Carvana (CVNA)

It got its groove Back. From mid-September till last week, shares were cut in half. The used car business is not the place to be when you're worried about interest rates. But shares are popping in the past week, partially due to a benign Fed/Powell meeting, and Carvana reported a stellar quarter last week. 

Is heavily shorted, but he keeps recommending it. Today, they announced earnings suddenly. Shares soared 40% today with a blowout quarter--record sales, a new deal to reduce debt by $1.2 billion, Q2 earnings beat on all lines. A great comeback story.

Shares are up 670% in the last 6 months, but do not short it.

CVNA has recovered quite well this year, after a substantial drawdown of around 90% from its peak in 2021 and it is now trading at 0.2x times' Price/Sales (as the company has negative EBITDA, earnings and even book value). Growth was more than 100% in COVID years but went substantially to even negative growth in recent quarters. The balance sheet is highly leveraged with $8.2B of net debt while still burning cash. Overall, the company was growing really fast in the COVID years, with the promise to become the leader of used cars. However, the company is still unprofitable, burning cash quite significantly, highly leveraged, and may need to raise additional capital in tough times. We consider the share price highly volatile, and we would prefer to wait until profitability has been achieved. The company came precariously close recently to going under, and the short position remains more than 50%. Too risky for us. 
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