8:45 am, January 6, 2025
Used car dealer Cinch cut losses to just over £118m last year, latest accounts show.
Filed under Cinch Holdco UK Limited on Companies House, the Constellation Automotive Group-owned firm – which brands itself as a ‘faff-free’ way of buying a used car – finished the year ending March 31, 2024, with a pre-tax loss of £118.2m and saw lower revenue.
It was an improvement on 2023’s pre-tax loss of £176.1m, while adjusted loss before tax came to £115.3 versus 2023’s £176.3m. Loss after tax came to £103.1m (2023: £168.1m).
Cinch said the loss after tax came after £16.8m of depreciation and amortisation (2023: £13.4m), £2.0m of impairment (2023: £9.2m) and £4.0m of net finance costs (2023: £3.3m), and income tax credit of £15.1m (£8m in 2023).
Revenue came to £932.5m, down on the £1.01bn it made the year before. Cinch put this drop down to ‘rapidly falling’ used car prices in Q3.
As of March 31, 2024, the company had inventory worth broadly the same as the year before – £104.6m compared to 2023’s £103.2m.
‘Initiatives’ saw it sizing its inventory for ‘market demand’ and it shortened the amount of time vehicles were on its books.
At the end of the year, it had 5,285 vehicles listed for sale on its website (6,397 in 2023), of which 72% were owned by Cinch (62%).
In the report, director James Mullins declared Cinch to now be the largest fully online car dealer in the UK.
Last year, however, saw the firm switch to an omnichannel offering with it opening four showrooms, one of which was a former Cazoo site in Northampton.
At the time of the news, the firm said the ‘Stores’ would offer hand-picked used cars from its inventory and would allow it to reach ‘even more UK car buyers’.
Cinch’s dealerships offer test drives but purchases are completed online.
The accounts also showed that during 2024, Cinch made £18m on the sale of electric car subscription service Elmo.
Looking to the year ahead, Mullins said: ‘The group will continue to invest in promotional activities to grow brand consideration, seek to provide a “faff-free” customer experience through further development of the Cinch digital platform and supporting technology, continue to enhance Cinch’s offering to the consumer, focus on efficient buying of vehicles to increase unit economics and invest in data to drive insight-led commercial decision making.
‘The group will explore opportunities for growth through new marketplaces and strategic investments and acquisitions, where appropriate.’
