Turo, a startup that allows consumers to rent their cars to one another, filed an update to its IPO paperwork Friday, detailing its full 2022 financial performance.
The upshot? Turo has continued to grind away and even make revenue gains as it awaits better IPO conditions.
While the IPO market has been frozen for some time, Turo has not given up on its plans to go public. From a private filing back in 2021 and dropping a public S-1 document in early 2022, the unicorn has regularly released quarterly updates to the document. The latest filing fills in its Q4 2022 performance, allowing us to compare its most recent year to those trailing, and providing the market with news on what could be one of the first IPOs to price and start trading when the market improves for such offerings.
As a private company, Turo has raised around a half-billion dollars, including a Series E in 2019 that pegged its valuation at the $1 billion mark; that round was later extended in early 2020 per Crunchbase data.
What does the new filing show us? It indicates that Turo’s growth out of the pandemic doldrums continued last year after posting rapid revenue gains in 2021. And that the company has reached new levels of profitability that may prove enticing to investors when the time comes. Let’s take a closer look.
Turo’s 2022
In 2022 Turo generated revenue of $746.6 million, up 59% from the $469 million it brought into the business in 2021. That growth was powered, in part, by a large boost to spending at the company, which saw its sales and marketing costs grow from $52.7 million in 2021 to $111.3 million in 2022.
But rising costs didn’t mean that Turo had an unprofitable last year. In fact, after posting GAAP net losses in the $90 million range in both 2019 and 2020, Turo cut the figure to a $40.4 million net loss in 2021. Last year the company’s net income came to a far-shinier and positive $154.7 million, although that number is predicated on a more modest operating income result of $33.8 million.
Given that Turo’s income statement after operating costs is a bit wonky, its adjusted EBITDA may ironically be a more useful — less sclerotic — indicator of its profitability. Here we find that the company essentially matched its 2021 result of $81.1 million in 2022 when it reported adjusted EBITDA profit of $79.7 million.
Growth? Check. Profits? Check. Turo is ready to go public, and thanks to its S-1/A filing we know that it still wants to. At this point we’re merely waiting for it to kick off a roadshow.
While Turo has been itching to get into the public markets game, perhaps it better that it has waited. Turo competitor Getaround went public in late 2022 by merging with a SPAC. In the wake of that combination, the company has lost nearly all of its value and is at risk of delisting after falling below the $1 per share threshold. The company announced a round of cost cutting in February, but has not yet released Q4 earnings. A December-era investor update was light on hard financial data, but did detail that Getaround is a fraction of the size of Turo.
Turo’s model has evolved from individuals sharing cars to slightly more professional users that provide a handful of cars to the platform. Still, its asset-light business appears to have come good in the post-pandemic era, a time in which many folks felt the itch to move, and used and new car prices were above historical norms. Car rentals, it appears in light of Turo’s results, benefited from the trends.
It’s difficult to price Turo, as its gross margins are a bit outside normal software bands, and we don’t precisely know how investors will classify it industry-wise when it does debut. But give its revenue growth and ability to generate adjusted and unadjusted black ink, it doesn’t seem likely that Turo will struggle to defend its final private marks.
Turo, you have the keys. Kickstart the IPO wave please.