has become the most visited automotive shopping site in the US, with more car listings than any other major online automotive marketplace in the US. Unlike NADAguides, CarGurus deals strictly with car listings.

Founded in 2006, CarGurus has catapulted from a simple online forum to one of the most definitive automotive research and sales sites with over 5 million listings of used, certified pre-owned, and new cars. It has similar tools for browsing based on make, body style, price, and type of listing within a zip code range. They are obviously hurting new car and then obviously has a cascading effect to used cars as well. So I think what you'll see is not the same kind of dealer adds, not the same kind of QARSD growth. We'll be careful about doing things like renewals during the time that dealer inventories are down so significantly. We think we can still do well from a customer retention perspective and a QARSD perspective.

We just won't be as aggressive at putting those additional products or renewals into play on that front. CarGurus won because of its strategy in three main areas that the others missed. 1) Car marketplaces had historically been focused on the dealer – these were their customers and given the lack of transparency in the car buying process, marketplaces did not cater to the consumers. The others eventually realized this and introduced their own consumer transparency metrics, but too little too late.

2) CarGurus also understood the shift in consumer device usage and took on a mobile first focus – CargGurus introduced a mobile-optimized website back in 2011 and now has ~80%+ of its traffic through mobile . CarGurus even designed its searches so that they could use mobile GPS to include location as a criteria even if users did not specify their location. 3) CarGurus realized that SEO had become more commoditized and unless they were strong with local search , they couldn't win the market. While CarGurus might lose to competitors on broad keywords, their advantage on the local keywords and searches made users , more likely to end up with CarGurus .

CarGurus invites shoppers to review and rate dealerships with whom they have interacted during their car shopping experience. Dealer ratings and reviews are visible to the public on the site, and they are also factored in the algorithm that CarGurus uses to rank search results for shoppers. According to recent CarGurus poll, 78% of shoppers say they will not buy a car from a dealership without first seeking out reviews of that dealer from other shoppers. CarGurus is a consumer-minded website that uses customer reviews to rate and rank dealerships. Dealers can also post on the site and provide subscription services and deals to potential customers. The website provides essential information about the listed vehicles, such as accident history, title status, ownership history, features, amenities, and estimated payments.

A comparison shopping site for automobiles that uses proprietary pricing algorithms to analyze millions of new and used car listings to help consumers find the best deals and avoid bad deals in their local area. Users share information, including reviews of dealers, mechanics, and cars and advice on other car topics. Auto Trader's free car valuations are 100% data-driven, powered by thousands of data points including over 3,500 dealer websites, adverts listed on our site, and values from major auctions, ex-fleet and lease cars. We use data from different sources to ensure we're providing an accurate reflection of the market and getting the fairest price point for those buying or selling a car. CarGurus' instant market value is based on other used cars listed on its site. When we attempt to value a used vehicle we use a number of data points.

We also take into consideration MSRP, invoice, equipment assumptions, as well as supply and demand and other macro- and micro-economic factors and the competitive landscape of vehicles. Our retail value is what a person could reasonably pay for a vehicle at a dealer's lot. Our values are designed and intended to assist users in performing their own valuation of a particular used vehicle. The process by which users of NADAguides determine valuation is inherently subjective. Individual vehicles may have an actual value that is higher or lower than the estimated values created by us.

Prior to Q1, CarOffer was already experiencing strong growth because the platform offers dealers efficient wholesale execution via its instant trading platform. We believe this in turn creates a more capital-efficient business model for CarOffer versus other more people-intensive digital wholesale models that require dealers to frequently launch and monitor auctions. We also believe this efficiency is ultimately evidenced by the significant growth of CarOffer's platform over the last year, while consuming very little capital. CarGurus believes a transparent car shopping experience is better for shoppers and sellers alike, and more than 20 million unique monthly visitors to the site and mobile app agree. Headquartered outside Boston, CarGurus blends the feel of a startup with proven business acumen and sustainable growth.

The team's passion for data drives new product development and engineering breakthroughs. Car Gurus offers unbiased insights on dealer reputation, car pricing, and vehicle history. The user can use proprietary technology, search for innovative data analytics and algorithms. I had the same listing on Facebook marketplace and got hits every day.

The main reason I signed up for CarGurus was their claim that you could get paid securely through their app/site. Before I took my car off, I tried to do that just to see how it worked and only then did it tell me it wasn't supported because my car was selling for too much. Funny how it didn't mention that when I was paying for the service. Bottom line - this site is a waste of time and money. A great place for connecting ready-to-buy car shoppers with trusted dealers like ourselves, CarGurus, uses and Instant Market Value to give consumers an unbiased insight into each car's pricing, dealer reputation and vehicle history.