Analysts Crown Carvana the New Used Car King Despite Amazon’s Growing Ambitions
Some companies collapse under pressure while others come out sharper — Carvana is firmly in the latter camp. Despite ongoing turbulence in the auto-lending sector, the used-car marketplace earned an upgrade from Wedbush to Outperform with a $400 price target. Shares are up over 65% this year, and Wedbush’s Scott Devitt said the recent pullback was “overdone,” arguing investors should take advantage of the weakness.
- Carvana is now projected to surpass CarMax in quarterly used-vehicle volumes by Q4 2026 — six months earlier than expected — as its operational and tech upgrades accelerate.
- KBRA, S&P, and Morningstar have all issued upgrades on multiple classes of Carvana’s auto receivable notes, signaling increased confidence in its loan performance.
The moat widens: While Amazon pushes deeper into autos through partnerships with Ford and Hertz, Wall Street isn’t sounding alarms over near-term risks to Carvana. William Blair’s Sharon Zackfia believes that management has become “much more agile” since narrowly avoiding bankruptcy in 2022, steadily widening its operational edge. And despite auto loan delinquencies rising more than 50% since 2010, Carvana’s newer securitizations are performing better than earlier vintages — a sign it’s expanded into lower-prime and sub-prime segments without losing control of credit quality.
