CarGurus, Inc. (NASDAQ:CARG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Sorry. As I was saying, it sounds like per car arbitration has gotten a little bit better in the quarter and you guys are making some improvements there. Do you guys view that as a potential TAM unlock of being able to deal in different types of cars or potentially lower ASP cars that you guys typically deal with? Is there any sort of TAM unlock from lower arbitration costs? And then I have another follow-up.

Sam Zales: It’s Sam Zales. I appreciate the question. I think we’ll be careful in that direction. We’ve seen the incredible uptick of the CarOffer business. And with the macro environment hitting us knowing we needed to double down, triple down, quadruple down on the operating effort, yes. We’re seeing arbitration rates move in the right direction. We’re very pleased with that. We have more work to be done. As we said, this is a multi-quarter activity for us to really improve upon. That will make us more confident that we will have more and more profitable transactions in this business and get ourselves back to profitability. But we’re going to stay in the realm where we have in the past of the hopefully, a larger percentage of later model year, lower mileage vehicles.

Obviously, with the market going down, our average selling price was down to about $25,000 on the D2D business, 72,000 or so on the C2D business. We’re not purposely going to go down to the low end of the market. But I do appreciate your question, which is with these inspections at a much more fine level and you talk about mechanical and engine and frame damage and electrical, you have the ability to look at vehicles and be certain that you’re sending the right ones through with that lower arbitration rate. So, we could go and expand the TAM. I think our effort will not be deliberately to look down market right off the bat and say, let’s head down that direction. We prefer to focus where we are on improving and beating our projections to where we have much more efficient and profitable operation.

Unidentified Analyst: Got you. That’s super helpful. And then just one quick one on Marketplace. Kind of your — I know you talked about the CarOffer marketing spend. But what’s your philosophy on marketing expense in the Marketplace business in the event of a higher growth scenario than what you’re currently baking in?

Jason Trevisan: In the event of a higher growth scenario you said, how should we think about — how would we think about marketing?

Unidentified Analyst: Yes, exactly. Like would you reinvest those dollars into marketing to capture the growth upside, or would you let this fall to the bottom?

Jason Trevisan: Yes, I think that — so there’s no rigid formula. And I think we need to — in a case where our growth is exceeding our expectations, considering to invest in marketing more is certainly a possibility. It’s always a consideration as we think about capital allocation. What we have been challenged with, in the past, and I’m now going back several years is if — when we have reinvested in marketing and that has generated more lead growth and more value growth to dealers, we’ve not always been able to monetize that as quickly. And so, we’re very cognizant of that. This year, there is also an added dimension, which is our new brand campaign that we’re very excited about. Our brand campaign we believe can really open up awareness and top of funnel for sort of overall audience growth in ways that we maybe haven’t been able to in the past.

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