CVNA · Forward model
Revenue by vertical, 20 quarters out
Each segment is projected from its own operating driver, rolled up into consolidated cash flow, and discounted back to a fair value per share. The assumptions below are editable — change them and every number on this page moves with them.
Carvana reports ONE operating segment and three revenue lines: retail vehicle sales, wholesale sales and revenues, and other sales and revenues. Those three lines are the three verticals here, copied quarter by quarter from the shareholder letters filed as 8-K exhibits; all fourteen quarters from 2023 Q1 to 2026 Q2 sum exactly to reported net sales and operating revenues, with zero difference. Nothing in the revenue history is apportioned. What IS an allocation is profitability. Carvana publishes no EBITDA, operating income or capital expenditure by revenue line, so every per-vertical margin below is an assumption, chosen so that the three verticals less corporate overhead reproduce the disclosed 2026 Q2 Adjusted EBITDA of $769M: retail 13.22% of retail revenue, wholesale 11.76%, other 98.86%, less corporate overhead of 8.635% of consolidated revenue gives $769.0M. Those numbers are the disclosed gross profit of each line plus the share-based compensation and depreciation inside cost of sales, against SG&A of $704M less the $42M of depreciation and $25M of share-based compensation inside it, with the $6M of Root warrant revenue removed from the other line because Adjusted EBITDA excludes it. The engine holds corporate overhead at a fixed share of revenue, so the two levers management names for reaching a 13.5% margin - fixed-cost overhead leverage and advertising efficiency - are carried inside the retail vertical's terminal margin. Retail's 13.22% gliding toward 18.0%, which reaches 16.29% by 2031 Q2, is NOT a claim that retail gross profit per unit rises 23%; it is consolidated SG&A-per-unit leverage assigned to the line that carries the units. Read the consolidated margin, not the vertical one. Free cash flow here is EBITDA less capital expenditure less tax. It is not Carvana's reported free cash flow, which is dominated by finance-receivable originations and sales and by vehicle inventory - working capital the engine does not model. Where the base case sits against guidance is stated plainly: FY2026 Adjusted EBITDA comes out at about $3.09B against company guidance of $2.7-3.0B and a sell-side estimate of $2.99B, so the base case is roughly 3% above the top of the guided range. The gap is margin, not volume: the low end of guidance implies second-half Adjusted EBITDA growth of 9.7% year over year and the midpoint 22.7%, against 32.0% in the first half, and this engine carries a single monotone margin path that cannot reproduce the seasonal fourth-quarter dip in gross profit per unit. The bear case lands FY2026 at $2.71B, the low end of the guided range.
Latest: $19.03B (2031Q2E)
| Period | Value |
|---|---|
| 2023Q1 | $2.61B |
| 2023Q2 | $2.97B |
| 2023Q3 | $2.77B |
| 2023Q4 | $2.42B |
| 2024Q1 | $3.06B |
| 2024Q2 | $3.41B |
| 2024Q3 | $3.65B |
| 2024Q4 | $3.55B |
| 2025Q1 | $4.23B |
| 2025Q2 | $4.84B |
| 2025Q3 | $5.65B |
| 2025Q4 | $5.60B |
| 2026Q1 | $6.43B |
| 2026Q2 | $7.38B |
| 2026Q3E | $7.99B |
| 2026Q4E | $7.58B |
| 2027Q1E | $8.57B |
| 2027Q2E | $9.28B |
| 2027Q3E | $9.99B |
| 2027Q4E | $9.42B |
| 2028Q1E | $10.58B |
| 2028Q2E | $11.40B |
| 2028Q3E | $12.20B |
| 2028Q4E | $11.45B |
| 2029Q1E | $12.80B |
| 2029Q2E | $13.72B |
| 2029Q3E | $14.63B |
| 2029Q4E | $13.68B |
| 2030Q1E | $15.23B |
| 2030Q2E | $16.26B |
| 2030Q3E | $17.27B |
| 2030Q4E | $16.10B |
| 2031Q1E | $17.87B |
| 2031Q2E | $19.03B |
What drives each segment
Retail vehicle sales
Units × priceRetail units sold times revenue per retail unit - $5,507M in 2026 Q2, 74.7% of revenue. Units are gated by reconditioning production output rather than by demand: management states that regions where production growth exceeded the company average also delivered above-average retail unit growth. Fully built-out annual capacity is about 1.5 million retail units against a 2026 Q2 annualised run rate of about 789,000, with real estate for 3 million. Both the unit count and the revenue per unit are disclosed every quarter, so this line can be driven honestly on volume and price separately - which matters, because they are moving for unrelated reasons.
Latest: $14.57B (2031Q2E)
| Period | Value |
|---|---|
| 2023Q1 | $1.83B |
| 2023Q2 | $1.96B |
| 2023Q3 | $1.95B |
| 2023Q4 | $1.78B |
| 2024Q1 | $2.17B |
| 2024Q2 | $2.41B |
| 2024Q3 | $2.54B |
| 2024Q4 | $2.55B |
| 2025Q1 | $2.98B |
| 2025Q2 | $3.40B |
| 2025Q3 | $4.00B |
| 2025Q4 | $4.16B |
| 2026Q1 | $4.83B |
| 2026Q2 | $5.51B |
| 2026Q3E | $5.92B |
| 2026Q4E | $5.80B |
| 2027Q1E | $6.47B |
| 2027Q2E | $6.98B |
| 2027Q3E | $7.45B |
| 2027Q4E | $7.25B |
| 2028Q1E | $8.04B |
| 2028Q2E | $8.62B |
| 2028Q3E | $9.15B |
| 2028Q4E | $8.85B |
| 2029Q1E | $9.77B |
| 2029Q2E | $10.43B |
| 2029Q3E | $11.01B |
| 2029Q4E | $10.61B |
| 2030Q1E | $11.66B |
| 2030Q2E | $12.41B |
| 2030Q3E | $13.06B |
| 2030Q4E | $12.54B |
| 2031Q1E | $13.74B |
| 2031Q2E | $14.57B |
Assumptions & reasoning
- Every quarter of this history is the disclosed 'Retail vehicle sales, net' line from a Carvana shareholder letter filed as an 8-K exhibit. Nothing here is apportioned, and the fourteen quarters sum to the reported consolidated revenue with zero difference.
- Seasonality [Q1 1.00, Q2 1.02, Q3 1.03, Q4 0.95] is derived from this line's own printed quarters by centred 2x4 ratio-to-trend, normalised to mean 1.0, using the post-turnaround window from 2024 Q1 so the 2022-23 contraction does not contaminate it. Within-quarter spreads are 0.024 to 0.046, comfortably under the 0.08 amplitude, and the direction matches the 10-K's own statement that used-vehicle sales peak late in the first quarter with tax refunds and trough in the holiday quarter.
- Because the seasonal index carries the shape, the unit count in the driver is the DESEASONALISED 193,456, not the printed 197,325: the engine reapplies the 1.02 second-quarter factor itself, and entering the printed figure would count that 2% twice. The volume growth rate is likewise a deseasonalised trend, not a printed sequential step.
- Revenue per retail unit rose 17.4% year over year to $27,908 for a disclosed one-off reason - FTC guidance requiring dealers to include mandatory fees in advertised prices lifted industry retail prices, and Carvana 'followed the market on retail pricing'. That is a level shift, not a growth rate, so the price drift here is 0.4% a quarter, about 1.6% a year. A model that extrapolated 17% would be compounding a regulatory price step.
- The volume ceiling is set at 750,000 a quarter, the disclosed real estate for 3 million annual retail units, not at the 375,000 a quarter that the current built-out footprint supports. The base path's retail volume passes 1.5 million units a year during 2030 - 1.43 million in calendar 2029, 1.67 million in calendar 2030 - which is the point at which the buildout management has already begun, the first full ADESA buildout producing from early 2027, has to have delivered. Neither the cost nor the schedule of the rest of that buildout is disclosed.
- Retail's 13.22% basis margin is disclosed retail gross profit of $700M plus the $28M of depreciation and share-based compensation inside cost of sales, over $5,507M of retail revenue. The glide toward 18.0%, which reaches 16.29% by 2031 Q2, is the corporate SG&A leverage this engine cannot put in the overhead line. Read literally as gross profit it would be $4,923 a retail unit against $3,689 today, and that is not the claim: the claim is that the same unit carries less overhead.
- Capital expenditure is assigned entirely to this vertical because reconditioning capacity is what Carvana is building. 1.0% of retail revenue matches the disclosed $102M of property and equipment purchases in the first half of 2026 against $10,335M of retail revenue; the glide to 2.0% follows management's statement that it will 'continue investing in our infrastructure ahead of future growth'.
Wholesale sales and revenues
Units × priceWholesale vehicles sold - overwhelmingly trade-ins Carvana does not retail - plus ADESA wholesale marketplace fees; $1,343M in 2026 Q2, 18.2% of revenue. Volume is a by-product of retail transaction volume and of the ADESA auction business, so wholesale units track retail units with a wider amplitude. Monetisation is blended revenue per wholesale vehicle, because the reported revenue line includes marketplace revenue that Carvana's own disclosed per-unit metric explicitly excludes by footnote.
Latest: $3.36B (2031Q2E)
| Period | Value |
|---|---|
| 2023Q1 | $618M |
| 2023Q2 | $777M |
| 2023Q3 | $610M |
| 2023Q4 | $499M |
| 2024Q1 | $657M |
| 2024Q2 | $720M |
| 2024Q3 | $786M |
| 2024Q4 | $678M |
| 2025Q1 | $863M |
| 2025Q2 | $1.02B |
| 2025Q3 | $1.18B |
| 2025Q4 | $988M |
| 2026Q1 | $1.08B |
| 2026Q2 | $1.34B |
| 2026Q3E | $1.51B |
| 2026Q4E | $1.26B |
| 2027Q1E | $1.52B |
| 2027Q2E | $1.69B |
| 2027Q3E | $1.88B |
| 2027Q4E | $1.57B |
| 2028Q1E | $1.87B |
| 2028Q2E | $2.06B |
| 2028Q3E | $2.29B |
| 2028Q4E | $1.89B |
| 2029Q1E | $2.25B |
| 2029Q2E | $2.47B |
| 2029Q3E | $2.73B |
| 2029Q4E | $2.25B |
| 2030Q1E | $2.66B |
| 2030Q2E | $2.90B |
| 2030Q3E | $3.19B |
| 2030Q4E | $2.62B |
| 2031Q1E | $3.09B |
| 2031Q2E | $3.36B |
Assumptions & reasoning
- Fourteen quarters of the disclosed 'Wholesale sales and revenues' line, copied from the shareholder letters. Nothing here is apportioned or estimated.
- The price per unit is blended and derived, not disclosed: $1,343M over 105,052 wholesale vehicles is $12,784, against the $10,633 Carvana publishes for wholesale vehicles alone. The $226M difference is marketplace revenue that footnote 3 excludes from the per-unit figure. It is arithmetically implied by two disclosed numbers, so it is reported here as a residual and never promoted to a vertical of its own.
- Seasonality [Q1 0.99, Q2 1.04, Q3 1.10, Q4 0.87] is the most pronounced of the three lines, because trade-in supply and auction throughput peak with the spring and summer selling season and collapse in the holiday quarter. The Q4 trough is the reliable part - the weakest quarter in every year-window measured, on a within-quarter spread of 0.045. The Q3 factor is the shakier one: across all ten available ratios its spread is 0.165, because the ADESA marketplace inside this line has been scaling all through the window, so part of the apparent third-quarter lift is ramp rather than season.
- The units in the driver are the deseasonalised 101,012 rather than the printed 105,052, for the same reason as retail: the engine reapplies the 1.04 second-quarter factor itself.
- Wholesale grew 44.4% in units and fell 1.1% in revenue per vehicle in the same quarter. This line adds volume, not price, which is why the price drift starts negative and only recovers to a nominal 0.3% a quarter.
- The 11.76% margin is disclosed wholesale gross profit of $158M over $1,343M of wholesale revenue. No capital expenditure is assigned here: Carvana discloses no capex split, and the reconditioning and inspection capacity it is actually building serves the retail line.
Other sales and revenues
Units × priceGain on sale of the finance receivables Carvana originates against its own retail sales, plus vehicle service contracts and GAP coverage, plus ADESA services; $526M in 2026 Q2, 7.1% of revenue. This line carries no cost of sales - reported other revenue and other gross profit are identical to the dollar in every quarter presented - so it is pure contribution, and Carvana itself publishes its monetisation as Other GPU, other revenue per RETAIL unit. That makes retail units the correct driver: this is an attach-rate business on the retail vertical, not an independent one.
Latest: $1.09B (2031Q2E)
| Period | Value |
|---|---|
| 2023Q1 | $161M |
| 2023Q2 | $230M |
| 2023Q3 | $214M |
| 2023Q4 | $148M |
| 2024Q1 | $229M |
| 2024Q2 | $279M |
| 2024Q3 | $326M |
| 2024Q4 | $317M |
| 2025Q1 | $389M |
| 2025Q2 | $411M |
| 2025Q3 | $474M |
| 2025Q4 | $459M |
| 2026Q1 | $526M |
| 2026Q2 | $526M |
| 2026Q3E | $565M |
| 2026Q4E | $518M |
| 2027Q1E | $578M |
| 2027Q2E | $606M |
| 2027Q3E | $654M |
| 2027Q4E | $602M |
| 2028Q1E | $673M |
| 2028Q2E | $706M |
| 2028Q3E | $763M |
| 2028Q4E | $702M |
| 2029Q1E | $784M |
| 2029Q2E | $822M |
| 2029Q3E | $887M |
| 2029Q4E | $815M |
| 2030Q1E | $909M |
| 2030Q2E | $952M |
| 2030Q3E | $1.03B |
| 2030Q4E | $940M |
| 2031Q1E | $1.05B |
| 2031Q2E | $1.09B |
Assumptions & reasoning
- Fourteen quarters of the disclosed 'Other sales and revenues' line. Its components - finance gain-on-sale, EPP and ADESA services - are NOT published separately by Carvana, so no sub-line for any of them appears anywhere in this model.
- The unit count here is retail units, because the company's own metric for this line is other gross profit per retail unit. It is deseasonalised by this line's own factor, which is why it reads 194,883 rather than the retail vertical's 193,456 or the printed 197,325 - the two lines carry slightly different seasonal indices.
- Other revenue per retail unit has fallen three quarters running: $2,869 in 2025 Q2, $2,807 in 2026 Q1, $2,666 in 2026 Q2, the last of those a 5.0% sequential fall. Management's explanation is explicit - benchmark rates rose while Carvana 'kept customer-facing interest rates stable'. The base case carries that erosion forward at 2.5% a quarter, fading to flat, which lands the figure near $2,270 by 2031. Holding it flat would already be more optimistic than the last four prints.
- The 98.86% margin is the disclosed 100% gross margin less the $6M of Root warrant revenue that Adjusted EBITDA excludes. It does NOT mean this line drops 99 cents in the dollar to profit: origination, servicing and securitisation costs sit in SG&A and in interest expense, both of which are outside the vertical.
- This is where the margin question actually lives. At 7% of revenue and 38% of gross profit ($526M of the $1,384M reported in 2026 Q2), the path of other revenue per retail unit moves consolidated Adjusted EBITDA margin far more than it moves the revenue line.
- Loan-sale capacity is contractual and is being consumed: $1.2B unused under the Ally master purchase agreement at 2026-06-30, down from $4.9B at 2025-12-31, and $8.7B under fixed pool agreements, down from $11.3B. The model does not cap this line on that capacity, because Carvana has repeatedly replenished it, but a failure to do so would hit here first.
Where each case comes from
Bear case — primary sources
The primary sources this case is built from — filings, calls and posts. Where they are claims by an interested party rather than disclosures, every number in the Bear column is what happens if they are taken at face value.
The margin the quarter actually challenged
- Jul 29, 2026 Adjusted EBITDA totaled $769 million; Adjusted EBITDA margin was 10.4%, a decrease from 12.4%.
- Jul 29, 2026 Other GPU, which was lower due to increasing benchmark rates. With both industry retail prices and benchmark rates drifting higher in the quarter, we followed the market on retail pricing but kept customer-facing interest rates stable.
- Jul 29, 2026 EBITDA guidance for the full year is $2.85 billion at the midpoint, below analyst estimates of $2.99 billion.
Bull case — primary sources
The primary sources this case is built from — filings, calls and posts. Where they are claims by an interested party rather than disclosures, every number in the Bull column is what happens if they are taken at face value.
The headroom and the cost curve
- Jul 29, 2026 We have only 2% market share of used retail and 1.5% market share of all automotive retail.
- Jul 29, 2026 Our current footprint gives us fully built out annual capacity for approximately 1.5 million retail units, with real estate to support annual retail production of 3 million retail units.
- Jul 29, 2026 Total SG&A expenses per retail unit $3,568, down from $3,846 a year earlier - a company record low.
- Aug 14, 2026 A $1.66 billion senior secured Term Loan B facility at Term SOFR plus 2.25%, used to redeem the 9.00% Senior Secured Notes due 2030.
Garcia 3M case — primary sources
The primary sources this case is built from — filings, calls and posts. Where they are claims by an interested party rather than disclosures, every number in the Garcia 3M column is what happens if they are taken at face value.
The goal, and what management says it takes
- Jul 29, 2026 We remain firmly on the path to selling 3 million cars per year and to achieving 13.5% Adjusted EBITDA margin by 2030 to 2035.
- Feb 18, 2026 When we announced this goal, we estimated that we would need to grow at 20% to 40% annually to achieve our goal by 2030 or 2035. In 2025, we grew at 43% year-over-year. As a result, the annual growth rates required to achieve our goal are now 18% to 38%.
- Feb 18, 2026 We see a clear path to our target of 13.5% through: 1) fixed cost overhead leverage and 2) driving our company-wide advertising efficiency to mature market levels.
- Jul 29, 2026 As of June 30, 2026, Carvana Co. owned approximately 65.0% of Carvana Group with the LLC Unitholders owning the remaining 35.0%.
From cash flow to fair value
| Present value of free cash flow, 20 quarters | $15.80B |
| Terminal-year revenue | $70.28B |
| Terminal-year EBITDA | $8.23B |
| Exit multiple, on ebitda | 18.0x |
| Terminal value | $148.20B |
| Discounted at 11.0% a year, terminal value becomes | $87.95B |
| Enterprise value | $103.75B |
| Net cash | -$2.50B |
| Equity value | $101.25B |
| Shares | 1.13B |
| Fair value per share | $89.84 |
| Against the current price of $74.09 | +21% |
Enterprise value against exit Adjusted EBITDA, because Carvana pays no dividend, buys back almost nothing and runs a working-capital-heavy balance sheet - and because the guided FY2026 EBITDA range is the only forward number the company has actually put a figure on. 18x is an ASSUMPTION and is the least evidenced input on this page. It is a fade from the roughly 29x of guided FY2026 Adjusted EBITDA the shares carry today ($84.0B of enterprise value over the $2.85B guidance midpoint) toward what a scaled retailer earns once growth has decelerated to the high single digits, which is where the base case leaves it in 2031. Peer multiples for CarMax, AutoNation, Lithia and Penske were named in the research but not independently verified, so this multiple rests on Carvana's own implied multiples plus judgement, not on a peer screen. It matters more than any operating slider here: the terminal value is about 85% of the enterprise value in the base case. Bear holds 12x, Bull 21x.
Read the other way round: at $74.09 the market is paying 14.4x terminal-year revenue, holding every other assumption on this page fixed. That is the number to argue about.
Capex outside the verticals
Each vertical's capex is a share of its own revenue, which is the right shape for capacity that scales with sales. These are not that: fixed-size programmes with their own schedule that spend whether or not any segment grows. They are added on top, and they are why free cash flow dips in the years below.
Franchise dealership acquisitions
2026 Q3 → 2031 Q2Carvana paid $40M net of cash acquired for franchise dealerships in the first half of 2026, against $24M a year earlier. It is small, it recurs, and it belongs to no revenue line, so it is carried here at that $80M annual run rate for the full horizon rather than buried in a vertical capex intensity. The run rate is disclosed; extending it twenty quarters is an assumption.
The projected path
| Quarter | Retail vehicle sales | Wholesale sales and revenues | Other sales and revenues | Revenue | YoY | EBITDA | Capex | FCF | R40 | PV of FCF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 Q3E | $5.92B | $1.51B | $565M | $7.99B | +42% | $844M | $84M | $646M | +50 | $629M |
| 2026 Q4E | $5.80B | $1.26B | $518M | $7.58B | +35% | $802M | $87M | $607M | +43 | $577M |
| 2027 Q1E | $6.47B | $1.52B | $578M | $8.57B | +33% | $912M | $99M | $691M | +41 | $639M |
| 2027 Q2E | $6.98B | $1.69B | $606M | $9.28B | +26% | $985M | $110M | $744M | +34 | $671M |
| 2027 Q3E | $7.45B | $1.88B | $654M | $9.99B | +25% | $1.08B | $120M | $813M | +33 | $714M |
| 2027 Q4E | $7.25B | $1.57B | $602M | $9.42B | +24% | $1.02B | $121M | $765M | +32 | $654M |
| 2028 Q1E | $8.04B | $1.87B | $673M | $10.58B | +24% | $1.16B | $136M | $868M | +32 | $723M |
| 2028 Q2E | $8.62B | $2.06B | $706M | $11.40B | +23% | $1.24B | $148M | $932M | +31 | $756M |
| 2028 Q3E | $9.15B | $2.29B | $763M | $12.20B | +22% | $1.35B | $160M | $1.01B | +30 | $801M |
| 2028 Q4E | $8.85B | $1.89B | $702M | $11.45B | +22% | $1.28B | $159M | $951M | +30 | $733M |
| 2029 Q1E | $9.77B | $2.25B | $784M | $12.80B | +21% | $1.44B | $176M | $1.07B | +29 | $806M |
| 2029 Q2E | $10.43B | $2.47B | $822M | $13.72B | +20% | $1.54B | $190M | $1.15B | +29 | $839M |
| 2029 Q3E | $11.01B | $2.73B | $887M | $14.63B | +20% | $1.66B | $203M | $1.24B | +28 | $884M |
| 2029 Q4E | $10.61B | $2.25B | $815M | $13.68B | +19% | $1.57B | $199M | $1.16B | +28 | $807M |
| 2030 Q1E | $11.66B | $2.66B | $909M | $15.23B | +19% | $1.76B | $220M | $1.30B | +28 | $882M |
| 2030 Q2E | $12.41B | $2.90B | $952M | $16.26B | +19% | $1.87B | $235M | $1.39B | +27 | $916M |
| 2030 Q3E | $13.06B | $3.19B | $1.03B | $17.27B | +18% | $2.01B | $250M | $1.50B | +27 | $960M |
| 2030 Q4E | $12.54B | $2.62B | $940M | $16.10B | +18% | $1.89B | $243M | $1.40B | +26 | $873M |
| 2031 Q1E | $13.74B | $3.09B | $1.05B | $17.87B | +17% | $2.10B | $267M | $1.56B | +26 | $951M |
| 2031 Q2E | $14.57B | $3.36B | $1.09B | $19.03B | +17% | $2.23B | $284M | $1.66B | +26 | $984M |
Every row is projected. A year-over-year change is shown only where the quarter it compares against exists — an em dash means there is no comparable quarter, not a flat year.
Model revisions
Assumptions are marked to reality as each quarter prints. Every change is appended here, with the fair value the model produced at the time, so the model's own history stays visible.
| Date | Changed | Fair value then | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-27 | all | $89.84 | Initial model, built off the reported 2026 Q2 print: $7,376M of revenue, 197,325 retail units at $27,908 each, 105,052 wholesale vehicles, $526M of other revenue and $769M of Adjusted EBITDA. Three verticals matching Carvana’s three reported revenue lines, fourteen quarters of disclosed history from 2023 Q1, seasonal indices derived per line from the post-turnaround window, and vertical margins allocated so that the three lines less corporate overhead reproduce the disclosed $769M exactly. |