Bluechip
Value Investor, Short Seller
Carvana and CarMax face a day of reckoning from negative equity in auto loans. Buyers with 72- or 84-month loans re-enter the market before their loans are paid off, a mismatch between loan length and ownership behavior that sets up negative equity. Incentives on new cars are also trending up. x.com x.comÂ
Subprime auto loans continue to hold up, yet Carvana still looks weak. x.comÂ
Carvana is headed back below $2 next year as 2027 becomes the year of blowups, when misallocated capital gets punished. A nasty head-and-shoulders pattern on the long-term chart adds technical evidence. x.comÂ
Carvana has completed one of the most impressive turnarounds in recent memory, and the market is underestimating the runway ahead. It sold a record 187K retail units, posted a record $672M of adjusted EBITDA and cut net leverage to 1.1x, while AI-powered reconditioning tools are already lifting labor efficiency. x.comÂ
Carvana faces a tough road ahead based on its earnings and management commentary. Anyone expecting 30%+ growth for a while could be surprised within a few quarters by major deceleration and margin pressure. x.comÂ
Large-cap banks such as JPMorgan and Carvana are exposed to a coming credit crisis that war headlines are distracting investors from. The private debt market keeps imploding, and troubles at JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock and Deutsche Bank are symptoms of a broad debt-market problem. More esoteric debt such as subprime auto loans is likely to come under scrutiny next, which is why the short positions remain. x.comÂ
CarMax's turnaround is still unfolding, and the latest quarter reinforced it. Used retail unit sales rose 9%, the $200M SG&A savings target is on track, CarMax Auto Finance penetration is growing, and about $35 per vehicle of EPP profit uplift is expected by FY27; management says it has turned the corner. At about 17x forward earnings, the stock still trades below its 20.8x historical average despite improving fundamentals, so the buy-up-to price is being raised. x.comÂ
Capital One is making the same argument for subprime auto loans that was made for mortgages in 2007. It says it is not worried about lending to subprime borrowers because repayment terms can stretch to 10 years, lowering payment-to-income ratios so low-wage consumers can afford $100k vehicles. x.comÂ
Rivian and Lucid are adding supply into a US EV market facing demand destruction and rising interest rates, which pressure prices and demand further. Cox Automotive reports US EV sales dropped dramatically over the past two quarters after the tax credit ended, and buyers are already trending to combustion vehicles. That mix makes both stocks unattractive to own. x.comÂ
Carvana's clean Q1 beat in a strained consumer environment is reassuring, but collapsing free cash flow is the number the bear case lives in. Revenue rose 52% to $6.43B and adjusted EBITDA of $672M beat, with SG&A per unit down 7.8% and retail GPU recovering from Q4 reconditioning issues; full-year EBITDA estimates rise to about $2.9B. Free cash flow fell 73% to $56M versus a $157M estimate, pointing to inventory build or rising financing costs. Q2 retail GPU faces headwinds. x.comÂ
Affirm's claim of a resilient consumer rings hollow because its model offers little visibility into credit risk. Like mortgage underwriters before the housing collapse, it originates and sells the loans, so it bears little risk itself. BNPL is opaque, with payments not reported to credit agencies; a survey found 41% of buyers made late BNPL payments over 12 months, against a reported 1.2% 30-day delinquency rate. Fitch assumes a 4% default rate because it is not given pool delinquency data. … Show more
