Carsome announces most successful quarter with over US$310mil revenue in 2Q2024, new financing line from Maybank

By Digital News Asia September 11, 2024

Revenue grew 9% QoQ with over 3x EBITDA jump, GPU up by over 5%
Push ancillary biz, especially Carsome Capital with working capital lines from banks

Carsome has just added a new working capital facility from Maybank to add to the RM100 million facility it got from AmBank in July. While it has not disclosed the amount yet, it is believed to be more than RM100 million.

CARSOME Group Inc, Southeast Asia’s largest integrated car e-commerce platform, took another big step towards its much talked about eventual IPO by announcing its most successful quarter to date.

According to the company, in 2Q2024, it maintained a leadership position with about 35,000 vehicles traded (includes cars sold through Carsome via retail and B2B and CarTimes in Singapore) and claimed it grew revenue by 9% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) to above US$310 million (RM1.3 billion). The gross margin achieved was over 10%, and EBITDA increased over 3x QoQ. This continues the proﬁtable growth momentum that Carsome ﬁrst achieved in December 2023 despite the challenging macro market backdrop.

In line with the strong results, Carsome announced various new ﬁnancing partnerships, such as with Ambank Group (announced in July) and Maybank (not officially announced yet), which will provide over US$46.17 million (RM200 million) in new working capital lines to support Carsome’s expansion plans. Carsome intends to leverage its market-leading scale to accelerate its ﬁnancing, insurance, aftersales, and other ancillary offerings to provide its dealers and customers with a comprehensive one-stop solution.

Carsome announces most successful quarter with over US$310mil revenue in 2Q2024, new financing line from Maybank Eric Cheng (pic), Carsome’s co-founder, chairman and Group CEO, said, "This quarter’s results are a continuation of our proﬁtable growth strategy. Our GPU (Gross Proﬁt per Unit) is up by more than 5% QoQ, even as customer acquisition costs continue to come down signiﬁcantly, which is a testament to our strong execution, our value proposition, and our brand equity. We will continue this path and remain on track to deliver a record year.” He highlighted the opportunities it sees in expanding ancillary offerings, especially Carsome Capital with the support of its banking partners.

“We have established a strong operational track record empowered by a robust in-house origination and underwriting capability, with NPL below 2% for retail and 0.1% for wholesale (refers to B2B). With the additional ﬁnancing support and our demonstrated capabilities, we are well positioned to leverage our scale to expand this business further. This will allow us to better serve current and new customers throughout their vehicle ownership journey, keeping Carsome top-of-mind.”