1:33 pm, December 15, 2022
Cazoo has sold its Spanish subscription business Swipcar as it looks to claw back some of its eye-watering losses.
The troubled online retailer splashed out a whopping €30m on the firm just one year ago but has now decided to part with it for an undisclosed fee.
It has been bought by the Madrid-based Renting Finders S.L. as Cazoo desperately looks to wind down expensive operations in mainland Europe.
The agreement includes the sale of 100 per cent of the shares of Swipcar, along with the Swipcar brand and associated assets.
Cazoo has now sold its assets and exited from both the Spanish and Italian markets despite throwing millions of pounds at both.
It is also expecting to have largely finalised deals to leave both France and Germany by the end of the year, in an embarrassing scaling-back of ambitions for the Alex Chesterman-backed company.
The deal to buy Swipcar raised eyebrows when it was announced last November, just after Cazoo posted losses of £102.7m for the previous financial year.
At the time, bosses said the purchase would have a ‘negligible’ impact on the firm’s finances, but just 13 months on, the Spanish retailer has been sold.
In that time, Cazoo has announced other business deals in Spain, including pricy sponsorships of La Liga football sides Valencia and Real Sociedad.
The firm’s losses more than trebled to £329m in 2021 and earlier this year Chesterman was forced to launch a major cost-cutting exercise.
He was also forced to admit that the company may ‘never achieve profitability’ in a letter to investors in May.
To learn more about Cazoo, watch our special investigation here.
