WeBuyCars, you buy shares?
WBC, which listed this month, is being hailed by some as the Capitec of the preloved car market
Tech-driven used car retailer WeBuyCars (WBC), spun out from Transaction Capital this month, is increasingly seen as an industry disrupter with the potential to become the “Capitec of the motor industry”.
The newly listed group is already shifting gears, and the market rates it significantly ahead of its car-selling peers. WBC has not faced the kind of scepticism that initially greeted Capitec before it surged to success, but its popularity among retail investors has raised eyebrows in more sceptical investment circles.
Richard Cheesman, a partner at Urquhart Partners, describes WBC as “a successful and growing … business that ended up in bed with the wrong company”.
Cheesman says two-thirds of the value of former parent Transaction Capital was derived from WBC. “It was more of a reverse spin-off,” he says — WBC opened at R20 a share on April 11, above the IPO price of R18.75 a share.
Launched 23 years ago, WBC now has an imposing national footprint of 345 agency buyers and about 90 branches and “buying pods”. More than 13,500 vehicles are bought and sold a month.
In 2021 the company bought the Ticketpro Dome in Northgate, Joburg, which was built as an indoor events arena, and converted it into the biggest vehicle showroom in Africa, housing 1,500 bays.
WBC has a 10%-12% market share and plans to have doubled this to 23% by financial 2028, with sales of 22,000 vehicles a month. It plans to add 2,000 more bays in 2025/2026 and expand into new regions.
A notable aspect of the business is just how quickly it moves its inventory. WBC’s asset turn is about three times higher than other local listed vehicle dealers. South Africa has about 11.2-million licensed vehicles and the used car market is fragmented and competitive, with more than 3,000 dealers.
CEO Faan van der Walt said at the listing that this step was never on the radar when he and his brother Dirk launched the business in 2001.
Faan is a former teacher. His father taught him how to fix vehicles and they worked on family cars, so by the time he founded WBC, he’d spent a number of years repairing vehicles.
“I got to know which cars to buy and what to look out for, and also [how to] build my capital,” Faan has previously told the