BCA Marketplace makes progress in first half

AIM-listed BCA Marketplace (LON:BCA) upped its revenues for the six months to 30th September by 22% to £1.43 billion as the online car sales firm increased volumes and margins across its operations. Operating profits were £50 million, 20% higher than during the same period of last year.

CEO Avril Palmer-Baunack commented: “Performance and progress in the first half has been good. BCA’s position as the market leader of integrated solutions for both physical and digital services to the automotive industry has allowed us to facilitate faster changes of vehicle ownership creating a compelling customer offering. We are winning multi-service contracts across de-fleet, refurbishment, inspection and collection, inventory management and physical and digital remarketing, through delivering synergies and efficiencies to customers.

The number of vehicles sold through our UK Vehicle Remarketing division has continued to grow, with volumes up 3% from strong growth in WeBuyAnyCar, alongside continued OEM and dealer wins, although supply from corporate, leasing and OEMs has been constrained due to lower new car registrations. This has resulted in strong used car pricing and demand from remarketing buyers. BCA won Motor Trader’s Remarketing Company of the Year Award for 2018 reflecting its pre-eminent position with vendors and buyers. We continue to drive efficiencies through modernisation of systems and processes, successfully running our first paperless vehicle entry auction in the period. Synergies from deploying the BCA Automotive transporter fleet on auction vehicle movements progressed with 49% (2017: 40%) moved by our own transporters.

[…] We anticipate that the impact of WLTP will continue to restrict the supply of new vehicles in the second half, although due to our multi-channel and multinational business we remain confident that we can continue to deliver our profit and growth targets“.

BCA Marketplace’s share price rose by 2.49% to 226.50p (as of 14:45 GMT).