Auto1: EU-sed Car Marketplace

**Matt Russell** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (1:45)
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**Matt Russell** (2:34)
This is Matt Russell, and today we are breaking down Auto1.
On the surface, Auto1 will sound very much like a European Carvana. But my guest today, Harrison Moot, co-founder and CIO of Sandstone, will get into what exactly differentiates Auto1 from any of the US analogues and even its European competition. So we get into the European used car market, the cross-country dynamics and how that's an opportunity for Auto1, and how they approach financing. So that subprime risk that we often associate with Carvana, what's different there at Auto1, and much, much more. So please enjoy this breakdown of Auto1.
Harrison, I am excited to have you here to talk Auto1 today. I don't think this is going to be a name that our US listener base is too familiar with, but I think it resembles a name that our US investor base is very familiar with. So you can give the formal introduction to what Auto1 is as a business, some brief overview to get us started, and we can dive in from there.

**Harrison Moot** (3:45)
Hi, Matt. Great to be on the show. Looking forward to going deep on a very unique and we think underappreciated business of Auto1.
So sometimes referred to as the Carvana of Europe, Auto1 is Europe's largest vertically integrated online marketplace for the buying and selling of used vehicles. At the simplest level, it connects people who want to sell a car with dealers and consumers who are looking to buy one. But that simplicity significantly undersells how the business actually operates and how differentiated it is from a traditional marketplace like your auto classified you'd be familiar with. The business model is unique in that it actually buys the cars itself from those consumers who are looking to sell. It takes that car onto its own balance sheet. It then moves the car through its fully owned and operated logistics and refurbishment network, then sells that car to either dealers, which is unique from the Carvana business model or back to consumers, and ultimately it also provides financing to the end buyer as well. The vertical integration of the business is key to understand because it gives Auto1 much tighter control over price, speed and customer experience that a pure marketplace or classifieds model could just never match. To give you a sense of the massive scale of Auto1, last year they traded about 840,000 vehicles through the platform, which is more than 2,300 vehicles a day. They did this across 30 countries in continental Europe, and really they're the only company operating this model at any meaningful scale in Europe.