7:46 am, May 21, 2026
Autotrader saw its revenues leap and profit surge after pushing up the cost of advertising in April last year.
Operating profits for the firm hit £392.7m as revenues surged to £624.3m in its financial year to the end of March 2026 – an operating profit margin of 63%.
However, the advertising marketplace admitted in its annual results that revenue was dented following the introduction of its controversial Deal Builder product in November.
The firm said revenue growth slowed to 3% in the second half of its financial year which ‘reflected the difficult trading conditions and retailer feedback regarding our Deal Builder product roll-out’.
Autotrader, the UK’s leading online used car advertising marketplace, said it ‘moved quickly’ to address these dealer concerns.
There was a groundswell of discontent among the car dealer community when Deal Builder was introduced which led to protests and ‘mass cancellations’. At the time, Autotrader said they had seen a few numbers of dealers cancel their spend, but many dealers reported downgrading their packages.
The number of car dealers using the platform also dropped by 71 – a 1% fall – from 14,013 in 2024 to 13,942 at the end of March.
Since the introduction of Deal Builder, Autotrader has changed the way the product is built into its car listing pages and tweaked the way consumers can contact dealers.
In a separate statement, issued alongside the financial results, Autotrader CEO Nathan Coe said: ‘Over the past few months, we’ve been focused on working closely with our retailer partners to ensure Deal Builder and how we roll it out works for retailers.
‘We have been greatly helped by input from many customers and are especially grateful to the members of our new Customer Advisory Groups.
‘We develop and test all our products with retailers and for those using Deal Builder the feedback was consistently positive. There’s always more we can do, but we’re confident retailers will value the higher quality, more qualified leads that Deal Builder delivers.’
In the results, Autotrader doubled down on the roll out of its Deal Builder product and said it had ‘continued to scale’ it as it has ‘strong conviction of the benefits to retailers and car buyers’.
However, it admitted that revenue in April 2026 has been flat year on year, due to a lower run rate and a lower price increase for dealers.
Autotrader shares have nearly halved in value in the last year – down 45%. Marketplaces claim they have been hit by sentiment that AI could disrupt their businesses which has weighed on its share price. This morning, Autotrader was trading down nearly 2% at 486.5p.
Autotrader said its board believes the current share price ‘does not reflect the company’s fundamentals or long term prospects’. As a result it said it will continue returning cash to shareholders via a £500m share buy back and dividends.
‘This [will return more than] £1bn to shareholders over the course of 2026 and 2027,’ said the company.
On average, car dealers are now spending £2,995 each with Autotrader, up 5% on the previous year, and the company expects that to continue to rise this year into next.
Autorama, the leasing business it bought, continues to lose money, but losses have halved, now down to £2m a year. Revenue for the arm was up 7% to £39m last year and is expected to make a small profit this year.
Employee engagement also fell drastically from 91% to 72% reflecting a ‘challenging year’ for the company due to ‘both internal and external factors’.
Coe added: ‘We continued to grow both revenue and profits this year, despite a challenging backdrop. Our competitive position has strengthened, with six times more time spent on Autotrader than all our main competitors combined.
‘We remain committed to using our brand, technology and proprietary data to benefit car buyers and retailers.
‘AI will significantly enhance our ability to do this which has already been demonstrated through our retailer products, such as Co-Driver and Buying Signals, as well as our improved search functionality for car buyers both on our marketplace and within ChatGPT.
‘Looking forward we are confident we will continue to power a better car buying experience and more profitable retailing for our customers.’
