Cazoo Group Ltd, an online car retailer has announced its financial results for the year ended December 31, 2021.
Alex Chesterman OBE, founder & CEO of Cazoo, commented, “I am incredibly proud of what the team at Cazoo has achieved since launch and particularly over the last 12 months. Our strong growth, rapid market expansion and market-leading consumer feedback give us increasing confidence in both our strategy and our ability to deliver on our market share and profitability ambitions.
During 2021, we made some important strategic progress, creating further moats around our business. In the UK we brought our vehicle reconditioning in-house well ahead of schedule, a challenging process but one which has significant long-term advantages. We also successfully launched our car buying channel, now sourcing a substantial proportion of our vehicles directly from consumers.
Outside of the UK, we have expanded our total addressable market (“TAM”) dramatically through our entry into France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the four largest automotive retail markets in the EU. Together with the UK, these five key markets have a combined TAM of over £300 billion and our long-term target is to capture a 5 per cent market share, which is why we are extremely energised by our future growth opportunities.
Whilst we have accomplished an enormous amount in a short period, we are still just at the start of this exciting journey. Our strong growth in 2021 combined with the strategic building blocks that we have put in place, including our significant funding, means that we are very well positioned to deliver on our ambitious growth plans.”
Stephen Morana, chief financial officer of Cazoo, added, “I am delighted with the excellent progress we have made in 2021. We have seen rapid revenue growth of 312 per cent YoY to £668m, driven by a 233 per cent increase in vehicles sold and further uptake of our finance and ancillary products. Last year was only our second full year of operations and I am very proud of how quickly we have scaled the business.
I am also extremely encouraged by the strategic steps we made in 2021 that we believe have set us up for significant future GPU expansion. We have made sensible investments by bringing UK reconditioning in-house and with the launch of our car buying channel, which has seen incredible traction and in Q4 2021 we sourced over 30 per cent of our retail sales directly from consumers.
Whilst these investments have impacted GPU in the short term, the benefits are clear and give us much greater visibility and confidence to deliver on our long-term GPU target of £3,000. We remain laser-focused on continuing our path to profitability and while our UK Retail GPU will be sequentially lower in Q1 2022, we expect to see material improvements through the year, up significantly in Q2 2022 and approaching £900 for FY22.
Our balance sheet remains very strong. In February 2022 we raised $630 million from the issuance of convertible notes. We believe this, when combined with our December 31, 2021 cash position of almost £200m, gives us a clear runway for at least the next 24 months to execute on our ambitious strategy, and by which stage we believe our UK business will reach profitability.”
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