Openlane's vehicle volume up 7%, revenue rises 3.6% in Q2

Online wholesale vehicle auctions provider Openlane Inc. said on Aug. 7 its net income swung to $10.7 million in the three months ended June 30. Revenue grew 3.6 percent to $431.8 million.

Openlane, of Carmel, Ind., also reported total wholesale sales of vehicles by dealer and commercial consignors in its marketplace grew 7 percent year over year to 368,000.

The CDK Global outage — undertaken by the company after it experienced cyberattacks June 19 — disrupted the operations of some of Openlane's dealer and commercial clients, which had a "small" effect on Openlane's volumes late in the quarter, CEO Peter Kelly said.

"Our dealers' operations were impacted by the outage," Kelly said during Openlane's earnings call Aug. 7. "That meant they couldn't take trade-ins and they couldn't wholesale cars, and that by implication impacted our volumes later in the second quarter."

From that, the company lost sales volume of about 6,000 vehicles in the quarter, Kelly said. If those vehicles had been transacted, it would have put Openlane closer to a 9 percent year-over-year increase in total sales volume, he said.

Openlane's own information systems were "not in any way compromised," Kelly said.

The number of vehicles sold by commercial consignors in Openlane's marketplace rose by double digits in the first two quarters of 2024. That volume was up 33 percent year over year to 222,000 vehicles in the first quarter and up 21 percent year over year to 217,000 vehicles in the second quarter.

Net income: $10.7 million, improved from a loss of $193.8 million in the year-ago period.

Total operating revenue: $431.8 million, up 3.6 percent.

Vehicle sales: 368,000, up 7 percent year over year. Openlane said dealer-to-dealer vehicle sales in its marketplace fell 7.9 percent to 151,000, while commercial-to-dealer sales rose 21 percent to 217,000.

The company reported 301,000 dealer-to-dealer sales and 439,000 commercial-to-dealer sales in its wholesale marketplace in the first half of 2024.

Stock market: Shares of Openlane fell 1.4 percent to $16.72 Aug. 7 and was unchanged in premarket trading Aug. 8.