We Buy Cars (WBC SJ): Initiate at Buy: Smarter buying, faster selling

Research evidence excerpt

20 August 2026

We Buy Cars (WBC SJ)

Equities

Specialty Retail

Initiate at Buy: Smarter buying, faster selling

South Africa

◆ Scaled sourcing footprint, ongoing capacity expansion and

INITIATE AT BUY

tech-enabled execution support long-term market share gains

◆ Chinese OEM growth is a near-term margin headwind, but

higher new-car volumes should expand the used supply pool

◆ We forecast a three-year DHEPS CAGR of 14%; initiate with

a Buy rating and TP of ZAR39

A scalable, hard-to-replicate used vehicle retail platform, built by combining a

dense national sourcing footprint with a high-velocity operating model and 20+ years of

proprietary transaction data. Its brand-agnostic, value/older-vehicle focus broadens the

addressable market, while data-led pricing and a streamlined end-to-end process

support fast inventory turns and disciplined capital management in a category where

speed is the strategy. The physical network (supermarkets and buying pods) provides a

structural sourcing advantage, and the tech stack (pricing, inspections and digital tools)

compounds over time as the dataset deepens, supporting better buying decisions and

more consistent execution at scale. While Chinese OEM-led disruption is creating nearterm margin pressure, we see WBC’s platform as positioned to keep taking share over

the long term supported by ongoing capacity expansion. At scale, this creates a flywheel

where more transactions improve the data and decision-making, helping reinforce the

gap versus smaller competitors over time. Initiate with a Buy rating and a TP of ZAR39.

Rapid rise of Chinese OEMs is a near-term headwind. Aggressive new-car pricing is

compressing the used-vs-new price gap and forcing repricing in overlapping segments,

pressuring GP margins and increasing markdown risk if stock turns slow. WBC’s

response is pragmatic and consistent with its model, protect liquidity first by repricing

quickly, tightening buying discipline, and shifting mix toward more affordable, fastermoving vehicles, while its expanding capacity supports throughput as demand

rebalances. Importantly, the same trend should expand the future used vehicle supply

…