Pendragon goes for second-hand car growth

Pendragon, the Nottingham headquartered firm behind the Stratstone and Evans Halshaw dealerships, has seen its profit before tax rise to £75.4m for the year ending December 31, 2016.

The Evanshalshaw.com and Stratstone.com websites have also performed well during the year generating 22.7 million visits, up +14.4% – with 66% of our visitors from self-generated rather than paid sources.

Trevor Finn, chief executive, said: “Pendragon is leading the evolution of automotive online retailing. Our underlying profit before tax has increased by 7.6% in the year as our growth continues. The Group has doubled underlying profit before tax in four years as a result of our clear strategy of offering choice, value, customer service and convenience. Future growth will be driven by our initiatives, our investment in additional physical capacity for used car sales and by our strategic advantages in IT and intellectual property.

“We believe that we can achieve at least double digit growth in used revenue in 2017 and our aspiration over the next five years is to double our used vehicle revenue.

“In order to test this, during the final quarter of 2016 we invested in inventory and adjusted our algorithms and marketing initiatives with a view to driving growth in used vehicle activity levels to test the capacity of our current footprint.

“The early results of this are very encouraging. Our growth in used vehicle revenue on a like for like basis in January 2017 exceeded the increase required to achieve our growth aspirations.

“We anticipate our performance for 2017 will be in line with expectations.”