The project is a ‘key step’ in Uxin’s nationwide expansion of its used car superstore network, said CSO Wenbing Jing, following the openings of superstores in Xi’an, Hefei, Wuhan, and Zhengzhou.

Explaining the choice of Guangzhou, Wenbing Jing pointed out that the city “offers a compelling combination of strategic location, pro-business environment, and a well-established automotive industry.”

With a permanent population exceeding 18 million and more than 4 million registered vehicles, the city maintains one of the most active used car markets in China, according to Uxin. Guangzhou also hosts one of the country’s most advanced automotive parts and manufacturing ecosystems, Uzum said, which provides an “ideal foundation for Uxin’s large-scale used car retail operations through advanced reconditioning, one-stop shopping, and digitalized operations.”

Guangzhou is also one of China’s most important gateways for international trade, with a total import and export volume exceeding RMB1 trillion ($145 billion) in 2024. With the launch of the Guangzhou project, Uxin aims to strengthen its service capabilities and market presence across Southern China.

Mobile.de has named Olaf Reichel as its new director of advertising sales, a new position focused on expanding the company’s media and advertising partnerships. 

In his new position, Reichel will oversee the strategic development of Mobile.de’s media sales business, strengthening relationships with agencies and direct clients while driving new advertising initiatives. 

“With his expertise, he will drive our extensive advertising business forward and strengthen Mobile.de as the leading platform in the automotive sector,” said chief of partnerships and media Anthony Saines.

Reichel has more than 15 years of experience in media distribution and advertising technology, specializing in retail and commerce media and programmatic advertising. He has held management positions at Scout24, subsidiaries of Ceconomy AG and Metro AG, and founded the consulting firm Retail Media Services.

“The automotive market is undergoing profound change, and Mobile.de plays a key role in this. My focus will be on building sustainable partnerships, driving innovative product development, and delivering excellent customer experiences,” he said.

The announcement comes as the Sweden-based private equity firm EQT is reportedly considering a bid for Mobile.de, which is owned by Adevinta and based in Berlin. EQT has held preliminary talks with Blackstone and Permira, which led the consortium that acquired Adevinta and took it private in June last year, the Financial Times (FT) reports, citing “people familiar with the matter.”

EQT has held preliminary talks with Blackstone and Permira, which led the consortium that acquired Adevinta and took it private in June last year, the Financial Times (FT) reports, citing “people familiar with the matter.”

However, the newspaper added that the talks were at a preliminary stage. It noted that EQT, Permira and Blackstone had declined to comment on the story.

It had been thought that Adevinta was planning an IPO for Mobile.de, and earlier this month, the FT reported that it had selected investment banks Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to work on listing plans. The newspaper said that the deal could value the company at around €10 billion ($11.7 billion), adding that the IPO would be one of the largest in Europe in recent years.

The IPO could still happen, but these discussions with EQT suggest that Adevinta’s owners are keeping their options open.

EQT and Adevinta are already doing business in Spain: In July this year, the former agreed to buy Adevinta’s Spain-based marketplaces, including auto marketplace Coches.net (not to be confused with Santander Bank’s Coches.com), job board InfoJobs and horizontal Milanuncios.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but Spain-based business newspaper Expansión reported at the time that the deal valued Adevinta Spain at around €2.0 billion, citing “industry sources.”

Adevinta was formed in 2018 as a spinoff from Schibsted and taken public a year later. At the time, it mainly operated in six core European markets: Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium. The company’s marketplaces included LeBonCoin in France and Marktplaats.nl in the Netherlands.

During the less than 18 months since it changed hands, Adevinta has exited joint ventures in Ireland (Distilled) and Austria (Willlhaben), as well as agreeing to exit Spain.

It was recently revealed that Adevinta had decided to shutter job board InfoJobs Italia at the end of this year.

The AIM Group has contacted Adevinta, Mobile.de, Blackstone, Permira and EQT for comment, and we will update this story if we receive a response.

Hamburg-based Xing, a subsidiary of New Work SE, has announced a management reshuffle as it pivots from a professional network to a job board.

At the end of this year, managing director Thomas Kindler (above) will step down after two years in the role, according to New Work’s news release. He will be succeeded by Simone Reif (below), who joins from Stepstone as MD and CRO. She was at the latter company for 21 years, ending her time their as MD for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Meanwhile, Philip Brandecker and Mario Kühlkamp have been named as COO and chief sales officer, respectively, while former Stepstone CEO Ralf Baumann will join Xing as senior advisor.

New Work CEO Henning Rönneberg commented: “I am extremely pleased that we have succeeded in recruiting three proven industry experts in Simone Reif, Ralf Baumann and Mario Kühlkamp. Together with Philip Brandecker, they will further develop Xing strategically. All three represent customer focus, problem-solving expertise and have demonstrated their ability to successfully build and lead high-performing recruitment organizations.”

Rönneberg, who was promoted to CEO in June, praised Kindler’s contribution to the company’s turnaround: “He repositioned Xing, reorganized the company and played a crucial role in re-establishing Xing as a relevant player in the recruiting market.”

Kindler wrote in a LinkedIn post: “The past five years have been intense and deeply meaningful. Together we have redefined Xing’s strategy, fundamentally restructured the organization, and laid the foundation for a successful German jobs network. I’m proud that we’ve brought Xing back into the position of a relevant recruiting player — and that the company is now ready to move forward with confidence.”

Founded in 2003, Xing recently came into the hands of Munich-based Burda Digital as part of its acquisition of New Work SE. Burda is reportedly preparing to sell Kununu, an employer-rating site acquired by New Work in 2019.

Xing operates in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The company says it hosts 20 million members, 1 million job ads and 20,000 recruiters.

The automotive retailer confirmed the layoffs to RichmondBizSense, saying, “We recently conducted a comprehensive review of our CECs [customer experience centers] and have determined that the reorganization of the CECs will help us best serve our customers and strengthen our business for the future. After implementing several processes and technological improvements to streamline our customer communication support function, we are now able to realign key work areas, resulting in the consolidation of some teams.”

Impacted employees will be offered severance pay, career support services, and the opportunity to apply for open positions elsewhere in the company, according to the report.

The layoffs come amid broader financial headwinds. A sharp Sept. 25 stock sell-off, allegedly the result of an unexpected jump in loan losses at CarMax Auto Finance, has resulted in more than one legal firm alleging securities fraud.

CarMax has more than 250 retail locations throughout the U.S., and over 30,000 employees. Founded in 1993, it is considered the largest marketplace for used vehicles in the U.S.

CEO Tomy Schoenfeld informed employees that the deal could close by then.

Four major foreign investment funds — Blackstone, Francisco Partners, Apax, and Warburg Pincus — are competing, with Blackstone seen as the frontrunner. A fifth fund, CVC, is reportedly preparing to submit a bid. Barclays and Citi are managing the transaction.

Financials obtained by CalcalisTech revealed sustained growth for Yad2, with 2024 revenue at €62.4 million and a 46% adjusted EBITDA margin.

In 2025, revenue is expected to reach €83 million with adjusted EBITDA of €37 million, maintaining a similar margin.

Projected revenue for 2026 stands at €93.7 million, and adjusted EBITDA at €44.4 million, with an estimated 21% annual growth rate in operating cash flow from 2022 to 2026. The company noted that its performance could have been stronger without the ongoing war in Israel.

Growth drivers include increased ad sales, user conversion to paying ads, and traffic growth.

Yad2.co.il reportedly attracts 4 million unique visitors per month (Similarweb put its September traffic at 9.3 million), listing around 590,000 new ads monthly. The majority of revenue is from real estate (56%), primarily agencies and developers, followed by automotive (27%) and job listings via its subsidiary Drushim.co.il (15%).

Yad2 is operated by Aviv Group, which is based in Germany and was acquired by KKR as part of an $11 billion deal with Axel Springer. Its competitors include Facebook Marketplace, Agora.co.il and Homeless.co.il.

The AIM Group reached out to Yad2 for confirmation of the acquisition reports, but had not received a response by the time the story was published.

Online dealer Carvana posted another in a string of company firsts, achieving a profit on record revenue in Q3 2025 despite a cooling down in the used-car market. 

Carvana posted $5.65 billion in revenue, up 55% year-over-year and up from its previous record of $4.84 billion set the previous quarter. The company sold 156,000 vehicles, another record.

Carvana reported net income of $263 million, up $115 million y-o-y, though down from $308 million in Q2.

During an earnings call with investors, Carvana CEO Ernie Garcia III boasted that Carvana had profit margins more than two times the industry average and unit sales growth above 40% when other public retailers have been nearly flat.

“We remain the most profitable and fastest-growing automotive retailer,” Garcia said. “These data points are exciting in isolation. Achieving them simultaneously is rare and points to an exceptional future.”

Industrywide, used car wholesale sales were down slightly from Q2 and y-o-y, according to a study by Manheim, and Carvana felt it.

Gross profits per unit were down for both Carvana’s retail and wholesale businesses, which the company attributed to an expected drop off after tariff scares drove an outsized group of buyers to car lots in hopes of avoiding higher prices.

“We attribute that to some effects from the late March auto tariff announcements,” Carvana CFO Mark Jenkins said during a call with investors. “I think on the contrary, Q3 was a bit of a softer depreciation quarter on a year-over-year basis. I think we would attribute that almost an offset to the Q2 strength.”

Decline in per-unit profits was also due to an increase in advertising. After Carvana’s brush with bankruptcy in 2023, the company pared down its business and focused on efficiency, cutting out advertising almost entirely. 

In the last few quarters, it has recharged its marketing efforts. Advertising expenses increased by $139 per car sold in Q3, with expectations for Q4 spending to be equal or slightly higher.

That effort goes to one of three pillars of Carvana’s strategy: building understanding, awareness and trust. During a period of explosive growth and inadequate staffing during the pandemic, Carvana was the subject of lawsuits and state enforcement actions due to registration and titling problems (see here and here).

Improved registration processes are part of a R&D project that uses Phoenix as a test market.

Thanks to this project, 40% of customers in Phoenix receive their cars within a day of buying them online, versus a national average of 10%.

Phoenix is also a test market for more efficient finance verifications, vehicle staging, delivery scheduling systems, and staffing models, the company said.

Carro, a Singapore-headquartered digital automotive group and marketplace with operations across Southeast Asia, has posted SGD1.2 billion ($898 million U.S.) in revenue, up 15% year on year (y-o-y), for the 12 months to March 2025 (FY24-25).

Gross profit reached SGD149 million, up 20% y-o-y, the startup said in a news release. It reported EBITDA of SGD43 million for FY24-25 but didn’t say how this compared to FY23-24.

The company’s gross profit margin improved to 12.4% from 11.8% in FY23-24, which it said was underpinned by “margin expansion, ecosystem-led ancillary income growth and productivity optimization.” Ancillaries accounted for 55% of gross profit in FY24-25.

Among these ancillaries, Carro’s fintech business, Genie Financial Services, reported loan book growth of 35% y-o-y to SGD670 million in FY24-25. The company has continued to strengthen its fintech arm, recently teaming up with Hong Kong-listed fintech company SY Holdings to expand its auto financing services.

“As we grow our differentiated ecosystem-led business operating model, we continue to focus on driving marketplace margin expansion by cross-selling ancillaries to drive recurring income streams and improve customer lifetime value,” said Aaron Tan, co-founder and group CEO of Carro.

Tan revealed that Carro had scaled up operations in Hong Kong and Japan, venturing beyond its core markets in Southeast Asia. “This year, we launched our ‘brand new’ segment in Singapore and Malaysia to capture a broader customer base in the automotive value chain and are looking to bring this to other markets,” he added.

Last month, Carro raised $60 million U.S. in funding in a round led by the Japanese government-backed Cool Japan Fund. The company said the proceeds would be used to drive demand for Japan-based brands across the markets it operates in.

During the same month, Carro revealed plans to expand to Australia and pursue up to three M&A deals before the end of its current financial year. The planned expansion is part of preparations for a potential $500 million U.S. IPO next year, which could be a dual listing in the U.S., Singapore or Hong Kong.

On the product front, Carro recently launching an AI-enabled inspection app that combines on-board diagnostics with visual, sound and vibration analysis to improve its used-car inspection capabilities. “Our use of AI also stretches to sales conversion and customer service, which helps handle up to 85% of conversations and has cut down average response time by up to 80% to below 3 minutes in our largest markets,” Tan explained.

Carro has raised over $600 million U.S. in funding to date and has 5,000 employees across the Asia Pacific region. The company’s suite of services includes Carro Care (after-sales), Genie Financing Services and Coverro (insurance). It ended FY24-25 with a liquidity of SGD385 million.