Carvana Valuation - Why I Bought It

Another stock I recently bought was Carvana, a used car dealer focusing on its customer experience. 

I would like to share my thesis for Carvana and some concerns about it as I am not 100% convinced yet, unlike Shopee (SEA Group) which I got more information as part of my daily usage as a user/seller of its platform.

My valuation of Carvana does not involve any numbers as I don't think that is the point of investing in growth stocks. There were a few aspects of it that inspired me to buy Carvana:

  • Carvana was scaling up in term of revenue and still planning to expand
  • I did a podcast search and there seem to be some hate/fear of Carvana by existing car dealers (a good sign that the company is a competitor
  • I felt that even a crisis happened, used cars deals wouldn't be as affected as new cars (like Tesla which I sold at $750 and still thinking whether to buy again if no better opportunities)
  • Carvana's competitor VRoom is going to be listed this year (not sure why they are rushing in a crisis). Nevertheless, Vroom's customer ratings are definitely worse than Carvana based on a web search. 
  • Some Youtube videos showing the happy experience of buying Carvana. The staff/dealer who delivered the car seems very friendly and they provided simple touches like a keychain, notebook, etc.
  • The expensive costs to start another Carvana makes it a moat. It is not profitable and no one would do another unless they have lots of cash to burn

The above reasons were sufficient for me to plunge into buying it before I studied more about Carvana.

As I studied more, I was worried about some concerns about Carvana:

  • Some bad reviews on Youtube, especially by mechanics saying their 100+ checklist seem to be done on paper only as the car still requires rework. Nevertheless, the 7-day guarantee and some car still being in warranty will make them keep the car.
  • I am not a resident in the USA and cannot access the site at all. Not really important but it is kinda nice to see the platform at least.
  • The plan to have a huge reconditioning center in one of the states seems to be paused for now.
  • Share dilution still ongoing for fundraising

Nevertheless, my thesis is still valid and shall continue to monitor or buy more unless the thesis changed. I would like to ignore daily price movements for my stock investment and focus on the business only. It is not easy but it is definitely the right way to invest instead of focusing on the price (though I did sold Tesla as it went up too much for my liking).

 

Author
Sky Hoon. Read Full Bio
Website Owner, Twitter-er
He has been trading since 2008. He started this blog to share the journey about option trading. He dabbled in stocks, bitcoin, ethereum (in Celsius Network), ETF (lazy Dollar Cost Averaging) and also built websites for fun. He used this as a platform to share my experiences and mistakes in trading, especially options which I just picked up.

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