CAR Group CEO William Elliott concedes the market has marked his company down over artificial intelligence fears. He says, however, their moat holds, and that AI is helping more than it is hurting.
CAR Group closed at $26.00 on Monday 7 September, as this week’s Switzer Show went to air. That is about 35 per cent below the $39.775 the stock touched on 8 September 2025.
Asked on the show why the market had not rewarded recent results he was pleased with, chief executive William Elliott answered:
“Clearly our valuation is still lower than where it was 12 months ago, which I still think reflects some question marks around the impact of AI on our business.”
CAR Group is not alone in wearing that discount. In March, Morningstar cut REA Group’s moat rating to narrow from wide, citing AI, in a review that also downgraded TechnologyOne, Hansen Technologies and FINEOS. CAR Group was not in that group. The same analyst wrote in August that AI fears had cut CAR Group’s share price by nearly half from its peak, while keeping a narrow moat rating on the company.
The argument made against REA was that AI-curated shortlists reduce the eyeballs a listing earns and erode pricing power, and that AI lowers the cost of building a rival. The same worry, that software can now be cloned by anyone with a prompt, is what sits behind the marking down of CAR Group.
Either way, the CAR Group CEO says he is convinced his company’s walls will hold against the bots.
“The thing that we’re very confident in is the absolute defensibility of our business, and we see AI as an opportunity for sure. So we’re seeing it help to accelerate our revenue growth. It’s also helping us to control costs.”
Much like the Xero CEO told the Switzer Show a few months ago, Elliott says the business’ assets are what make it stronger than the vibe coders.
“Our leading brands, our proprietary data and then obviously the very sophisticated and intricate ecosystems in which we operate. That’s a great economic moat for our business that will persist for a long time to come.”
One thing to note, however, is that CAR Group has put no dollar figure on what AI has added to revenue or taken out of costs. Its results give operational numbers instead: a 26 per cent uplift in session-to-lead conversion from AI conversational search, inspection times on its Guarantee product cut from 30 minutes to 15, and dealer quote reviews cut from about six hours to 0.6 hours. But it has also published nothing showing AI taking anything away. The market has repriced the stock on the question of AI for the moment.
What it did publish was reported revenue up 6 per cent to $1,253 million and reported EBITDA up 8 per cent to $667 million.
On the proforma segment numbers the company reports alongside those, Australia is no longer the fastest-growing part of the business. Australia, still the largest segment at $519 million, grew 7 per cent. Latin America grew 19 per cent in constant currency, North America 12 per cent and Asia 15 per cent. In Australian dollars those become 22, 6 and 7 per cent respectively, and the Asian gap between the two measures is the widest of any segment.
Elliott said this international growth is CAR Group’s most underrated commodity.
“Over the last 10 years, we’ve diversified away from being a mainly Australian business to being a truly global enterprise. It’s in these markets where we’re less penetrated with dealers and private sellers where we’re seeing our fastest growth.”
