COMMUNAUTO EXPANDING
Car-sharing firm secures backers
Car-sharing service Communauto is riding high.
The company announced a strategic partnership Wednesday that founder and president Benoit Robert said will allow it to expand its Canadian operations, electrify more of its Montreal fleet and grow its business internationally.
The partners are PSA Group, the Paris-based manufacturer of Peugeot, Citroën and DS vehicles, and Montreal-based merchant bank MacKinnon Bennett & Company Inc.
The size of their financial injection was not disclosed, but they’ll be equal partners with minority positions. They’ll be represented on the Communauto board, but a controlling stake will remain in the hands of current ownership. “We get to keep both hands on the wheel,” Robert said.
He predicted that, with their backing, Communauto will be operating in dozens of cities on several continents within a matter of years. Lack of capital had been an issue for the company, forcing it to “limit our ambitions,” he said.
In Montreal, Communauto will now be able to add more electric vehicles to its fleet, said Marco Viviani, vice-president of strategic development. It currently has 90, from about 1,300 vehicles in its local pool. The Coderre administration is pushing for 1,000 electric vehicles from Communauto and the other local car-sharing service, Car2Go, by 2020.
Robert said he’d been looking for strategic partners for a couple of years to assure the company’s future as car-sharing went from niche to mainstream, and approached several while also being courted by potential buyers.
“To avoid disappearing, we had to find a solution.”
PSA Group and MacKinnon had compatible priorities and visions of what Communauto could become, he said.
“We invest in growth companies with a lot of potential,” said MacKinnon Bennett president Kenneth MacKinnon. Communauto possesses an experienced management team and has been consistently profitable since it started, in a business still “in its infancy,” he said in a video conference from Paris.
“We were seduced by the personality of Benoit Robert, who created this company at 22,” said Grégoire Olivier, head of PSA Group’s mobility services division.
Olivier said car-sharing is a small but “important” segment of the company’s business. It’s targeting about 300 million (euros) in revenue from it by 2021, on total revenue for the group of about 60 billion.
Robert noted there’s no contractual obligation for Communauto to use PSA Group vehicles for its global expansion, but it could serve as its window back into the North American market.
Founded in Quebec City in 1994 and established in Montreal since 1995, Communauto is the oldest car-sharing business in North America and currently has about 2,000 vehicles serving clients in seven Canadian cities and in Paris.
“Car sharing is something that can no longer be ignored,” Robert said. “The more accessible it is, the more people will get interested and convert.”
Car sharing is something that can no longer be ignored. The more accessible it is, the more people will get interested and convert.