1:08 pm, March 7, 2023
Used car dealer Cazoo has appointed former Car Shop CEO Jonathan Dunkley as its new chief operating officer.
The former boss of the used car supermarket group has more than 20 years’ experience in the used car business and worked for Sytner after the dealer group took over his operation.
He will join Cazoo at the end of March.
Cazoo says it is also on plan to ‘rightsize headcount and operations’ by the end of March.
Car Dealer exclusively reported this morning that staff had been told via a slide presentation that 15 of the 22 customer care centres earmarked for closure will shut.
Staff are likely to be made redundant as soon as next week.
The announcement about Dunkley came with a brief update from Cazoo to the New York Stock Exchange this lunchtime. Cazoo had been expected to publish its full year results for 2022, but instead posted a brief bulletin.
In it, the used car operator said it has strong cash reserves of £225m as at the end of last month.
It also said that its gross profit per unit sold was up to £900 from £600 in the last quarter of 2022. This is still someway adrift of the likes of Vertu Motors who make around £1,500 per used car.
Alex Chesterman, CEO and founder, who will be stepping back from his role shortly, said: ‘We are executing at pace on our revised plan to rapidly improve our unit economics, reduce our fixed cost base and maximise our cash runway.
‘The rightsizing of our headcount and operational footprint is well progressed and we expect to complete the restructuring before the end of Q1 2023. At the same time, we have seen significant improvement in our GPU, given the renewed focus on our unit economics.’
Cazoo says it remains on track to achieve its goal of profitability without the need for further external funding by the first half of next year.
Chesterman added: ‘We continue to expect to end 2023 with over £100m of cash and cash equivalents on our balance sheet and to sell 40,000-50,000 UK retail units in the current year.’
Chesterman remains committed to the online-only used car sales model, despite many in the industry predicting an omnichannel approach to sales is what consumers really want. This will be discussed at length by the likes of Cazoo and Cox Automotive at this week’s Car Dealer Live event.
In the update, he added: ‘The fact that we have now sold well over 100,000 cars entirely online in the UK in the three years since launch demonstrates the continued consumer shift online as they embrace the transparency and convenience of our market-leading digital used car buying and selling experience.
‘We remain fully focused on continuing to drive higher profitability from our operations and I am delighted to announce that Jonathan Dunkley, who has been working as a strategic advisor to Cazoo over the past 18 months, will be appointed as Chief Operating Officer with effect from the end of March.
‘Jonathan brings over 20 years of automotive experience and leadership in the used car industry to our team having formerly been CEO of CarShop and an Executive Board member of Sytner Group.’
Cazoo has been drastically slashing costs in recent months, cutting back on marketing, closing down customer centres and slashing jobs.
It has also sold its operations in Germany, Italy and Spain, shut down its car subscription business and is in the process of selling off a large proportion of its prep centres. Two weeks ago it also sold its data business Cazana.
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