Cazoo Announces Transition to Pure-Play Automotive Marketplace Business Model

Cazoo Group Ltd (NYSE: CZOO) (“Cazoo” or “the Company”), the UK online used car platform which makes buying and selling a car as simple as ordering any other product online, announces its intention to transition to a marketplace business model, leveraging the strength of the Cazoo brand and the market-leading ecommerce platform it has built in online automotive retailing for the benefit of the 13,000 car dealers operating in the UK’s highly fragmented used car market.

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(Photo: Business Wire)

On December 6, 2023 Cazoo completed a series of transactions to restructure its capital structure and a new Board of Directors (the “Board”) was appointed. Since their appointment, the members of the Cazoo Board have reviewed the strategic options for the Company and believe that a pivot to a pure-play marketplace business model is the best direction for Cazoo and all its stakeholders. This will leverage our key advantages: our brand, which is recognisable and trusted nationwide, and our technology platform, which provides a market leading customer experience, and which will build on the demand from customers and UK dealers to transact online.

The adoption of a marketplace model leverages Cazoo’s market-leading ecommerce platform and the more than £100 million investment in the Cazoo brand. The brand is now one of the top five most recognised UK automotive brands and has enabled Cazoo to sell close to 160,000 retail cars entirely online since 2019. The Board believes Cazoo will bring fresh opportunities for dealers in the highly fragmented used car market, providing Britain’s car dealers with an online platform to offer their vehicles to the one million consumers on average who visit Cazoo’s website every month. Cazoo will support interactions between consumers and car dealers across a variety of business models, including enabling them to use the Cazoo platform to complete their transactions fully online.

Cazoo will leverage its substantial customer and data resources, including the 185,000 valuations it provides every month to consumers looking to sell their car. Based on this and its other proprietary pricing data, Cazoo is well-positioned to offer car dealers valuable customer and market analytical insights to support their sales and marketing activities and to help them source new stock in the UK’s currently stock-constrained used car market.