Yahoo Finance Sales grow at WeBuyAnyCar owner as motorists opt for convenience
Motorists who won’t put up with the inconvenience of people turning up at their homes to buy a secondhand vehicle are driving the growth of BCA Marketplace, the company behind the WeBuyAnyCar website.
The company said it enjoyed a 12.9pc rise to 219,000 in the number of vehicles going through its WeBuyAnyCar operation as drivers choose a quick sale, rather than handle the process themselves.
Avril Palmer-Baunack, executive chairman of the FTSE 250 company, said that consumers get a valuation for their car within a minute of entering its details into the WeBuyAnyCar website. Once they arrive at one the company’s 225 outlets, sales can be completed within 45 minutes and payment within an hour.
“People are losing trust in consumer to consumer sales and want to come to a professional business,” Ms Palmer-Baunack said. “People don’t want to place adverts, have strangers coming to their house, and then deal with the worries of insurance if a buyer wants a test driver, or concerns about money-laundering when it comes to payment.”
She added that WeBuyAnyCar has seen six years of double-digit growth, and has gained public acceptance as an easy way to sell cars.
“At one time we got customers who were selling on their children’s bashed up cars, but we are getting repeat customers coming to sell mid-range vehicles,” said Ms Palmer-Baunack.
Posting annual results for the year to the end of April, BCA said that cars going through the business ranged from superminis to a £216,000 Rolls-Royce Wraith.
Group revenue rose 19.8pc to £2.4bn in the year, and pre-tax profit was a third higher at £75.9m.
BCA also runs 23 car auction venues in the UK and 28 in Europe, and the executive chairman said that despite the growth of online car sales, these have a strong future.
“Dealers love to come to talk to each other, see what others are buying and what’s selling, they want to know what the market is doing,” she said. “We call ourselves a digital business but there is a physicality to it - we have 230,000 vehicles on the ground at any one time.”
BCA also handles the import and export of cars to and from the UK, dealing with customs and transport of vehicles for many of the world’s leading manufacturers.
Although the company is “agnostic” towards Brexit, the executive chairman said she believed there could be opportunities for BCA if tighter border and customs controls are imposed.
However, she dismissed suggestions that manufacturers will give up on importing cars to Britain because it is leaving the EU and fears over problems this could cause.
In May BCA rebuffed a 200p a share approach from Apax Partners valuing the company at £1.6bn, saying it did not reflect the company's true value.
The private equity firm now has until July 8 to make a firm offer but Ms Palmer-Baunack would not be drawn on a potential offer, saying only that “the ball is in Apax’s court”, and refusing to be drawn on the potential for other bidders entering the fray.
BCA is proposing a final dividend of 5.95p - up from 4.55p last year - and taking the full-year payout to 8.15p. Shares in BCA were up 0.5pc at 217p in lunchtime trading.
