UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022

OR

FOR THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM TO

Commission File Number 001-38233

CarGurus, Inc.

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its Charter)

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (617) 354-0068

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act. Yes ☐ No ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☒

If securities are registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act, indicate by check mark whether the financial statements of the registrant included in the filing reflect the correction of an error to previously issued financial statements. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether any of those error corrections are restatements that required a recovery analysis of incentive-based compensation received by any of the registrant’s executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to §240.10D-1(b). ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ☒

The aggregate market value of the registrant’s Class A common stock, par value $0.001 per share, held by non-affiliates of the registrant based on the closing price of the registrant’s common stock as reported on the Nasdaq Global Market on June 30, 2022 was $2,177,687,560. Shares of voting and non-voting stock held by executive officers, directors and holders of more than 10% of the outstanding stock as of such date have been excluded from this calculation because such persons or institutions may be deemed affiliates. This determination of affiliate status is not a conclusive determination for other purposes.

As of February 21, 2023, the registrant had 98,869,235 shares of Class A common stock, and 15,999,173 shares of Class B common stock, par value $0.001 per share, outstanding.

Table of Contents

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward‑looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, which statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. Forward‑looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial or operating performance. In some cases, you can identify forward‑looking statements because they contain words such as “anticipates,” “believes,” “could,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “likely,” “may,” “might,” “plans,” “potential,” “predicts,” “projects,” “seeks,” “should,” “target,” "goal," “will,” “would,” or similar expressions and the negatives of those terms. Forward-looking statements contained in this report include, but are not limited to, statements about:

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You should not rely upon forward‑looking statements as predictions of future events. We have based the forward‑looking statements contained in this report primarily on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our business, financial condition, operating results, and growth prospects. The outcome of the events described in these forward‑looking statements is subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors described in the section titled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this report. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks and uncertainties emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all risks and uncertainties that could have an impact on the forward‑looking statements contained in this report. Further, our forward‑looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any future acquisitions, mergers, dispositions or joint ventures in which we may be involved, or investments we may make. We cannot assure you that the results, events, and circumstances reflected in the forward‑looking statements will be achieved or occur, and actual results, events, or circumstances could differ materially from those described in the forward‑looking statements.

The forward‑looking statements made in this report relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward‑looking statement made in this report to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this report or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law.

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PART I

Item 1. Business.

Overview

CarGurus, Inc. is a multinational, online automotive platform for buying and selling vehicles that is building upon its industry-leading listings marketplace with both digital retail solutions and the CarOffer digital wholesale platform. The CarGurus platform gives consumers the confidence to buy and/or sell a vehicle either online or in-person, and it gives dealerships the power to accurately price, instantly acquire, effectively market, and quickly sell vehicles, all with a nationwide reach. We use proprietary technology, search algorithms and data analytics to bring trust, transparency and competitive pricing to the automotive shopping experience. In addition to the United States, we operate online marketplaces under the CarGurus brand in Canada and the United Kingdom. In the United States and United Kingdom, we also operate the Autolist and PistonHeads online marketplaces, respectively, as independent brands.

In 2006, Langley Steinert founded CarGurus on the premise of bringing trust and transparency to the automotive marketplace. Our online marketplace platform provides ease of access to prices of vehicles and dealer ratings both of which are imperative to a consumer’s vehicle purchase. By providing car-shoppers with the tools and insights necessary for their automotive journey, CarGurus has garnered a large and engaged user base with whom our dealers can transact. Our ready-to-shop audience of 29.1 million average monthly visitors in the U.S. has attracted 24,567 paying dealers to list inventory on our U.S. online marketplace as of December 31, 2022. Over time, we have seen an evolution of dealer and consumer wants and needs as we enter a more digitally-enabled world. To best meet our customers’ needs, we evolved our Listings business to a transaction-enabled platform by introducing products that allow consumers to not only embark on a convenient self-selective purchasing journey with a seamless online to in-store transition but also to efficiently sell their car online from the comfort of their home. Dealers now have the ability to reach customers outside of their immediate geographic footprint and source inventory nationwide from both consumers and other dealers. This expanded suite of offerings can help increase our dealers’ return on investment, or ROI, adding even more scale to our marketplace network. While, we have evolved to an end-to-end transaction-enabled platform where consumers can shop, finance, buy, and sell, and dealers can source, market, and sell vehicles, our ultimate goal remains the same: to empower our customers by giving them all the tools and information they need to buy or sell any car, anywhere, at the right price and in the right way for them. At CarGurus, we give people the power to reach their destination.

Prior to the first quarter of 2022, we had two reportable segments – United States and International. Effective as of the first quarter of 2022, we revised our segment reporting from two reportable segments to one reportable segment. Effective as of the fourth quarter of 2022, we revised our segment reporting from one reportable segment to two reportable segments – U.S. Marketplace and Digital Wholesale. The U.S. Marketplace segment derives revenues from marketplace services for customers within the United States. The Digital Wholesale segment derives revenues from our Dealer-to-Dealer and Instant Max Cash Offer, or IMCO, services and products sold on our CarOffer platform. See Note 13 to our consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further segment reporting and geographical information.

Consumers' CarGurus Journey

Shop: A car purchase is a milestone in a consumer’s life – whether it is the first set of keys or parting from a memory-filled vehicle. However, shopping for a vehicle can be frustrating instead of empowering. Enter CarGurus, where we provide trust and transparency to the process for consumers. As the consumer moves to purchase a vehicle, we aggregate vehicle inventory from dealers and apply our proprietary analysis to generate a Deal Rating as one of: Great Deal, Good Deal, Fair Deal, High Priced, or Overpriced. Deal Rating illustrates how competitive a listing is compared to similar cars recently sold in the same region. We determine Deal Rating principally on the basis of both our proprietary Instant Market Value, or IMV, algorithm, which determines the market value of a used vehicle in a local market, and Dealer Rating, a measure of a dealer’s reputation as determined by reviews of that dealer from our user community. As the only major U.S. online automotive marketplace that defaults to sorting organic search results based on a used car’s Deal Rating, we enable consumers to find the most appropriate car for their needs. For new cars, we help our users understand deal quality by providing price analysis and our Dealer Rating. We also provide our users with information that historically has not been widely available, such as Price History, Time on Site, and Vehicle History.

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Finance & Buy: Once a consumer has found a listing they intend to pursue, we provide an omni-channel approach to the purchase of a vehicle partially or principally online. Our digital retail products such as Digital Deal provide the consumer with a self-selected car-buying journey to tailor their experience to their specific needs. Consumers can build a near penny-perfect deal with either dealer or vehicle specific finance and insurance products, and then place a deposit on their vehicle of choice, and/or take delivery of the vehicle all while experiencing a seamless online to in-store experience. We believe this approach throughout the end-to-end consumer experience brings greater trust, transparency, and efficiency to a consumer’s entire car shopping experience, leading to highly-engaged, more confident and satisfied shoppers.

Sell: According to recent consumer research, almost 70% of car-buying shoppers will trade in or sell a vehicle during their car-shopping journey. Our acquisition of 51% interest in CarOffer, LLC, or CarOffer, in January 2021, with the ability to buy the remaining equity interest in the company in the second half of 2024, enabled the launch of CarGurus Instant Max Cash Offer, or IMCO. IMCO provides the consumer with the ability to complete this part of the process entirely online through a trusted and transparent experience. Consumers who are trading-in or selling vehicles receive the most competitive offer sourced from our in-network dealers. Consumers benefit from the volume of participating dealerships in the CarGurus/CarOffer network, as well as the 24/7 automated matching provided by CarOffer's proprietary matrix technology, or the Buying Matrix, which enables a hands-off approach to find the consumer the best deal at any time. Once the customer has accepted their offer, they can further customize their intake experience by arranging a pick-up either at their home or a drop-off location of their choice within participating states. With an expansive dealer network, consumers can have the confidence that they are truly finding the best deal for their vehicle instantly.

Dealers' CarGurus Journey

Source: Made possible by the acquisition of CarOffer, we entered the digital wholesale space enabling dealers to acquire inventory in a convenient and efficient manner. CarOffer is an automated instant wholesale vehicle trade platform that is disrupting the traditional wholesale auction model. CarOffer's technology enables dealers to bid, transact, inspect and transport vehicles seamlessly and efficiently without geographic limitations. Any dealer, including those who are customers of the CarGurus website, can enroll on the CarOffer platform at no additional cost. The Buying Matrix allows dealers on the platform to buy and sell vehicles using limit orders, saving dealers the time and expense of going to an auction to acquire vehicles via the traditional in-person physical auction model. Through inspections on sales, dealers can be confident their purchase meets their expectations while they reap the benefits of focusing their resources and attention on other elements of their businesses. As CarOffer continues to activate more dealers, we expect dealers will see a corresponding increase of inventory on the platform, further enabling liquidity, selection, and business efficiencies. Additionally, the CarOffer platform enabled us to launch IMCO nationwide, which we expect over time will provide dealers with access to a fresh source of consumer trade-in inventory and will provide even further liquidity on the CarOffer platform. Similar to a dealer-to-dealer purchase, CarOffer handles inspections, transportation, titles, and payments in one bill of sale from the consumer. CarOffer’s platform provides a solution for a dealer looking to minimize reliance on in-person or online auctions to source their vehicle inventory while assuring they are paying a fair price, which has led to rapid growth and adoption within the dealer community.

Market: Dealers can list their inventory on CarGurus’ marketplace for free or with a subscription to one of our paid Listings packages. Non-paying dealers receive a limited number of anonymized email connections and access to a subset of tools on our Dealer Dashboard at no cost. A dealer with a paid subscription receives connections with consumers that are not anonymous and are made through a wider variety of methods, including phone calls, email, managed text and chat, links to the dealer’s website, and map directions to its dealerships. The primary objective of our traffic acquisition and site improvement efforts is to generate quality high-intent consumer leads to dealers. Leads are a subcategory of connections that we define as user inquiries via our marketplace to dealers by phone calls, email, or managed text and chat interactions. We define connections as interactions between consumers and dealers via our marketplace through phone calls, email, managed text and chat, and clicks to access the dealer’s website and map directions to the dealership. Dealers with our paid Listings packages are able to display their dealer name, address, and dealership information on their listings on our websites to gain brand recognition, which promotes walk-in traffic to the dealership. Paying dealers also have access to tools on the Dealer Dashboard as well as other digital retail add-on product offerings which enable dealers to expand their geographic footprint to reach a larger consumer audience while gaining efficiencies by streamlining the car sales process. Through our ready-to-purchase consumer audience, our paying dealers ultimately have a consistent and compelling ROI through our variety of product offerings.

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Sell: By presenting consumers with data such as our Deal Ratings, Price History, Time on Site, Vehicle History and financing options we believe our consumer audience is comprised of more informed, ready-to-purchase shoppers. By connecting dealers with such consumers, we believe we provide dealers with access to an efficient customer acquisition channel with the highest-intent shoppers generating the highest ROI. Further, as consumer needs evolve to customizing aspects of their vehicle purchase, we provide dealers, through a variety of digital offerings, the means to cater to consumers on a personalized level. Consumers can choose to complete their self-selected car-shopping journey with Digital Deal and other digital offerings that we provide through our partnership with dealers, enabling an individualized shopping experience from financing options to placing a deposit. We also provide paying dealers with full access to our Dealer Dashboard, including inventory pricing tools informed by real time market conditions, which helps them more effectively price, merchandise, and sell their cars. With CarOffer, we have also integrated insights regarding wholesale pricing among the dealer community. The ability to compare wholesale pricing with retail pricing ultimately allows dealers to price a car with more accuracy, winning loyal consumers with trust and transparency. These combined offerings allow dealers to efficiently drive their business to success from all aspects of sourcing, marketing, and selling. Our success in our partnership with dealers is evidenced by the number of paying dealers – 24,567 paying dealers as of December 31, 2022 – in our marketplace in the U.S.

CarGurus Value Proposition

With the majority of dealers in the United States listing inventory on our platform and our consumer-friendly deal ratings, we have built the most visited online automotive marketplace in the United States (Source: SimilarWeb, Traffic Report, Q4 2022, USA) and we believe that our scale creates powerful network effects that reinforce the competitive strength of our business model. This powerful network has only strengthened since our acquisition of CarOffer. The combination of Digital Retail, Digital Wholesale and Listings creates powerful synergies for our dealer customers. Dealers can leverage this one-stop shop to acquire inventory from both consumers and dealers, list the vehicle on our marketplace and sell it utilizing our digital retail capabilities. CarGurus’ industry-leading inventory selection from our U.S. dealers attracts a large and engaged consumer audience – 29.1 million average monthly U.S. unique users in 2022. The robust connections from our high-intent consumer audience drive greater value and a higher return on investment for our paying dealer. Driven by these network effects, we continue to amass data points, which we use to further strengthen our traffic acquisition efforts and marketplace search algorithms, the quality of our user experience, the quality of our partnership with dealers to provide innovative digital offerings and much more. As we continue to innovate and progress our offerings to meet both consumer and dealer needs, we strive to uphold and improve the quality of the connections between consumers and dealers and become the preferred platform for all steps of the vehicle acquisition and sale process, ultimately giving dealers and consumers the power to reach their destination.

Consumers' Challenges

As consumers complete the end-to-end car shopping journey, the key questions they ask are:

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In answering these questions, consumers historically had limited access to transparent information on specific vehicles, car pricing, and dealer reputation. Further, consumers who wanted to trade in their vehicle or wanted to complete select elements of their car shopping journey online typically had very limited options. Every car-shopping journey is a unique experience, and so for consumers embarking on this journey, there is a difficulty in the absence of consistent information on pricing for both selling and purchasing vehicles. Selling a vehicle was time-consuming and exhausting for consumers as they traveled dealer to dealer to ensure they were receiving a fair and accurate price for their vehicle. Selecting the right dealer was also challenging for consumers as dealer reputations were historically based primarily on word-of-mouth. The lack of clear, transparent information made it difficult for consumers to effectively compare vehicles, find the vehicles that best suited their needs and transact with well-regarded dealers. In addition, following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers are also increasingly interested in understanding which aspects of their buying journey they can complete online and are looking for ways to customize their journey to incorporate both online and in-person components.

Dealers' Challenges

Dealers have had to face a new set of challenges over the past few years as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent semiconductor chip shortage impacting auto manufacturers' production levels. The shortage of both used and new car inventory and rapidly evolving wholesale prices caused dealers to invest in additional methods to source wholesale vehicles all while dealers have been adapting to the shift from physical to digital marketplaces as consumer needs and wants continue to evolve and competition from online-retailers increases. Dealers need to remain competitive in their offers for consumer trade-ins, as consumers have increasing means to source multiple offers in this highly competitive and digitally-enabled market. The economics of dealerships depend largely on vehicle acquisition costs, sales volume, and customer acquisition efficiency. To achieve a high return on their marketing investments, dealers must find in-market consumers. Dealers additionally need to be strategic about selling vehicles before they are “aged inventory.” Traditional marketing channels that dealers utilize, including television, radio, and newspaper, can target locally but are inefficient in targeting the narrow percentage of high-intent consumers who are ready to purchase and potentially trade-in a vehicle both locally and outside a dealership's immediate geographic footprint. In addition, with used car pricing being fluid due to rapidly shifting supply and demand dynamics, dealers need to find ways to manage constantly changing inventory and adjust pricing and purchasing strategies to adapt to frequently changing market conditions as evidenced by the past few years.

Our Strengths

We believe that our competitive advantages are based on the following key strengths:

Trusted Marketplace for Consumers. We provide consumers with transparent information, intuitive search results, and other tools that aid them in their car-shopping journey. Furthermore, consumers can have confidence in finding a fair value in the vehicles they search for in our marketplaces since less than one-third of eligible vehicle listings on CarGurus.com earn a Great Deal or Good Deal rating. We also enable bids on vehicle trade-ins and sales from the thousands of dealers in the CarGurus/CarOffer network, assuring consumers that they are receiving the best offer on their vehicle. We offer the largest online selection of new and used car listings of any major U.S. online automotive marketplace. We aggregate and analyze these listings using proprietary technology and data along with innovative data analytics to create a differentiated automotive search experience for consumers to bring them great deals from top-rated dealers. In 2022, we experienced over 77.7 million average monthly sessions in the United States. We believe this user traffic, an indicator of consumer satisfaction and engagement, is critical to our marketplace success and will continue to strengthen our market position. We attract our audience from a diverse range of acquisition channels including, but not limited to, direct navigation, mobile applications, email, organic search, paid search advertising, social media advertising, on-site advertising, audience targeting, and brand advertising campaigns. In addition, we focus our efforts on attracting users that we believe are near a car purchasing decision, resulting in a higher quality audience to which our dealers can market.

Proprietary Search Algorithms and Data-Driven Approach. We have built an extensive repository of data on cars, prices, dealers, and the interactions between consumers and dealers that is the result of many years of data aggregation and regression modeling. The primary product of this analysis is our determination of a used car’s IMV, which, together with Dealer Rating, drives our Deal Rating. We calculate IMV by applying more than 20 ranking signals and more than 100 normalization rules to tens of millions of data points, including the make, model, trim, year, features, condition, history, geographic location, and mileage of the car. With our acquisition of CarOffer in 2021, we have extended our proprietary search algorithms and data analytics to include the Buying Matrix, providing unique insights to dealers regarding their purchases in the wholesale space as well as up-to-date pricing information for the consumers they are servicing. We apply the knowledge gained from analyzing the substantial volume of connections between consumers and dealers on our platform to build new features for our consumers, IMV technology features on the Dealer Dashboard and new products for our dealers. These enhancements enable more informed consumers and dealers from the start of their car journey to the end.

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Strong Value Proposition to Dealers. We believe that our marketplace offers an efficient customer acquisition channel for dealers, helping them achieve attractive returns on their marketing spend with us. With the acquisition of CarOffer, we increased efficiencies for dealers to source vehicles from both consumers and dealers with the 24/7 online Buying Matrix. We provide our dealer base with connections to prospective car buyers; most of these connections have historically been for used cars, and to prospective car sellers. The primary objective of our traffic acquisition and site improvements is to generate high quality consumer leads to our dealers. These leads include phone calls, email, and managed text and chat interactions for dealers, which we believe yield the highest value engagement for dealers. Dealers are able to leverage our large consumer audience, our digital retail offerings and consumer trade-in services to provide more quality leads to their dealership, providing the highest return on their investment. We provide all dealers with tools that are informed by real-time market conditions that help them acquire inventory, merchandise, and sell their cars, and our paying dealers get access to additional valuable information from our Pricing and Market Analysis tools. Additionally, with digital retail offerings we help level the online offering playing field for our dealer partners who are unable to provide these solutions to consumers on their own and/or wish to utilize our largest consumer audience to sell additional inventory with CarGurus' digital retail offerings. Our strong value proposition to the dealer community is evidenced by our 4% growth in quarterly average revenue per subscribing dealer, or QARSD, in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to the fourth quarter of 2021.

Attractive Financial Model. We have a strong track record of revenue growth, profitability, and capital efficiency. We generated revenue of $1,655.0 million in 2022 compared to $951.4 million in 2021, representing a year-over-year increase of 74%. 37% of our revenue generated in 2022 was attributable to the U.S. Marketplace segment compared to 62% in 2021. 60% of our revenue generated in 2022 was attributable to the Digital Wholesale segment compared to 33% in 2021. A significant portion of our revenue is recurring due to the subscription nature of our products, including from our Listings packages, our Real-time Performance Marketing, or RPM, and our digital advertising suite. At the same time, our revenue is highly diversified due to the subscription nature of our listings business, transactional nature of our digital wholesale business and our diverse dealer base. We also have been able to grow and invest in our future growth as a result of our highly profitable foundational Listings business. The profitability of the Listings business and the liquidity of our balance sheet, helps drive growth and innovation as we build out our vision of creating an end-to-end transaction-enabled automotive platform. We ended 2022 with $469.5 million of cash on hand up from $231.9 million in 2021.

Experienced Management Team with Culture of Innovation. Our founder, Executive Chairman and Chairman of our Board of Directors, Langley Steinert, co-founded and was previously chairman of TripAdvisor, an online marketplace for travel-related content based on the mission of using technology and a data-driven approach to provide transparency for consumers’ travel planning. Led by Mr. Steinert and a management team with extensive experience guiding technology companies in evolving industries – including Jason Trevisan, our Chief Executive Officer and Sam Zales, our President and Chief Operating Officer – we bring the same commitment to fostering a culture of innovation and delivering data-driven transparency to the automotive market.

Our Products and Services

U.S. Marketplace and Other

Our product offerings described below are available for the U.S. CarGurus marketplace; their availability on our other marketplaces varies. We also offer paid listings subscriptions for dealers and dealer advertising products for the PistonHeads website, as well as paid listings subscriptions for dealers for the Autolist website.

Consumer Experience

We provide consumers with an online automotive marketplace where they can search for new and used car listings from our dealers and sell their cars to dealers and other consumers. A user accesses our marketplace through our websites or by using our mobile applications. Most users specify whether they are searching for a used, certified pre‑owned, or new car and then provide their desired vehicle make and model and their postal code.

Used and Certified Pre‑Owned Cars

Using our proprietary search algorithms, we immediately display the results of the consumer’s search, ranked by Deal Rating, on a search results page, or SRP. Eligible used car listings in our marketplace are assigned one of five Deal Ratings: Great Deal, Good Deal, Fair Deal, High Priced, or Overpriced. A Deal Rating illustrates how competitive a listing is compared to similar cars sold in the same region in recent history. A listing’s Deal Rating is based primarily upon the IMV of the vehicle and the Dealer Rating of the dealer.

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Instant Market Value. IMV is a proprietary algorithm that assesses the market value of a used vehicle in a local market and is a key input for determining a vehicle’s Deal Rating. The IMV algorithm is the product of many years of regression modeling utilizing tens of millions of used car data points. IMV takes into account a number of factors, including comparable currently listed and previously sold used cars in the local market and vehicle details including make, model, trim, year, features, condition, history, and mileage. The IMV algorithm uses more than 20 ranking signals and more than 100 normalization rules that distill unstructured data from hundreds of sources across thousands of dealers.

Dealer Ratings. Dealer Ratings are derived from user‑generated content from our users’ experiences with dealers with which they have connected. To promote high‑quality reviews, we require that a user has interacted with the dealer via our marketplace to submit a review. We believe this requirement, together with additional qualification standards, results in a more valuable Dealer Rating. Dealer Rating is an important component of a listing’s Deal Rating and, as a result, can impact the organic search position of a listing.

Search Results Page. In addition to each car’s Deal Rating, our SRP provides users with other useful information, including the difference between the listing price and the IMV that we have determined for the car, mileage, Dealer Rating, and dealer location for paying dealers. We provide in‑depth search filters, including price, year, mileage, trim, color, options, condition, body style, miles per gallon, seating capacity, vehicle ownership history, usage history, seller type, and days on market, among others, which we believe deliver the most comprehensive search capability among major U.S. online automotive marketplaces. We also provide our users with additional features to aid their search, including similar vehicle recommendations, side‑by‑side vehicle comparisons, expert reviews, and user rankings. Our platform also gives users the ability to save searches and receive alerts that keep them informed of relevant developments in the market, including newly available inventory and price changes to cars they are monitoring.

Vehicle Detail Page. If a user clicks on one of the listings on the SRP, the user is taken to that listing’s vehicle detail page, or VDP. VDPs are designed to provide numerous photos and a comprehensive description of the vehicle, dealer name, address, and dealership information for paying dealers, detailed dealer reviews, methods to contact the dealer, payment calculators, and helpful information about the vehicle, including:

New Cars

Search results for new car listings are sorted by price of inventory matching the user’s search, with the lowest priced listings sorted first. Our new car VDPs include our Dealer Rating and many of the other features of our used car listings, such as Price History and Time on Site. Deal Rating is not applicable to new car listings because it utilizes data not relevant to new cars. Instead, we analyze data on manufacturers’ suggested retail prices, or MSRPs, and recent sales of similar new vehicles, accounting for trade-ins, incentives, and other factors that can affect the price of a new car, to provide users with comparative price information.

Sell My Car

We also allow our consumers to list their cars in both our peer-to-peer and consumer-to-dealer marketplaces in the United States. Our peer-to-peer offering, Sell My Car, enables individual car owners to easily merchandise their vehicles, determine an appropriate selling price with our proprietary price guidance, and manage their listings and communications with prospective buyers from our audience. We collect a fee when a consumer lists a vehicle on the peer-to-peer marketplace. See “— Digital Wholesale” below for a description of our consumer-to-dealer offering, IMCO.

Autolist

Autolist provides consumers an online automotive marketplace through mobile applications on iOS and Android phones, as well as a website. The platform includes inventory from top automotive dealers across the U.S. and gives consumers quick access to manage their search on the go with real-time alerts of newly available inventory and changes that occur on vehicles and saved searches they have configured. An independent editorial staff produces content to keep consumers informed on the latest vehicles and trends in the automotive market.

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PistonHeads

PistonHeads is a U.K. automotive marketplace, forum, and editorial site geared towards automotive enthusiasts. The platform allows consumers to search across a broad range of dealer and private seller listings, engage with other automotive enthusiasts through forums, and stay informed about automotive news through editorial articles and expert reviews. Paying U.K. dealers who list on the CarGurus platform automatically have their inventory added to the PistonHeads site for greater consumer reach.

Dealer Offerings

Listings

Our marketplace connects dealers to a large audience of informed and engaged consumers. We offer multiple types of marketplace Listings subscriptions to dealers for the CarGurus marketplace in the U.S. (availability varies on our other marketplaces): Restricted Listings, which is free, and various levels of Listings packages, each of which requires a paid subscription.

Dealer Dashboard and Merchandising Tools

All dealers with inventory on CarGurus may access the following Dealer Dashboard features and merchandising tools:

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Dealers subscribing to a paid Listings package also have access to the following additional features and tools:

Digital Marketing Products

We offer dealers subscribing to one of our Enhanced, Featured or Featured Priority Listings packages access to additional advertising products marketed primarily under our RPM digital advertising suite. With RPM, dealers can reach our large and engaged automotive shopping audience, on other sites on the internet and/or on high-converting social media platforms. RPM helps dealers build brand awareness and acquire customers to their website and dealership. Advertisements can be targeted by the user’s geography, search history, CarGurus website activity and a number of other targeting factors. This product suite allows dealers to increase their visibility with in-market consumers and drive qualified traffic to their websites.

Pricing and Packaging

We offer our Listings product suite through a tiered set of packages. Listings are priced on a monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual subscription basis based on the dealer’s inventory size, region, and our assessment of the ROI we expect to deliver. For improved performance, dealers can purchase higher Listings suite levels and add-ons available at an existing Listings suite level. Dealers may be renewed at higher rates commensurate with growth and updated performance expectations. RPM is sold as a subscription, and priced as a percentage of Listings while accounting for factors such as dealership characteristics and performance expectations.

Digital Retail

In recent years, both consumer demand and dealer receptiveness to digital retail has increased, as consumers have become more comfortable transacting some or all of their car buying processes online. We are focused on addressing the needs of both consumers and dealers in this growing segment of automotive digital retail.

Finance in Advance

Through our partnerships with automotive lending companies, we allow eligible consumers on our U.S. marketplace to pre-qualify for financing on cars from dealerships that offer financing from these partners. We primarily generate revenue from these partnerships based on the number of funded loans from consumers who pre-qualify with our lending partners through our site. We believe this program both provides more transparency to car shoppers about actual payments to be offered at the dealership specific to participating lenders, as well as delivers highly qualified car shopper leads to participating dealers.

Digital Deal

We continue to offer consumers the ability to transact additional elements of their car buying experience through our websites as they seek to complete more of this process online. For example, our shoppers can ‘start purchase’ from a VDP on eligible listings and utilize purchase options, including but not limited to estimating a car’s trade-in value, deciding payment options, selecting finance and insurance products, and placing a reservation deposit. Digital Deal generates revenue by charging fees to dealerships to enroll in the program and from partnerships based on the number of funded loans from consumers.

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Area Boost

We offer the ability for dealerships to expand their VDP geographic footprint to non-local customers via dealer home delivery services. Revenue is generated through fees charged to the dealership to enable listings beyond the default geographical radius. We believe this program provides additional vehicle options to car shoppers open to home delivery services while promoting participating dealers’ delivery capabilities and increasing non-local VDP views. As a prerequisite to enrolling in Area Boost, new dealerships are required to sign up for Digital Deal.

Auto Manufacturer and Other Advertiser Products

Our platform offers auto manufacturers and others the ability to purchase advertising on both our sites and third‑party websites, including social media platforms, to execute targeted marketing strategies:

International

We also facilitate high-intent consumers to engage with automotive dealers in both Canada and the U.K. Like our U.S. offerings, CarGurus provides consumers in Canada and the U.K. with a transparent shopping experience, using our proprietary algorithms to determine market specific valuations for vehicles, and ordinating our organic search results based on Deal Ratings.

In Canada, CarGurus is a leading automotive marketplace that provides consumers a transparent shopping experience whether they are looking for a new or used car. In the U.K., CarGurus is a leading marketplace for dealers’ listings of used vehicles, providing consumers with one of the broadest selections of inventory in the U.K. We also provide automotive shoppers rich expert review content, an active forum for automotive discussion, and offer privately owned inventory through the PistonHeads website.

Digital Wholesale

Dealer-to-Dealer

As the automotive industry continues to move further online, it has become even more important for dealers not only to sell their vehicles effectively at retail, but also to acquire the right inventory in the first place via wholesale transactions. In recent years, wholesale vehicle sales have begun shifting online and those trends have accelerated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The industry continues to see an increase in online transactions that are easier, faster, and reduce the effect of geographic constraints.

In January 2021, we completed our acquisition of a 51% ownership interest in CarOffer, a modern-day automotive inventory transaction platform that allows dealers and dealer groups to buy, sell, and trade online with automation and ease. The acquisition added wholesale vehicle acquisition and selling capabilities to our portfolio of dealer offerings, creating a powerful digital solution for dealers to sell and acquire vehicles at both retail and wholesale. Unlike traditional vehicle auctions which require manual bidding and vehicle evaluation, the Buying Matrix enables buying dealers to create standing buy orders and provides instant offers to selling dealers.

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IMCO

In 2021, we launched a new consumer offering, IMCO, which allows consumers to sell their vehicles to dealers entirely online. This offering, which is now available to approximately 93% of the U.S. population, provides dealers with access to a fresh source of trade-in inventory and helps ensure liquidity amongst CarOffer’s platform. Through IMCO, consumers who are trading-in or selling vehicles enter easy-to-answer questions regarding their vehicle and are instantly presented with the most competitive offer sourced from in-network dealers. Once the customer has saved their offer, they can further customize their experience by arranging a location of their choice to have the vehicle picked-up and transported. In this model, CarOffer processes the transaction directly and collects transaction and other fees from the dealer.

In 2022 we continued to optimize and evolve our consumer-to-dealer offering to improve the consumer experience and performance. We launched online pickup scheduling, which allows consumers to schedule their vehicle pickup through our simple online tool. We ran a pilot of drop-off locations where consumers could opt to drop their vehicle off rather than have it picked up at their home. We optimized the consumer experience with more data and information to help consumers make confident decisions, and integrated a virtual inspection process to allow consumers to pre-inspect their vehicle in order to streamline the pickup process. We ended 2022 with a consumer NPS of 88 for sellers who completed a transaction.

Marketing and Brand

Consumer Marketing

CarGurus continues to be the most visited online automotive marketplace in the United States, with more than 77.7 million and 29.1 million average monthly sessions and unique users, respectively in 2022. We have built our engaged audience on the strength of our user experience, leveraging the power of technology and data to bring trust and transparency to the automotive platform. Our intuitive search experience, combined with the largest inventory of any major U.S. online automotive marketplace and relevant content, updates, and transaction-enabled tools, provide unparalleled transparency and decision-support to consumers during their car search to help them shop, buy, finance and sell with confidence and ease. The strength of our consumer experience is one of our most powerful marketing tools, with 95% of sellers stating they would recommend CarGurus to a friend and 90% of sellers stating they would recommend starting their purchase online with CarGurus. CarGurus also attracts free website traffic from high-intent car shoppers through search engines.

A key pillar of our consumer marketing efforts is what we call algorithmic traffic acquisition. We employ a team of strategists, engineers and data scientists that optimizes our user acquisition through search engine performance marketing, social media, and other digital marketing channels and has tested over one billion keywords on various search engines as well as sophisticated, personalized re-marketing, to nurture high-intent consumers interested in auto-shopping. We continuously integrate new efficient channels and advance the sophistication of our data-driven algorithmic traffic acquisition, with an ongoing focus on increasingly value-driven campaigns that produce high return on advertising spend. We believe our expertise in this area constitutes a competitive advantage over less sophisticated competitors and those who outsource these capabilities.

In parallel with our sophisticated paid and organic traffic acquisition efforts, we invest significant resources in optimizing our site experience and retention marketing efforts; this includes email and app notifications, to help consumers find the right car for them, connect with a dealer to make a purchase or sell their car online. Rigorous conversion rate optimization efforts help increase the ROI on our advertising spend. Our increasing focus on merchandising that drives more shoppers to connect with dealers with high subscription expansion opportunity is intended to create a virtuous cycle of improved monetization that allows for reinvestment in further improvements to our consumer experience.

We augment our performance marketing, conversion rate optimization and retention marketing efforts with brand building efforts. Our brand marketing efforts are primarily comprised of (i) investments in media, including television, online video and digital social, (ii) expressing our unique brand value proposition throughout our core site experience, app and organic social channels, and (iii) an always on public relations program that allows us to gain significant, high credibility earned media coverage. Despite a shorter tenure, lower investment in brand marketing than our primary competitors, and a hyper competitive industry, we have grown and maintained our brand awareness since launching brand marketing in 2017. We believe that we are well positioned to continue to strengthen our brand by continuing to invest in brand-building efforts and refining the articulation of our unique value proposition. As we continue to drive brand awareness and consideration, we see significant opportunity to drive reach with new consumers leveraging new channels and tactics, and a deeper understanding of and preference for our brand, further accelerating the strong consumer engagement and word of mouth benefits we already enjoy.

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Dealer Marketing

The primary goals of our dealer marketing initiatives are to acquire dealers not yet in our marketplace, convert non‑paying dealers into paying dealers, retain our existing paying dealers, and increase product adoption and usage from our paying dealers. Our dealer marketing efforts aim to:

Competition

We face competition to attract consumers and paying dealers to our marketplaces and services and to attract advertisers to purchase our advertising products and services. Our competitors offer various marketplaces, products, and services that compete with us. Some of these competitors include:

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Competition for Consumers and Dealers

We compete for consumer visits with other online automotive marketplaces, free listing services, general search engines, online dealerships and dealers’ websites. We compete for consumers primarily on the basis of the quality of the consumer experience and the breadth of offerings that we are able to provide. We believe we compete favorably on user experience due to the number of our vehicle listings, the transparency of the information we provide on cars, prices, and dealers, the intuitive nature of our user interface, and our mobile user experience, among other factors.

We compete for dealers’ marketing spend with offline customer acquisition channels, other online automotive marketplaces, dealers’ own customer acquisition efforts on search engines and social media marketplaces, and other internet sites, online dealerships and vehicle auction companies that attract consumers and dealers searching for vehicles, as applicable. We compete primarily on the basis of the ROI that our marketplace offers and the synergies provided by the combination of our foundational listings business with digital wholesale and digital retail offerings. We believe we compete favorably due to our large user audience, high user engagement, and the volume and quality of connections we provide to well-informed consumers, which results in an attractive ROI for dealers.

Competition for Advertisers

We compete for a share of advertisers’ total marketing budgets against media sites, websites dedicated to helping consumers shop for cars, major internet portals, search engines, and social media sites, among others. We also compete for a share of advertisers’ overall marketing budgets with traditional media, such as television, radio, magazines, newspapers, automotive publications, billboards, and other offline advertising channels. We compete for advertising spend based on the marketing ROI that our marketplace provides. We believe we compete favorably due to our large user audience size, high user engagement, and the effectiveness and relevance of our advertising products.

Seasonality

Across the retail automotive industry, consumer purchases are typically greatest in the first three quarters of each year, due in part to the introduction of new vehicle models from manufacturers and the seasonal nature of consumer spending. Additionally, the volume of wholesale vehicle sales can fluctuate from quarter to quarter caused by several factors, including the timing of used vehicles available for sale from selling customers, the seasonality of the retail market for used vehicles and/or inventory challenges in the automotive industry, which affect the demand side of the wholesale industry. Macroeconomic conditions, such as slower growth or recession, higher interest rates, high unemployment, consumer confidence in the economy, consumer debt levels, the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations and other matters that influence consumer spending and preferences, can also impact the volume of wholesale vehicle sales, as was evidenced by the global semiconductor chip shortage. The Digital Wholesale segment operating results have reflected the general seasonality of the wholesale vehicle sales market and macroeconomic conditions of the automotive industry. The U.S. Marketplace segment operating results have reflected the macroeconomic conditions of the automotive industry. However, to date, the U.S. Marketplace segment operating results have not been materially impacted by the general seasonality of the automotive industry. This could possibly change once our business and markets mature.

Sales

Our sales team is responsible for bringing dealers onto our marketplace, converting non-paying dealers to paid subscriptions and increasing dealer participation in new products that CarGurus is bringing to market. We have built an efficient sales and service team of approximately 320 employees worldwide who sell our marketplace products to franchise and independent dealers. We have built a field sales team that works with strategic franchise and national dealership groups in large metropolitan areas in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. In addition, we have advertising sales employees based in the U.S. and Canada.

We have a comprehensive dealer account management process to assist dealers in becoming successful in our marketplace. We assign an Account Manager to paying Listings dealers to develop strong relationships and customer satisfaction. The designated Account Manager spends time educating dealers at every stage of their lifecycle as a paying customer. They advise dealers on a range of topics, including how to effectively use their CarGurus products and merchandise their inventory, track sales, measure ROI for their marketing spend and identify ways to grow their profits. We believe our active communication with our dealers fosters customer satisfaction and increases customer retention.

CarOffer also has a team of approximately 149 sales and service employees based in Texas, which is dedicated to driving transactions for the business as well as enrolling new dealers on the CarOffer platform.

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People and Talent

Our investment in our greatest asset – our people – is integral to our core values, evidenced by our inclusion of employee engagement and cultural efforts as components of our 2022 strategic and organizational initiatives. Our Board of Directors oversees our people and talent efforts and views building our culture – from employee development and retention to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives – as key to driving long-term value for our business and helping mitigate risks.

As of December 31, 2022, we had 1,403 full-time employees, 87 of whom were based outside the United States and 348 of whom were employed through CarOffer. None of our employees are represented by a labor union or covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

Culture, Values and Standards

Our company culture has developed out of our data-driven and innovative approach to the automotive market. We leverage data to drive innovation across all facets of our business and continuously optimize our products and processes to serve our consumers, dealers, advertisers, and partners. Our approach emphasizes original thought, impact, and collaboration across our organization, and we recognize and award employees who drive positive results across these constituencies. We invest in creating a work environment that facilitates partnership among our employees and promotes diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. In that spirit, we have identified our core values as follows:

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging and Equal Employment Policy

We are an equal opportunity employer and strive to build and nurture a culture where inclusiveness is a reflex, not an initiative. With support from our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Advisory Team, we seek to foster diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and to build a workplace where everyone can thrive. Our commitment to these efforts helps us attract and retain the best talent, enables employees to realize their full potential and drives high performance through innovation and collaboration. In 2022, based on data from U.S. CarGurus employees who chose to self-identify (87.3%), we increased representation among women and non-binary employees (35.1% to 37.4%) and traditionally marginalized racial/ethnic groups (30.1% to 34.4%) within our U.S. workforce. We also saw year-over-year increases in the U.S. among women and non-binary employees in technical (25.9% to 26.2%) and among traditionally marginalized racial/ethnic groups in technical roles (45.7% to 49.4%) and management-level roles (19.4% to 21.6%).

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Compensation and Benefits

The success of our business is fundamentally connected to the well-being of our people. Accordingly, we provide our eligible employees with competitive wages and access to flexible and convenient medical programs intended to meet their needs and the needs of their families. In addition to standard medical coverage, we offer the following benefits to our U.S. employees (availability internationally varies): dental and vision coverage, health savings and flexible spending accounts, paid time off, flexible hybrid work schedules or remote work on a case-by-case basis, employee assistance programs, short term and long-term disability insurance and term life insurance, as well as company paid access to certain wellness and family care resources.

Employee Engagement

Each year, we conduct an employee engagement survey to help our management team gain insight into and gauge employees’ feelings, attitudes, and behaviors around working at CarGurus. Our latest survey, completed in September 2022, had a participation rate of approximately 90% of our eligible employees worldwide. The survey results indicated that we excelled in areas like manager empathy and support, as well as key indicators of belonging – including fairly considering each other's ideas and feeling respected as a member of our community. Based on employee feedback, we also identified several company-wide opportunity areas to improve engagement and drive long-term success. Our culture and commitment to building a workplace where we can all thrive has been recognized externally with the following awards: Built In Boston’s “Best Places to Work” in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023; Boston Business Journal’s “Best Places to Work” in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022; Boston Globe’s “Top Place to Work” in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2022; and multiple awards from Comparably including “Best Perks & Benefits” in 2021 and 2022, “Best Work-Life Balance” in 2021 and 2022, and "Best Company Culture” in 2022.

Training and Development

Our people and talent strategy is essential for our ability to continue to develop and market innovative products and customer solutions. We continually invest in our employees’ career growth and provide our team with a wide range of development opportunities, including mandatory quarterly compliance training courses as well as one-on-one, virtual, social and self-directed learning, mentoring, coaching, and external development. In 2022, nearly 100% of our employees participated in learning and development activities.

Technology and Product Development

We are a technology company focused on innovative, actionable data analysis. We design our mobile and web products to create a transparent experience for both consumers and dealers. We believe in rapid development, release frequent updates and have internal tools and automation that allow us to efficiently evolve our products. Our software is built using a combination of internally developed software, third-party software and services, and open source software.

Our Search Technology

Our search and ranking technology is served by a proprietary in‑memory search index solution that is scalable, fast, and extensible. We have highly flexible interfaces that allow dealers to automatically add their inventory to our index, enabling us to quickly integrate hundreds of inventory sources with minimal effort and easily support inventory growth.

Our Mobile Technology

We have designed our marketplace to appeal to mobile users by developing our products with a mobile‑first mindset. All of our search results pages use a single‑page application type approach to eliminate page reloads and improve responsiveness. We also use techniques to load content onto a user’s mobile device more efficiently.

Our Integrations

We make available several application program interfaces and web widgets that integrate with customer relationship management and inventory management solutions, among other platforms. These integrations allow dealers to incorporate designated data and tools into the fabric of their marketing and customer engagement strategies. For example, our Deal Rating Badges are used on dealer websites, which show our Deal Rating for cars that have been rated as a Great Deal, Good Deal, or Fair Deal. Our Deal Rating serves as trusted, third‑party validation on dealer websites.

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Infrastructure

Our development servers and U.S. and Canadian websites are hosted at a third-party data centers in the U.S. near Dallas, Texas, as well as through third-party cloud services in the U.S. Our European websites are hosted on third-party cloud computing services near each of London, England and Dublin, Ireland. We use third-party content distribution networks to cache and serve many portions of our sites at locations across the globe. We monitor and test at the application, host, network, and full site levels to maintain availability and promote performance. We use third-party cloud computing services for many data processing jobs and backup/recovery services.

Intellectual Property

We protect our intellectual property through a combination of patents, copyrights, trademarks, service marks, domain names, trade secret protections, confidentiality procedures, and contractual restrictions.

We have one issued U.S. patent with an expiration date of May 2034, one pending U.S. patent application, and two pending international patent applications. These applications cover proprietary technology that relates to various functionalities on our platform, generally in connection with pricing, ranking and detecting fraud in online listings. We intend to pursue additional patent protection to the extent we believe it would be beneficial to our competitive position.

We have a number of registered and unregistered trademarks, including “CarGurus,” the CarGurus logo, the CG logo, and related marks, which we have registered as trademarks in the U.S. and certain other jurisdictions. We pursue additional trademark registrations to the extent we believe doing so would be beneficial to our competitive position. Additionally, CarOffer has a number of registered and unregistered trademarks, including “CarOffer” and the CarOffer logo, and related marks, which CarOffer has registered as trademarks in the U.S. CarOffer pursues additional trademark registrations to the extent it believes doing so would be beneficial to its competitive position. Our and CarOffer’s registered trademarks remain enforceable in the countries in which they are registered for as long as we and CarOffer, as applicable, continue to use the marks, and pay the fees to maintain the registrations, in those countries.

We are the registered holder of several domestic and international domain names that include “CarGurus” and variations of our trade names.

In addition to the protection provided by our intellectual property rights, we enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements with our employees and relevant consultants, contractors, and business partners. We control the use of our proprietary technology and intellectual property through provisions in contracts with our customers and partners and our general and product-specific terms of use on our websites.

Regulatory

Various aspects of our business are, may become, or may be viewed by regulators from time to time as subject, directly or indirectly, to U.S. federal, state, local and foreign laws and regulations. In particular, the advertising and sale of new or used motor vehicles is highly regulated by the states and jurisdictions in which we do business. Although we do not sell motor vehicles and we believe that vehicle listings on our sites are not themselves advertisements, regulatory authorities or third parties could take the position that some of the laws or regulations applicable to dealers or to the manner in which motor vehicles are advertised and sold generally are directly applicable to our business. These advertising laws and regulations, which often originated decades before the emergence of the internet, are frequently subject to multiple interpretations, are not uniform across jurisdictions, sometimes impose inconsistent requirements with respect to new or used motor vehicles, and the manner in which they should be applied to our business model is not always clear. Regulators or other third parties could take, and on some occasions have taken, the position that our marketplace or related products violate applicable brokering, birddog, consumer protection, or advertising laws or regulations.

Our wholesale operations through CarOffer are regulated by the states in which we operate and by the U.S. federal government. These activities may also be subject to state and local licensing requirements. Additionally, we may be subject to regulation by individual state dealer licensing authorities and state consumer protection agencies.

In order to operate in this regulated environment, we develop our products and services with a view toward appropriately managing the risk that our regulatory compliance, or the regulatory compliance of the dealers whose inventory is listed on our websites, could be challenged.

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We consider applicable advertising and consumer protection laws and regulations in designing our products and services. With respect to paid advertising, other than Featured Listings, Featured Priority Listings and products marketed under our RPM digital advertising suite, we believe that most of the content displayed on the websites we operate does not constitute paid advertising for the sale of motor vehicles. Nevertheless, we endeavor to design our website content in a manner that would comply with relevant advertising regulations and consumer protection laws if, and to the extent that, the content is considered to be vehicle sales advertising.

Our websites and mobile applications enable us, dealers, and users to send and receive text messages and other mobile phone communications, which requires us to comply with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, in the U.S. The TCPA, as interpreted and implemented by the Federal Communications Commission, or the FCC, and federal and state courts, imposes significant restrictions on utilization of telephone calls and text messages to residential and mobile telephone numbers as a means of communication, particularly when the prior express consent of the person being contacted has not been obtained.

In addition, we are subject to numerous federal, national, state, and local laws and regulations in the United States and around the world regarding privacy and the collection, processing, storage, sharing, disclosure, use, cross-border transfer, and protection of personal information and other data. While the scope of these laws and regulations is changing and remains subject to differing interpretations, we seek to comply with industry standards and all applicable laws, policies, legal obligations, and industry codes of conduct relating to privacy and data protection. We are also subject to the terms of our privacy policies and privacy-related obligations to third parties.

Corporate Information

We were originally organized on November 10, 2005 as a Massachusetts limited liability company under the name “Nimalex LLC.” Effective July 15, 2006, we changed our name to “CarGurus LLC.” On June 26, 2015, we converted from a Delaware limited liability company into a Delaware corporation and changed our name to “CarGurus, Inc.”

Our principal executive offices are located at 2 Canal Park, 4th Floor, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02141, and our telephone number is (617) 354-0068. Our U.S. website is www.cargurus.com.

CarGurus, the CarGurus logo, and other trademarks or service marks of CarGurus appearing in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are the property of CarGurus, Inc. Trade names, trademarks, and service marks of other companies appearing in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are the property of their respective holders. We have omitted the ® and ™ designations, as applicable, for the trademarks used in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Additional Information

The following filings are available on our investor relations website after we file them with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC: Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, Proxy Statements for our annual meetings of stockholders and any amendments to those reports or statements. These filings are also available for download free of charge on our investor relations website. Our investor relations website is located at http://investors.cargurus.com.

We webcast our earnings calls and certain events that we participate in or host with members of the investment community on our investor relations website. Additionally, we provide news and announcements regarding our financial performance, including SEC filings, investor events, press and earnings releases, on our investor relations website. Corporate governance information, including our policies concerning business conduct and ethics, is also available on our investor relations website under the heading “Governance.” No content from any of our websites is intended to be incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any reference to our websites is intended to be an inactive textual reference only.

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Item 1A. Risk Factors.

Investing in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our audited consolidated financial statements and related notes, before evaluating our business. Our business, financial condition, operating results, cash flow, and prospects could be materially and adversely affected by any of these risks or uncertainties. In that event, the trading price of our Class A common stock could decline. See “Special Note Regarding Forward‑Looking Statements.”

Risks Related to Our Business and Industry

Our business is substantially dependent on our relationships with dealers. If a significant number of dealers terminate their subscription agreements with us, and/or dealer closures or consolidations occur that reduce demand for our products, our business and financial results would be materially and adversely affected.

A significant source of our revenue consists of subscription fees paid to us by dealers for access to enhanced features on our automotive marketplaces. Our subscription agreements with dealers generally may be terminated by us with 30 days’ notice and by dealers with 30 days’ notice prior to the commencement of the applicable renewal term. The majority of our contracts with dealers currently provide for one-month committed terms and do not contain contractual obligations requiring a dealer to maintain its relationship with us beyond the committed term. A dealer may be influenced by several factors to cancel its subscription with us, including national and regional dealership associations, national and local regulators, automotive manufacturers, consumer groups, and consolidated dealer groups. If any of these influential groups indicate that dealers should not enter into or maintain subscription agreements with us, dealers could share this belief and we may lose a number of our paying dealers. If a significant number of our paying dealers terminate their subscriptions with us, our business and financial results would be materially and adversely affected.

Additionally, in the past, the number of United States dealers has declined due to dealership closures and consolidations as a result of industry dynamics and macroeconomic issues. When dealers consolidate, the services they previously purchased separately are often purchased by the combined entity in a lesser quantity or for a lower aggregate price than before, leading to volume compression and loss of revenue. Further dealership consolidations or closures could reduce the aggregate demand for our products and services. If dealership closures and consolidations occur in the future, our business and financial results could be materially and adversely affected.

If we fail to maintain or increase the number of dealers that pay subscription fees to us, or fail to maintain or increase the fees paid to us for subscriptions, our business and financial results would be materially and adversely affected.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many paying dealers canceled their subscriptions with us (including, in some cases, with our permission prior to the end of the applicable contract term and notice period), and it is possible that such dealers will not re-subscribe and that additional dealers will cancel their subscriptions in the future for a variety of reasons, including as a result of the continuing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other macroeconomic issues, such as increased interest rates and other matters that influence consumer spending. If paying dealers do not receive the volume of consumer connections that they expect during their subscription period, do not experience the level of car sales they expect from those connections, or fail to attribute consumer connections or sales to our platform, they may terminate their subscriptions prior to the commencement of the applicable renewal term. If we fail to maintain or expand our base of paying dealers or fail to maintain or increase the level of fees that we receive from them, our business and financial results would be materially and adversely affected.

We allow dealers to list their inventory in CarGurus' marketplaces for free; however, we impose certain limitations on such free listings. In the future, we may decide to impose additional restrictions on Restricted Listings or modify the services available to non-paying dealers. These changes to our Restricted Listings product may result in less inventory being displayed to consumers, which may impair our efforts to attract consumers, and cause paying and non-paying dealers to receive fewer leads and connections, which may make it more difficult for us to convert non-paying dealers to paying dealers or maintain or expand our base of paying dealers. If dealers do not subscribe to our paid offerings at the rates we expect, our business and financial results would be materially and adversely affected.

Our business is subject to risks related to the larger automotive industry ecosystem, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, revenue, results of operations, and financial condition.

Decreases in consumer demand could adversely affect the market for automobile purchases and, as a result, reduce the number of consumers using our platform. Consumer purchases of new and used automobiles generally decline during recessionary periods and other periods in which disposable income is adversely affected. Purchases of new and used automobiles are typically discretionary for consumers and have been, and may continue to be, affected by negative trends in the economy, including: the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost of energy and gasoline; the availability and cost of credit; increased interest rates; reductions in business and consumer confidence; stock market volatility; and increased unemployment.

Further, in recent years the market for motor vehicles has experienced rapid changes in technology and consumer demands. Self-driving technology, ride sharing, transportation networks, and other fundamental changes in transportation could impact consumer

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demand for the purchase of automobiles. A reduction in the number of automobiles purchased by consumers could adversely affect dealers and car manufacturers and lead to a reduction in other spending by these groups, including targeted incentive programs.

In addition, our business has been and may continue to be negatively affected by challenges to the larger automotive industry ecosystem, including global supply chain challenges, the effects of the global semiconductor chip shortage, changes to trade policies, including tariff rates and customs duties, trade relations between the United States and China and other macroeconomic issues, including the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased interest rates. Increasing global inflation rates have spurred a cycle of monetary policy tightening, including through central bank increases to key short-term lending rates. Both the availability and cost of credit are factors affecting consumer confidence, which is a critical driver of vehicle sales for our consumers and dealers. Additionally, vehicle affordability for our consumers is becoming more challenging due to a combination of factors, including elevated vehicle pricing resulting from inflationary cost increases and vehicle production constraints, and increasing vehicle finance costs due to increased interest rates. These factors could have a material adverse effect on our business, revenue, results of operations, and financial condition.

If the CarOffer business and/or our combined offerings do not continue to grow, our revenue and business would be significantly harmed.

A significant amount of our revenue is now derived from the wholesale sale of automobiles and IMCO. Continued achievement of our transaction synergies and our ability to continue to grow the CarOffer business and the revenue associated with it depends on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, our ability to continue to: expand the number of dealers engaging on the CarOffer platform; retain existing customers and increase the share of wholesale transactions which they complete on the CarOffer platform; attract prospective customers who have historically purchased or sold vehicles through physical auctions and may choose not to transact online; and successfully compete with competitors, including other online vehicle auction companies and large, national offline vehicle auction companies that are expanding into the online channel and have launched online auctions in connection with their physical auctions. Additionally, our ability to continue to grow IMCO and the revenue associated with it also depends on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, our ability to continue to: effectively scale and market IMCO; attract prospective consumers to sell their vehicles online through IMCO; and successfully compete with competitors, including online dealerships. If our anticipated transaction synergies do not fully materialize, or the CarOffer business and/or IMCO fail to continue to grow at the rate we expect, our revenue and business would be significantly harmed.

Industry conditions such as a significant change in retail vehicle prices or a decline in the used vehicle inventory supply coming to the wholesale market could also adversely impact CarOffer’s business and growth. For example, if retail prices for used vehicles rise relative to retail prices for new vehicles, it could make buying a new vehicle more attractive to consumers than buying a used vehicle, which could result in reduced used vehicle wholesale sales on the CarOffer platform. Used vehicle dealers may also decide to retail more of their vehicles on their own, which could adversely impact the volume of vehicles offered for sale on the CarOffer platform. We also face inventory risk in connection with vehicles acquired by CarOffer via arbitration, including the risk of inventory obsolescence, a decline in values, and significant inventory write-downs or write-offs. Such inventory risk would be higher if arbitrations increase, which is more likely to occur in connection with declining wholesale market conditions.

Furthermore, activity on the CarOffer platform has in the past fluctuated, and may again in the future fluctuate, from period to period based on macroeconomic conditions and changing demand requirements, which could adversely impact our revenue, results of operations, and financial condition for such period(s). Macroeconomic issues, including increased interest rates and lower consumer confidence, could also adversely impact dealer demand for sourcing inventory and therefore lead to a reduction in the number of vehicle wholesale sales on the CarOffer platform and/or transacted via IMCO, which would adversely impact CarOffer’s business and financial results. Additionally, inventory challenges in the automotive industry, including for reasons attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic, have contributed and could continue to contribute to a decrease in the supply of vehicles coming to the wholesale market and reduce the number of vehicles sold on the CarOffer platform and/or transacted via IMCO. An inability by CarOffer to retain customers and/or increase or find alternative sources of vehicle supply would adversely impact our revenue and business.

If dealers or other advertisers reduce their spending with us, our advertising revenue and business would be harmed.

A portion of our revenue is derived from advertising revenues generated primarily through short-term advertising sales, including on-site advertising and audience targeting services, to dealers, auto manufacturers, and other auto-related brand advertisers. We compete for this advertising revenue with other online automotive marketplaces and with television, print media, and other traditional advertising channels. Our ability to attract and retain advertisers and to generate advertising revenue depends on a number of factors, including our ability to: increase the number of consumers using our marketplaces; compete effectively for advertising spending with other online automotive marketplaces; continue to develop our advertising products; keep pace with changes in technology and the practices and offerings of our competitors; and offer an attractive ROI to our advertisers for their advertising spend with us.

As a result of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, some advertisers canceled or reduced their advertising with us and it is possible that advertising customers will cancel or reduce their advertising with us in the future for a variety of reasons, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other macroeconomic issues, such as increased interest rates and other matters that influence consumer spending. In addition, the year-over-year decline in the number of consumer visits to our sites as a result of the COVID-19

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pandemic or otherwise resulted in the delivery of fewer impressions for our advertising customers than anticipated year-over-year for the year ended December 31, 2022, which has caused, and may continue to cause, an adverse impact on our advertising revenues. We may not succeed in capturing a greater share of our advertisers’ spending if we are unable to convince advertisers of the effectiveness or superiority of our advertising offerings as compared to alternative channels. If current advertisers reduce their advertising spending with us and we are unable to replace such reduced advertising spending, our advertising revenue and business and financial results would be harmed.

If we are unable to provide a compelling experience to consumers on our platform, connections between consumers and dealers using our marketplaces may decline and our business and financial results would be materially and adversely affected.

If we fail to continue to provide a compelling vehicle search experience to consumers, the number of connections between consumers and dealers through our marketplaces could decline, which in turn could lead dealers to suspend listing their inventory in our marketplaces, cancel their subscriptions, or reduce their spending with us. If dealers pause or cancel listing their inventory in our marketplaces, we may not be able to attract a large consumer audience, which may cause other dealers to pause or cancel their use of our marketplaces. This reduction in the number of dealers using our marketplaces would likely materially and adversely affect our marketplaces and our business and financial results. We believe that our ability to provide a compelling vehicle search experience, both on desktop computers and through mobile devices, is subject to a number of factors, including our ability to: maintain attractive marketplaces for consumers and dealers; continue to innovate and introduce products for our marketplaces; launch new products that are effective and have a high degree of consumer engagement; display a wide variety of automobile inventory to attract more consumers to our websites; provide mobile applications that engage consumers; maintain the compatibility of our mobile applications with operating systems, such as iOS and Android, and with popular mobile devices running such operating systems; and access and analyze a sufficient amount of data to enable us to provide relevant information to consumers, including pricing information and accurate vehicle details.

Any inability by us to develop new products, or achieve widespread consumer and dealer adoption of those products, could negatively impact our business and financial results.

Our success depends on our continued innovation to provide products that make our marketplaces, websites, and mobile applications useful for consumers and dealers or that otherwise provide value to consumers and dealers. For example, during 2022 we scaled IMCO in furtherance of our evolution to a transaction-enabled platform. We also continue to develop digital retail offerings, including those that expand a dealer’s geographic footprint and others that bring additional elements of the car buying experience online through our websites. A failure by us to capture the benefits that we expect from our rollout of IMCO and these digital retail investments could have an adverse effect on our business and financial results.

We also anticipate that over time our investments in our current products may become less productive and the growth of our revenue will require more focus on developing new products. These new products must be widely adopted by consumers and dealers in order for us to continue to attract consumers to our marketplaces and dealers to our products and services. Accordingly, we must continually invest resources in product, technology, and development to improve the attractiveness of our marketplaces. Our ability to engage in these activities may decline as a result of macroeconomic effects and any cost-savings initiatives on our business. These product, technology, and development expenses may include costs of hiring additional personnel and retaining our current employees, engaging third-party service providers and conducting other research and development activities. There can be no assurance that innovations to our products like IMCO, or the development of future products, will increase consumer or dealer engagement, achieve market acceptance, create additional revenue or become profitable. In addition, revenue relating to new products is typically unpredictable and our new products may have lower gross margins, lower retention rates, and higher marketing and sales costs than our existing products. We are likely to continue to modify our pricing models for both existing and new products so that our prices for our offerings reflect the value those offerings are providing to consumers and dealers. Our pricing models may not effectively reflect the value of products to dealers, and, if we are unable to provide marketplaces and products that consumers and dealers want to use, they may reduce or cease the use of our marketplaces and products. Without innovative marketplaces and related products, we may be unable to attract additional, unique consumers or retain current consumers, which could affect the number of dealers that become paying dealers and the number of advertisers that want to advertise in our marketplaces, as well as the amounts that they are willing to pay for our products, which could, in turn, negatively impact our business and financial results.

We rely on internet search engines to drive traffic to our websites, and if we fail to appear prominently in the search results, our traffic would decline and our business would be adversely affected.

We rely, in part, on internet search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo! to drive traffic to our websites. The number of consumers we attract to our marketplaces from search engines is due in part to how and where our websites rank in unpaid search results. These rankings can be affected by a number of factors, many of which are not under our direct control and may change frequently. For example, when a consumer searches for a vehicle in an internet search engine, we rely on a high organic search ranking of our webpages to refer the consumer to our websites. Our competitors’ internet search engine optimization efforts may result in their websites receiving higher search result rankings than ours, or internet search engines could change their methodologies and/or introduce competing products in a way that would adversely affect our search result rankings. If internet search engines modify their methodologies in ways that are detrimental to us, as they have done from time to time, or if our efforts to improve our search engine optimization are unsuccessful or

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less successful than our competitors’ efforts, our ability to attract a large consumer audience could diminish, traffic to our marketplaces could decline and the number of leads that we send to our dealers could be adversely impacted. Additionally, competing products from internet search engine providers, such as those that provide dealer and vehicle pricing and other information directly in search results, could also adversely impact traffic to our websites and the number of leads that we are able to send to our dealers. Our business would also be adversely affected if internet search engine providers choose to align with our competitors. Reductions in our own search advertising spend or more aggressive spending by our competitors could also cause us to incur higher advertising costs and/or reduce our market visibility to prospective users. Our websites have experienced fluctuations in organic and paid search result rankings in the past, and we anticipate fluctuations in the future. Any reduction in the number of consumers directed to our websites through internet search engines could harm our business and operating results.

We may be unable to maintain or grow relationships with data providers, or may experience interruptions in the data they provide, which may create a less valuable or transparent shopping experience and negatively affect our business and operating results.

We obtain data from many third-party data providers, including inventory management systems, automotive website providers, customer relationship management systems, dealer management systems, governmental entities, and third-party data licensors. Our business relies on our ability to obtain data for the benefit of consumers and dealers using our marketplaces. For example, our success in each market is dependent in part upon our ability to obtain and maintain inventory data and other vehicle information for those markets. The loss or interruption of such inventory data or other vehicle information could decrease the number of consumers using our marketplaces. We could experience interruptions in our data access for a number of reasons, including difficulties in renewing our agreements with data providers, changes to the software used by data providers, efforts by industry participants to restrict access to data, and increased fees we may be charged by data providers. Our marketplaces could be negatively affected if any current provider terminates its relationship with us or our service from any provider is interrupted. If there is a material disruption in the data provided to us, the information that we provide to consumers and dealers using our marketplaces may be limited. In addition, the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of this information may suffer, which may lead to a less valuable and less transparent shopping experience for consumers using our marketplaces and could negatively affect our business and operating results.

The failure to build, maintain and protect our brands would harm our ability to attract a large consumer audience and to expand the use of our marketplaces by consumers and dealers.

While we are focused on building our brand recognition, maintaining and enhancing our brands will depend largely on the success of our efforts to maintain the trust of consumers and dealers and to deliver value to each consumer and dealer using our marketplaces. Our ability to protect our brands is also impacted by the success of our efforts to optimize our significant brand spend and overcome the intense competition in brand marketing across our industry, including competitors that may imitate our messaging. In addition, we have reduced our brand spend in comparison to our pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, and it is possible that we may in the future decide to further suppress such spend depending on macroeconomic conditions. If consumers believe that we are not focused on providing them with a better automobile shopping experience, or if we fail to overcome brand marketing competition and maintain a differentiated value proposition in consumers’ minds, our reputation and the strength of our brands may be adversely affected.

Complaints or negative publicity about our business practices and culture, our management team and employees, our marketing and advertising campaigns, our compliance with applicable laws and regulations, the integrity of the data that we provide to consumers, data privacy and security issues, third party content and conduct on our websites and other aspects of our business, irrespective of their validity, could diminish consumers’ and dealers’ confidence and participation in our marketplaces and could adversely affect our brands. There can be no assurance that we will be able to maintain or enhance our brands, and failure to do so would harm our business growth prospects and operating results.

Our recent, rapid growth is not indicative of our future growth, and our revenue growth rate in the future is uncertain, including due to potential macroeconomic effects.

Our revenue increased to $1,655.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2022 from $951.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2021, representing a 74% increase between such periods. Our revenue in the future may not grow at such a rate and could potentially be impacted by macroeconomic issues, such as declining wholesale vehicle prices, the war in Ukraine and Russian sanctions, increased interest rates, lower consumer confidence, consumer debt levels and other matters that influence consumer spending and preferences. In addition, we will not be able to grow as expected, or at all, if we fail to: increase the number of consumers using our marketplaces; attract new consumers to sell their vehicles online through IMCO; maintain and expand the number of dealers that subscribe to our marketplaces and maintain and increase the fees that they are paying; expand the number of dealers engaging on the CarOffer platform and increase the share of wholesale transactions which they complete on such platform; attract and retain advertisers placing advertisements in our marketplaces; further improve the quality of our marketplaces and introduce high quality new products; and increase the number of connections between consumers and dealers using our marketplaces and connections to paying dealers, in particular. If our revenue declines or fails to grow, investors’ perceptions of our business may be adversely affected, and the market price of our Class A common stock could decline.

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We may require additional capital to pursue our business objectives and respond to business opportunities, challenges, or unforeseen circumstances. If we are unable to generate sufficient cash flows or if capital is not available to us, our business, operating results, financial condition, and prospects could be adversely affected.

If we are unable to generate sufficient cash flows, we would require additional capital to pursue our business objectives and respond to business opportunities, challenges, or unforeseen circumstances, including the continuing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other macroeconomic issues as well as to make marketing expenditures to improve our brand awareness, develop new products, further improve our platform and existing products, enhance our operating infrastructure, and acquire complementary businesses and technologies. Accordingly, we may need to engage in equity or debt financings to secure additional funds, in addition to our revolving credit facility associated with the Credit Agreement (as defined below) (the "2022 Revolver"). However, additional funds may not be available when we need them on terms that are acceptable to us or at all. Volatility in the equity and credit markets may also have an adverse effect on our ability to obtain equity or debt financing. An inability to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms satisfactory to us when we require it could significantly limit our ability to continue to pursue our business objectives and to respond to business opportunities, challenges, or unforeseen circumstances, and may adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and prospects.

Our international operations involve risks that may differ from, or are in addition to, our domestic operational risks.

In addition to the United States, we operate marketplaces in the United Kingdom and Canada, which are less familiar competitive environments and involve various risks, including the need to invest significant resources and the likelihood that returns on such investments will not be achieved for several years, or possibly at all. We have incurred losses in prior periods in the United Kingdom and Canada and may incur losses there again in the future. We also face various other challenges in those jurisdictions. For example, our competitors may be more established or otherwise better positioned than we are to succeed in the United Kingdom and Canada. Our competitors may offer services to dealers that make dealers dependent on them, such as hosting dealers’ websites and providing inventory feeds for dealers, which would make it difficult to attract dealers to our marketplaces. Any of these barriers could impede our operations in our international markets, which could affect our business and potential growth.

Our ability to manage our business and conduct our operations internationally requires considerable management attention and resources, and is subject to the particular challenges of supporting a business in an environment of multiple languages, cultures, customs, legal and regulatory systems, alternative dispute resolution systems, and commercial infrastructures. Operating internationally may subject us to different risks or increase our exposure in connection with current risks, including risks associated with: adapting our websites and mobile applications to conform to local consumer behavior; increased competition from local providers and potential preferences by local populations for local providers; compliance with applicable foreign laws and regulations, including different privacy, censorship, and liability standards and regulations, and different intellectual property laws; the enforceability of our intellectual property rights; credit risk and higher levels of payment fraud; compliance with anti-bribery laws, including compliance with currency exchange rate fluctuations; adverse changes in trade relationships among foreign countries and/or between the United States and such countries; double taxation of our international earnings and potentially adverse tax consequences arising from the tax laws of the United States or the foreign jurisdictions in which we operate; and higher costs of doing business internationally.

We depend on key personnel to operate our business, and if we are unable to retain, attract and integrate qualified personnel, or if we experience turnover of our key personnel, our ability to develop and successfully grow our business could be materially and adversely affected.

We believe our success has depended, and continues to depend, on our continuing ability to attract, develop, motivate, and retain highly qualified and skilled employees. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have encountered increased rates of turnover of our employee base and encountered intense competition for retaining and attracting qualified and skilled employees. Accordingly, we have incurred, and we may continue to incur, significant costs to attract new employees and retain existing ones, and we may in the future become less competitive in attracting and retaining employees as a result of any expense reduction efforts that we may initiate.

In addition, any unplanned turnover, reduced involvement, or our failure to develop an adequate succession plan for any of our executive officers or key employees, or the reduction in their involvement in the management of our business, could materially adversely affect our ability to execute our business plan and strategy, and we may not be able to find adequate replacements on a timely basis, or at all. Our executive officers and other employees are at-will, which means they may terminate their employment relationships with us at any time, and their knowledge of our business and industry would be extremely difficult to replace. We cannot ensure that we will be able to retain the services of any members of our senior management or other key employees. For example, effective on October 3, 2022 and December 2, 2022, respectively, Scot Fredo, our former Chief Financial Officer, and Yann Gellot, our former Senior Vice President, Finance and Principal Accounting Officer, resigned. If we do not succeed in attracting well-qualified employees or retaining and motivating existing employees, our business could be materially and adversely affected. Additionally, we may face risks related to the transitions that recently occurred in our senior management team, such as the departures of Messrs. Fredo and Gellot, and other future transitions in our leadership, including the disruption of our operations and the depletion of our institutional knowledge base.

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We may be subject to disputes regarding the accuracy of Instant Market Values, Deal Ratings, Dealer Ratings, New Car Price Guidance and other features of our marketplaces.

We provide consumers using our CarGurus platform and dealers using our CarOffer platform with our proprietary IMV, Deal Ratings, and Dealer Ratings, as well as other features to help them evaluate vehicle listings, including price guidance for new car listings, or New Car Price Guidance. Our valuation models depend on the inventory listed on our sites as well as public information regarding automotive sales. If the inventory on our sites declines significantly, or if the number of automotive sales declines significantly or used car sales prices become volatile, whether as a result of macroeconomic effects or otherwise, our valuation models may not perform as expected. Revisions to or errors in our automated valuation models, or the algorithms that underlie them, may cause the IMV, the Deal Rating, New Car Price Guidance, or other features to vary from our expectations regarding the accuracy of these tools. In addition, from time to time, regulators, consumers, dealers and other industry participants may question or disagree with our IMV, Deal Rating, Dealer Rating or New Car Price Guidance. Any such questions or disagreements could result in distraction from our business or potentially harm our reputation, could result in a decline in consumers’ confidence in, or use of, our marketplaces and could result in legal disputes.

We are subject to a complex framework of laws and regulations, many of which are unsettled, still developing and contradictory, which have in the past, and could in the future, subject us to claims, challenge our business model, or otherwise harm our business.

Various aspects of our business are, may become, or may be viewed by regulators from time to time as subject, directly or indirectly, to United States federal, state and local laws and regulations, and to foreign laws and regulations.

Local Motor Vehicle Sales, Advertising and Brokering, and Consumer Protection Laws

The advertising and sale of new and used motor vehicles is highly regulated by the jurisdictions in which we do business. Regulatory authorities or third parties could take the position that some of the laws or regulations applicable to dealers or to the manner in which motor vehicles are advertised and sold generally are directly applicable to our business. If our marketplaces and related products are determined to not comply with relevant regulatory requirements, we or dealers could be subject to civil and criminal penalties, including fines, or the award of significant damages in class actions or other civil litigation, as well as orders interfering with our ability to continue providing our marketplaces and related products and services in certain jurisdictions. In addition, even absent such a determination, to the extent dealers are uncertain about the applicability of such laws and regulations to our business, we may lose, or have difficulty increasing the number of paying dealers, which would affect our future growth.

If regulators or other third parties take the position that our marketplaces or related products violate applicable dealer licensing, brokering, bird-dog, consumer protection, consumer finance or advertising laws or regulations, responding to such allegations could be costly, could require us to pay significant sums in settlements, could require us to pay civil and criminal penalties, including fines, could interfere with our ability to continue providing our marketplaces and related products in certain jurisdictions, or could require us to make adjustments to our marketplaces and related products or the manner in which we derive revenue from dealers using our platform, any or all of which could result in substantial adverse publicity, termination of subscriptions by dealers, decreased revenues, distraction for our employees, increased expenses, and decreased profitability.

Federal Laws and Regulations

The United States Federal Trade Commission, or the FTC, has the authority to take actions to remedy or prevent acts or practices that it considers to be unfair or deceptive and that affect commerce in the United States. If the FTC takes the position in the future that any aspect of our business, including our advertising and privacy practices, constitutes an unfair or deceptive act or practice, responding to such allegations could require us to defend our practices and pay significant damages, settlements, and civil penalties, or could require us to make adjustments to our marketplaces and related products and services, any or all of which could result in substantial adverse publicity, distraction for our employees, loss of participating dealers, lost revenues, increased expenses, and decreased profitability.

Our platforms enable us, dealers, and users to send and receive text messages and other mobile phone communications. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or the TCPA, as interpreted and implemented by the United States Federal Communications Commission, or the FCC, and federal and state courts, impose significant restrictions on utilization of telephone calls and text messages to residential and mobile telephone numbers as a means of communication, particularly if the prior express consent of the person being contacted has not been obtained. Violations of the TCPA may be enforced by the FCC, by state attorneys general, or by others through litigation, including class actions. Furthermore, several provisions of the TCPA, as well as applicable rules and orders, are open to multiple interpretations, and compliance may involve fact-specific analyses.

Any failure by us, or the third parties on which we rely, to adhere to, or successfully implement, appropriate processes and procedures in response to existing or future laws and regulations could result in legal and monetary liability, fines and penalties, or damage to our reputation in the marketplace, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Even if the claims are meritless, we may be required to expend resources and pay costs to defend against regulatory actions or third-party claims. Additionally, any change to applicable laws or their interpretations that further restricts the way consumers and dealers interact through our platforms, or any governmental or private enforcement actions related thereto, could adversely affect our ability to attract customers and could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows.

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Antitrust and Other Laws

Antitrust and competition laws prohibit, among other things, any joint conduct among competitors that would lessen competition in the marketplace. A governmental or private civil action alleging unlawful or anticompetitive activity could be costly to defend and could harm our business, results of operations, financial condition, and cash flows.

Claims could be made against us under both United States and foreign laws, including claims for defamation, libel, invasion of privacy, false advertising, intellectual property infringement, or claims based on other theories related to the nature and content of the materials disseminated by our marketplaces and on portions of our websites. Our defense against any of these actions could be costly and involve significant time and attention of our management and other resources. If we become liable for information transmitted in our marketplaces, we could be directly harmed and we may be forced to implement new measures to reduce our exposure to this liability.

The foregoing description of laws and regulations to which we are or may be subject is not exhaustive, and the regulatory framework governing our operations is subject to continuous change. We are, and we will continue to be, exposed to legal and regulatory risks including with respect to privacy, tax, law enforcement, content, intellectual property, competition, and other matters. The enactment of new laws and regulations or the interpretation of existing laws and regulations, both domestically and internationally, may affect the operation of our business, directly or indirectly, which could result in substantial regulatory compliance costs, civil or criminal penalties, including fines, adverse publicity, loss of subscribing dealers, lost revenues, increased expenses, and decreased profitability. Further, investigations by governmental agencies, including the FTC, into allegedly anticompetitive, unfair, deceptive or other business practices by us or dealers using our marketplaces, could cause us to incur additional expenses and, if adversely concluded, could result in substantial civil or criminal penalties and significant legal liability, or orders requiring us to make adjustments to our marketplaces and related products and services.

We rely on third-party service providers and strategic partners for many aspects of our business, and any failure to maintain these relationships or to successfully integrate certain third-party platforms could harm our business.

Our success depends upon our relationships with third parties, including, among others: our payment processor; our data center hosts; our information technology providers; our data providers for inventory and vehicle information; and our partners for vehicle transportation, inspection and other logistics associated with our CarOffer business and IMCO. If these third parties experience difficulty meeting our requirements or standards, have adverse audit results, violate the terms of our agreements or applicable law, fail to obtain or maintain applicable licenses, or if the relationships we have established with such third parties expire or otherwise terminate, it could make it difficult for us to operate some aspects of our business, which could damage our business and reputation. In addition, if such third-party service providers or strategic partners were to cease operations, temporarily or permanently, face financial distress or other business disruptions, increase their fees, or if our relationships with these providers or partners deteriorate or terminate, whether as a result of macroeconomic conditions or otherwise, we could suffer increased costs and we may be unable to provide similar services until an equivalent provider could be found or we could develop replacement technology or operations. For example, primarily in connection with our Dealer-to-Dealer transactions, we utilize a third-party payment processor that collects customer payments on our behalf and remits them to us, as well as provides payments in advance for certain selling dealers. If our relationship with this third-party payment processor were to deteriorate or terminate, we would have to identify a succeeding payment processor or assume in-house facilitation of these services, which could disrupt our business and adversely affect our revenue, results of operations, and financial condition. Furthermore, if we are unsuccessful in identifying or finding high-quality partners, if we fail to negotiate cost-effective relationships with them, or if we ineffectively manage these relationships, it could have an adverse impact on our business and financial results.

Our enterprise systems require that we integrate the platforms hosted by certain third-party service providers. We are responsible for integrating these platforms and updating them to maintain proper functionality. Issues with these integrations, our failure to properly update third-party platforms or any interruptions to our internal enterprise systems could harm our business by causing delays in our ability to quote, activate service and bill new and existing customers on our platform.

A significant disruption in service on our websites or mobile applications could damage our reputation and result in a loss of consumers, which could harm our business, brands, operating results, and financial condition.

Our brands, reputation, and ability to attract consumers, dealers, and advertisers depend on the reliable performance of our technology infrastructure and content delivery. We have experienced, and we may in the future experience, interruptions with our systems. Interruptions in these systems could affect the security or availability of our marketplaces, and prevent or inhibit the ability of dealers and consumers to access our marketplaces. For example, past disruptions have impacted our ability to activate customer accounts and manage our billing activities in a timely manner. Such interruptions have resulted, and may in the future result, in third parties accessing our confidential and proprietary information, including our intellectual property. Problems with the reliability or security of our systems could harm our reputation, harm our ability to protect our confidential and proprietary information, result in a loss of consumers and dealers, and result in additional costs.

Substantially all of the communications, network, and computer hardware used to operate our platforms is located in the Eastern region of the United States, and internationally near each of London, England, Dublin, Ireland and Frankfurt, Germany. These facilities include hosting through Amazon Web Services, a provider of cloud infrastructure services. Although we can host our U.S. CarGurus’

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marketplace from two alternative locations and we believe our systems are redundant, there may be exceptions for certain hardware or software. In addition, we do not own or control the operation of these facilities. Any disruptions or other operational performance problems with these facilities or problems faced by their operators, including our cloud infrastructure service provider, could result in material interruptions in our services, adversely affect our reputation and results of operations, and subject us to liability. We also use third-party hosting services to back up some data but do not maintain redundant systems or facilities for some of the services. A disruption to one or more of these systems has caused, and may in the future cause, us to experience an extended period of system unavailability, which could negatively impact our relationship with consumers, customers and advertisers. Our systems and operations are vulnerable to damage or interruption from fire, flood, power loss, telecommunications failure, terrorist attacks, acts of war, electronic breaches, cyber-attacks, phishing attempts, errors by employees, physical break-ins, computer viruses, earthquakes, and similar events. The occurrence of any of these events could result in damage to our systems and hardware or could cause them to fail. In addition, we may not have sufficient protection or recovery plans in certain circumstances.

Any errors, defects, disruptions, or other performance or reliability problems with our network operations could cause interruptions in access to our marketplaces as well as delays and additional expense in arranging new facilities and services and fixing or replacing any affected systems or hardware and could harm our reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition. Although we carry insurance, it may not be sufficient to compensate us for the potentially significant losses, including the potential harm to the future growth of our business, that may result from interruptions in our service as a result of system failures.

We, and our third-party service providers, collect, process, store, transfer, share, disclose, and use consumer information and other data, and our actual or perceived failure, or the actual or perceived failure of our third-party service provides, to protect such information and data or respect users’ privacy could expose us to liability and adversely affect our reputation and brands and business and operating results.

Some functions of our marketplaces involve the storage and transmission of consumers’ information, such as IP addresses, contact information of users who connect with dealers, credit applications and other financial data, and profile information of users who create accounts on our marketplaces, as well as dealers’ information. We also process and store personal and confidential information of our vendors, partners, and employees, and we employ third-party service providers, such as payment processing providers, who also regularly have access to customer and consumer data. Some of this information may be private, and security breaches against us or our third-party service providers could expose us to a risk of loss or exposure of this information, which could result in potential liability, litigation, and remediation costs. For example, hackers could steal our users’ profile passwords, names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information. We rely on encryption and authentication technology licensed from third parties to effect secure transmission of such information, and we also rely on our third-party service providers to use sufficient security measures to protect such information. Despite all of our efforts to protect this information and data, none of our security measures or those of our third-party service providers provide absolute security, and they may not be effective in preventing a future failure of our systems. Like all information systems and technology, our websites, mobile applications, and information systems, and those of our third-party service providers, are subject to computer viruses, break-ins, phishing attacks, attempts to overload the systems with denial-of-service or other attacks, ransomware, and similar incidents or disruptions from unauthorized use of our or our third-party service providers’ computer systems, any of which could lead to interruptions, delays, or website shutdowns, and could cause loss of critical data and the unauthorized disclosure, access, acquisition, alteration, and use of personal or other confidential information. If we or our third-party service providers experience compromises to data security that result in website or mobile application performance or availability problems, the complete shutdown of our websites or mobile applications, or the loss or unauthorized disclosure, access, acquisition, alteration, or use of confidential information, consumers, customers, advertisers, partners, vendors, and employees may lose trust and confidence in us, and consumers may decrease the use of our websites or stop using our websites entirely, dealers may stop or decrease their subscriptions with us, and advertisers may decrease or stop advertising on our websites.

Further, outside parties have attempted and will likely continue to attempt to fraudulently induce employees, consumers, or advertisers to disclose sensitive information in order to gain access to our information or our consumers’, dealers’, advertisers’, and employees’ information. As cyber-attacks increase in frequency and sophistication, our cyber-security and disaster recovery plans may not be effective in anticipating, preventing and effectively responding to all potential cyber-risk exposures. In addition, because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access, disable or degrade service, or sabotage systems change frequently, often are not recognized until after having been launched against a target, and may originate from less regulated and remote areas around the world, we may be unable to proactively address these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures.

Any or all of the issues above could adversely affect our brand reputation, negatively impact our ability to attract new consumers and increase engagement by existing consumers, cause existing consumers to reduce or stop the use of our marketplaces or close their accounts, cause existing dealers and advertisers to cancel their contracts, cause employees to terminate their employment, cause employment candidates to be unwilling to pursue employment opportunities or accept employment offers, and/or subject us to governmental or third-party lawsuits, investigations, regulatory fines, or other actions or liability, thereby harming our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Although we carry privacy, data breach and network security liability insurance, we cannot be certain that our coverage will be adequate for liabilities actually incurred or sufficient to compensate us for the potentially significant losses, or that insurance will continue to be available to us on economically reasonable terms or at all.

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There are numerous federal, national, state, and local laws and regulations in the United States and around the world regarding privacy and the collection, processing, storage, sharing, disclosure, use, cross-border transfer, and protection of personal information and other data. These laws and regulations are evolving, are subject to differing interpretations, may be costly to comply with, may result in regulatory fines or penalties, may subject us to third-party lawsuits, may be inconsistent between countries and jurisdictions, and may conflict with other requirements. We seek to comply with industry standards and are subject to the terms of our privacy policies and privacy-related obligations to third parties, as well as all applicable laws and regulations relating to privacy and data protection. However, it is possible that these obligations may be interpreted and applied in new ways or in a manner that is inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another and may conflict with other rules or our practices and that new regulations could be enacted. Several proposals have recently become effective or are pending, as applicable, before federal, state, local, and foreign legislative and regulatory bodies that could significantly affect our business, which we refer to collectively as the Privacy Regulations. The Privacy Regulations include, but are not limited to, the EU's General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act. Certain of the Privacy Regulations have already required, and certain others may further require, us to change our policies and procedures and may in the future require us to make changes to our marketplaces and other products. These and other requirements could reduce demand for our marketplaces and other offerings, require us to take on more onerous obligations in our contracts and restrict our ability to store, transfer, and process data, which may seriously harm our business. Similarly, Brexit and the Schrems II decision of the Court of Justice of the EU, which effectively invalided the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, may require us to change our policies and procedures and, if we are not in compliance, may also seriously harm our business. We may not be entirely successful in our efforts to comply with the evolving regulations to which we are subject due to various factors within our control, such as limited internal resource allocation, or outside our control, such as a lack of vendor cooperation, new regulatory interpretations, or lack of regulatory guidance in respect of certain Privacy Regulations and other statutory requirements.

Any failure or perceived failure by us to comply with United States and international data protection laws and regulations, our privacy policies, or our privacy-related obligations to consumers, customers, employees and other third parties, or any compromise of security that results in the unauthorized release or transfer of data, which could include personal information or other user data, may result in governmental investigations, enforcement actions, regulatory fines, litigation, criminal penalties, or public statements against us by consumer advocacy groups or others, and could cause consumers and dealers to lose trust in us, which could significantly impact our brand reputation and have an adverse effect on our business. Additionally, if any third party that we share information with experiences a security breach or fails to comply with its privacy-related legal obligations or commitments to us, such matters may put employee, consumer or dealer information at risk and could in turn expose us to claims for damages or regulatory fines or penalties and harm our reputation, business, and operating results.

Our ability to attract consumers to our own websites and to provide certain services to our customers depends on the collection of consumer data from various sources, which may be restricted by consumer choice, privacy restrictions, and developments in laws, regulations and industry standards.

The success of our consumer marketing and the delivery of internet advertisements for our customers depends on our ability to leverage data, including data that we collect from our customers, data we receive from our publisher partners and third parties, and data from our operations. Using cookies and non-cookie-based technologies, such as mobile advertising identifiers, we collect information about the interactions of users with our customers’ and publishers’ digital properties (including, for example, information about the placement of advertisements and users’ shopping or other interactions with our customers’ websites or advertisements). Our ability to successfully leverage such data depends on our continued ability to access and use such data, which could be restricted by a number of factors, including: increasing consumer adoption of “do not track” mechanisms as a result of legislation; privacy restrictions imposed by web browser developers, advertising partners or other software developers that impair our ability to understand the preferences of consumers by limiting the use of third-party cookies or other tracking technologies or data indicating or predicting consumer preferences; and new developments in, or new interpretations of, privacy laws, regulations and industry standards. Each of these developments could materially impact our ability to collect consumer data and deliver relevant internet advertisements to attract consumers to our websites or to deliver targeted advertising for our advertising customers. If we are unsuccessful in evolving our advertising and marketing strategies to adapt to and mitigate these evolving consumer data limitations, our business results could be materially impacted.

We have been, and may again be, subject to intellectual property disputes, which are costly to defend and could harm our business and operating results.

We have been, and expect in the future to be, subject to claims and litigation alleging that we or content on our websites infringe others’ intellectual property rights, including the trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other intellectual property rights of third parties, including from our competitors or non-practicing entities. We may also learn of possible infringement to our trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other intellectual property. Patent and other intellectual property litigation may be protracted and expensive, and the results are difficult to predict and may result in significant settlement costs or payment of substantial damages. Many potential litigants, including patent holding companies, have the ability to dedicate substantially greater resources to enforce their intellectual property rights and to defend claims that may be brought against them. Furthermore, a successful claimant could secure a judgment that requires us to stop offering some features or prevents us from conducting our business as we have historically done or may desire to do in the future. We might also be required to seek a license and pay royalties for the use of such intellectual property, which may not be available

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on commercially acceptable terms, or at all. Alternatively, we may be required to modify our marketplaces and features, which could require significant effort and expense and may ultimately not be successful.

In addition, we use open source software in our platform and will use open source software in the future. From time to time, we may face claims regarding ownership of, or demanding release of, the source code, the open source software, or derivative works that were developed using such software, or otherwise seeking to enforce the terms of the applicable open source license. These claims could also result in litigation, require us to purchase a costly license or require us to devote additional product, technology, and development resources to change our platforms or services, any of which would have a negative effect on our business and operating results. Even if these matters do not result in litigation or are resolved in our favor or without significant cash settlements, these matters, and the time and resources necessary to litigate or resolve them, could harm our business, our operating results, and our reputation.

Failure to adequately protect our intellectual property could harm our business and operating results.

Our business depends on our intellectual property, the protection of which is crucial to the success of our business. We rely on a combination of patent, trademark, trade secret, and copyright law and contractual restrictions to protect our intellectual property. In addition, we attempt to protect our intellectual property, technology, and confidential information by requiring our employees and consultants to enter into confidentiality and assignment of inventions agreements and third parties to enter into nondisclosure agreements as we deem appropriate. Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy aspects of our platform’s features, software, and functionality or obtain and use information that we consider proprietary.

Competitors may adopt trademarks or trade names similar to ours, thereby harming our ability to build brand identity and possibly leading to user confusion. In addition, there could be potential trade name or trademark infringement claims asserted against us by owners of other registered or unregistered trademarks logos or slogans, for our use of registered or unregistered trademarks, logos or slogans, or third-party trademarks that incorporate variations of our trademarks. We have registered the CARGURUS and CG logos, as well as the word-mark CARGURUS, in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. Additionally, CarOffer has a number of registered and unregistered trademarks, including “CarOffer” and the CarOffer logo, and related marks, which CarOffer has registered as trademarks in the U.S.

We currently hold the “CarGurus.com” internet domain name and various other related domain names relating to our brands. The regulation of domain names is subject to change. Regulatory bodies could establish additional top-level domains, appoint additional domain name registrars, or modify the requirements for holding domain names. As a result, we may not be able to acquire or maintain all domain names that use the names of our brands. In addition, third parties have created and may in the future create copycat or squatter domains to deceive consumers, which could harm our brands, interfere with our ability to register domain names, and result in additional costs.

We may be unable to halt the operations of websites that aggregate or misappropriate our data.

From time to time, third parties may misappropriate our data through website scraping, robots, or other means and aggregate this data with data from other sources. In addition, copycat websites may misappropriate data in our marketplaces and attempt to imitate our brands or the functionality of our websites. We may be unable to detect and remedy all such activities in a timely and adequate manner. Regardless of whether we can successfully enforce our rights against these third parties, any measures that we may take could require us to expend significant financial or other resources, which could harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition. In addition, to the extent that such activity creates confusion among consumers or advertisers, our brands and business could be harmed.

Seasonality and other factors may cause fluctuations in our operating results and our marketing spend.

Across the retail automotive industry, consumer purchases are typically greatest in the first three quarters of each year, due in part to the introduction of new vehicle models from manufacturers and the seasonal nature of consumer spending, and our consumer-marketing spend generally fluctuates accordingly. This seasonality has not been immediately apparent historically due to the overall growth of other operating expenses. In addition, any reduction of our marketing spend in response to COVID-19 or other macroeconomic-related expense management or otherwise, and shifts in demand from dealers and consumers could impact the efficiency of our marketing spend. As our growth rates moderate or cease, the impact of these seasonality trends and other influences on our results of operations could become more pronounced. In addition, the volume of wholesale vehicle sales fluctuates from quarter to quarter as a result of macroeconomic issues, which may have a corresponding impact on our results of operations. This variability is caused by several factors including the timing of used vehicles available for sale from selling customers, the seasonality of the retail market for used vehicles and/or inventory challenges in the automotive industry, which affect the demand side of the wholesale industry. This variability has affected our Digital Wholesale segment in the past, and may continue to in the future.

Failure to deal effectively with fraud or other illegal activity could harm our business.

Based on the nature of our business, we are exposed to potential fraudulent and illegal activity in our marketplaces, including: listings of automobiles that are not owned by the purported dealer or that the dealer has no intention of selling at the listed price; receipt of fraudulent leads that we may send to our dealers; and deceptive practices in our peer-to-peer marketplace. The measures we have in place to detect and limit the occurrence of such fraudulent and illegal activity in our marketplaces may not always be effective or account

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for all types of fraudulent or other illegal activity now or in the future. Failure to limit the impact of fraudulent and illegal activity on our websites could lead to potential legal liability, harm our business, cause us to lose paying dealer customers and adversely affect our reputation, financial performance and growth prospects.

We have identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting. If we are unable to remediate this material weakness, we may not be able to accurately or timely report our financial condition or results of operations, which may adversely affect our business and the market price of our common stock.

We have identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting. If we are unable to remediate this material weakness, we may not be able to accurately or timely report our financial condition or results of operations, which may adversely affect our business and the market price of our Class A common stock. A material weakness is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting, such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. We have identified deficiencies in controls at our CarOffer subsidiary. These deficiencies include controls over (i) certain IT general controls for systems that are relevant to the preparation of our financial statements and (ii) our financial statement close process, which in the aggregate constitute a material weakness. While this material weakness did not result in a material misstatement of our financial statements, it could impact the effectiveness of our segregation of duties controls, as well as the effectiveness of IT-dependent controls, which could result in misstatement(s) impacting financial statement accounts and disclosures, resulting in a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements that we would have failed to prevent or detect. As a result of this material weakness, our management concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were not effective as of December 31, 2022.

We are in the process of implementing a remediation plan designed to improve our internal control over financial reporting to remediate this material weakness. This remediation plan includes implementation of additional controls and procedures, including timely performance of user access and change management reviews, as well as an effective review of journal entries and accounts reconciliations. We cannot assure you that the measures we have taken to date, and actions we may take in the future, will be sufficient to remediate the control deficiencies that led to the material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting or that they will prevent or avoid potential future material weaknesses. If we are unable to successfully remediate the material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting, the accuracy and timing of our financial reporting may be adversely affected, investors could lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, the market price of our Class A common stock could decline, we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by Nasdaq, the SEC or other regulatory authorities, and our ability to access the capital markets could be limited.

Our 2022 Revolver contains certain covenants and other restrictions on our actions that may limit our operational flexibility or otherwise adversely affect our results of operations.

The terms of our 2022 Revolver include a number of covenants that limit our ability to, among other things, grant or incur liens, incur additional indebtedness, make certain restricted investments or payments, enter into certain mergers and acquisitions or engage in certain asset sales, subject in each case to certain exceptions. In addition, our 2022 Revolver also subjects us to financial covenants in respect of minimum liquidity and requires that we maintain a net leverage ratio. The terms of our 2022 Revolver may restrict our current and future operations and could adversely affect our ability to finance our future operations or capital needs. Complying with these covenants may make it more difficult for us to successfully execute our business strategy and compete against companies which are not subject to such restrictions. Further, interest rate fluctuations may materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial conditions due to the variable interest rate on our 2022 Revolver, in the event that we draw down funds thereunder.

A failure by us to comply with the covenants or payment requirements specified in our 2022 Revolver could result in an event of default, which would give the lenders the right to terminate their commitments to provide loans under our 2022 Revolver and to declare any borrowings outstanding, together with any accrued and unpaid interest and fees, to be immediately due and payable. If any debt under our 2022 Revolver were to be accelerated, we may not have sufficient cash or be able to borrow sufficient funds to refinance the debt or sell sufficient assets to repay the debt, which could immediately adversely affect our business, cash flows, results of operations, and financial condition. Even if we were able to obtain new financing, it may not be on commercially reasonable terms or on terms that are acceptable to us. As of December 31, 2022, there were no amounts outstanding under our 2022 Revolver.

Risks Related to Our Class A Common Stock

Our founder controls a majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, and, therefore, has control over key decision-making and could control our actions in a manner that conflicts with the interests of other stockholders.

Primarily by virtue of his holdings in shares of our Class B common stock, which has a ten-to-one voting ratio compared to our Class A common stock, Langley Steinert, our founder, Chairman of the Board and Executive Chairman, is able to exercise voting rights with respect to a majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock and therefore has the ability to control the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors and any merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets. This concentrated control could delay, defer, or prevent a change of control, merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets that our other stockholders support, or conversely this concentrated control could result in the

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consummation of such a transaction that our other stockholders do not support. This concentrated control could also discourage a potential investor from acquiring our Class A common stock, which might harm the trading price of our Class A common stock. In addition, Mr. Steinert has significant influence in the management and major strategic investments of our company as a result of his position as Executive Chairman, and his ability to control the election or replacement of our directors. As Chairman of the Board and our Executive Chairman, Mr. Steinert owes a fiduciary duty to our stockholders and must act in good faith in a manner he reasonably believes to be in the best interests of our stockholders. If Mr. Steinert’s status as an officer and a director is terminated, his fiduciary duties to our stockholders will also terminate, but his voting power as a stockholder will not be reduced as a result of such termination unless such termination is either made voluntarily by Mr. Steinert or due to Mr. Steinert’s death, or if the sum of the number of shares of our capital stock held by Mr. Steinert, by any Family Member of Mr. Steinert, and by any Permitted Entity of Mr. Steinert (as such capitalized terms are defined in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation attached to this Annual Report on Form 10-K as Exhibit 3.1), assuming the exercise and settlement in full of all outstanding options and convertible securities and calculated on an as-converted to Class A common stock basis, is less than 9,091,484 shares. As a stockholder, even a controlling stockholder, Mr. Steinert is entitled to vote his shares in his own interests, which may not always be aligned with the interests of our other stockholders.

We believe that Mr. Steinert’s continued control of a majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock is beneficial to us and is in the best interests of our stockholders. In the event that Mr. Steinert no longer controls a majority of the voting power, whether as a result of the disposition of some or all his shares of Class A or Class B common stock, the conversion of the Class B common stock into Class A common stock in accordance with its terms, or otherwise, our business or the trading price of our Class A common stock may be adversely affected.

The multiple class structure of our common stock has the effect of concentrating voting control with our founder and certain other holders of our Class B common stock, which will limit or preclude the ability of our stockholders to influence corporate matters.

Our Class B common stock has ten votes per share and our Class A common stock has one vote per share. Our founder and certain of his affiliates hold a substantial number of the outstanding shares of our Class B common stock and therefore hold a substantial majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock. Because of the ten-to-one voting ratio between our Class B and Class A common stock, the holders of our Class B common stock collectively control a majority of the combined voting power of our common stock and therefore are able to control all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval so long as the shares of Class B common stock represent at least 9.1% of all outstanding shares of our Class A and Class B common stock. This concentrated control will limit or preclude the ability of our other stockholders to influence corporate matters for the foreseeable future. Additionally, transfers by holders of Class B common stock will generally result in those transferred shares converting into Class A common stock, subject to limited exceptions, such as certain transfers effected for estate planning or charitable purposes. The conversion of Class B common stock into Class A common stock has had and will continue to have the effect, over time, of increasing the relative voting power of those holders of Class B common stock who retain such shares. If, for example, Mr. Steinert retains a significant portion of his holdings of Class B common stock, he could continue to control a majority of the combined voting power of our outstanding capital stock.

Our status as a “controlled company” could make our Class A common stock less attractive to some investors or otherwise harm the trading price of our Class A common stock.

More than 50% of our voting power is held by Mr. Steinert. As a result, we are a “controlled company” under the corporate governance rules for Nasdaq-listed companies and may elect not to comply with certain Nasdaq corporate governance requirements. We rely and have relied on certain or all of these exemptions. Accordingly, should the interests of our controlling stockholder differ from those of other stockholders, the other stockholders may not have the same protections afforded to stockholders of companies that are subject to all of the corporate governance rules for Nasdaq-listed companies. Our status as a controlled company could make our Class A common stock less attractive to some investors or otherwise harm our stock price.

The trading price of our Class A common stock has been and may continue to be volatile and the value of our stockholders’ investment in our stock could decline.

The trading price of our Class A common stock has been and may continue to be volatile and fluctuate substantially. The trading price of our Class A common stock depends on a number of factors, including those described in this “Risk Factors” section, many of which are beyond our control and may not be related to our operating performance. Factors that could cause fluctuations in the trading price of our Class A common stock include the following: changes in the operating performance and stock market valuations of other technology companies generally, or those in our industry in particular; sales of shares of our Class A common stock by us or our stockholders; adverse changes to recommendations regarding our stock by covering securities analysts; failure of securities analysts to maintain coverage of us, changes in financial estimates by any securities analysts who follow our company, or our failure to meet these estimates or the expectations of investors; announcements by us or our competitors of new products; the public’s reaction to our issuances of earnings guidance or other public announcements and filing; real or perceived inaccuracies in our key metrics; actions of an activist stockholder; actual or anticipated changes in our operating results or fluctuations in our operating results or developments in our business, our competitors’ businesses, or the competitive landscape generally; litigation involving us or investigations by regulators into our operations or those of our competitors; developments or disputes concerning our proprietary rights; announced or completed acquisitions of businesses or technologies by us or our competitors; new laws or regulations or new interpretations of existing laws or

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regulations applicable to our business; changes in accounting standards, policies, or guidelines; any significant change in our management; changes in the automobile industry; the COVID-19 pandemic; and general economic conditions.

We cannot guarantee that our share repurchase program will be fully implemented or that it will enhance stockholder value, and share repurchases could affect the price of our Class A common stock.

In December 2022, our board of directors authorized a share repurchase program (the "Share Repurchase Program") pursuant to which we may, from time to time, purchase shares of our Class A common stock for an aggregate purchase price not to exceed $250 million, with an expiration date of December 31, 2023. Repurchases under the program may be made through a variety of methods, including but not limited to open market purchases, privately negotiated transactions and transactions that may be effected pursuant to one or more plans under Rule 10b5-1 and/or Rule 10b-18 of the Exchange Act, and are subject to market and business conditions, levels of available liquidity, cash requirements for other purposes, regulatory, and other relevant factors. The timing, pricing, and size of share repurchases will depend on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, price, corporate and regulatory requirements, and general market and economic conditions. The repurchase program does not obligate us to repurchase any dollar amount or number of shares, and the program may be suspended or discontinued at any time, which may result in a decrease in the price of our Class A common stock.

Repurchases under our Share Repurchase Program will decrease the number of outstanding shares of our Class A common stock and therefore could affect the price of our Class A common stock and increase its volatility. The existence of our Share Repurchase Program could also cause the price of our Class A common stock to be higher than it would be in the absence of such a program and could reduce the market liquidity for our Class A common stock. Additionally, repurchases under our Share Repurchase Program will diminish our cash reserves, which could impact our ability to further develop our business and service our indebtedness. There can be no assurance that any share repurchases will enhance stockholder value because the market price of our Class A common stock may decline below the levels at which we repurchased such shares. Any failure to repurchase shares after we have announced our intention to do so may negatively impact our reputation and investor confidence in us and may negatively impact our Class A common stock price. Although our Share Repurchase Program is intended to enhance long-term stockholder value, short-term price fluctuations could reduce the program’s effectiveness.

General Risk Factors

We are unable to predict the extent to which the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic may adversely impact our business operations, financial performance and results of operations.

For the past three years the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to control its spread have resulted in, and may continue to or at a later time result in, significant disruptions to the global economy as well as businesses and capital markets around the world. Our operations have been and may continue to be materially adversely affected by a range of factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic that are not within our control, including the various restrictions imposed by cities, counties, states and countries on our employees, customers, partners and suppliers designed to limit the spread of COVID-19. The ultimate extent of the impact of the pandemic will depend on future developments that remain highly uncertain and cannot currently be predicted, including outbreaks of new variants and the availability and effectiveness of vaccines.

Our operations have been and may continue to be materially adversely affected by a range of factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including periodic changes in restrictions that vary from region to region in which we operate and may require rapid response to new or reinstated orders. Many of these orders resulted in, and, to the extent reinstated, may in the future result in changes to our on-site work policies and staffing and restrictions on the ability of consumers to buy and sell automobiles by restricting operations at dealerships and/or by closing or reducing the services provided by certain service providers upon which dealerships rely. In addition, these restrictions and continued concern about the spread of the disease have impacted car shopping by consumers and disrupted the operations of car dealerships, which has adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect the market for automobile purchases.

These effects from the COVID-19 pandemic on our revenue caused us to implement certain cost-savings measures across our business, which previously disrupted our business and operations. Any future cost-savings measures implemented by us due to macroeconomic issues, may affect our future business and operations and yield unintended consequences, such as loss of key employees, increased costs in hiring new employees, undesired attrition, and the risk that we may not achieve anticipated cost savings at the levels we expect, any of which may have a material adverse effect on our results of operations and/or financial condition.

We continue to monitor and assess the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our commercial operations, including the impact on our revenue. We cannot at this time accurately predict what effects these conditions will ultimately have on our operations or on the global economies and financial markets in which we operate, which may have a significant negative impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

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We participate in a highly competitive market, and pressure from existing and new companies may adversely affect our business and operating results.

We face significant competition from companies that provide listings, car-shopping information, lead generation, marketing, wholesale, and digital car-buying and -selling services designed to help consumers and dealers shop for cars and to enable dealers to reach these consumers. Our competitors include: online automotive marketplaces and websites; internet search engines; peer-to-peer marketplaces; social media marketplaces; sites operated by automobile dealers; online dealerships; and vehicle auction companies. We compete with these and other companies for a share of dealers’ overall marketing budget for online and offline media marketing spend and we compete with these and other companies in attracting consumers to our websites. To the extent that dealers view alternative marketing and media strategies to be superior to our marketplaces, we may not be able to maintain or grow the number of dealers subscribing to, and advertising on, our marketplaces, and our business and financial results may be adversely affected. We also expect that new competitors will continue to enter the online automotive retail and wholesale industries with competing marketplaces, products, and services, and that existing competitors will expand to offer competing products or services, which could have an adverse effect on our business and financial results.

Our competitors could significantly impede our ability to expand the number of dealers using our marketplaces or could offer discounts that could significantly impede our ability to maintain our pricing structure. Our competitors may also develop and market new technologies that render our existing or future platforms and associated products less competitive, unmarketable, or obsolete. In addition, if our competitors develop platforms with similar or superior functionality to ours, or if our web traffic declines, we may need to decrease our subscription and advertising fees. If we are unable to maintain our current pricing structure due to competitive pressures, our revenue would likely be reduced and our financial results would be negatively affected. Furthermore, our existing and potential competitors may have significantly more financial, technical, marketing, and other resources than we have, which may allow them to offer more competitive pricing and the ability to devote greater resources to the development, promotion, and support of their marketplaces, products, and services. They may also have more extensive automotive industry relationships than we have, longer operating histories, and greater name recognition. In addition, these competitors may be able to respond more quickly with technological advances and to undertake more extensive marketing or promotional campaigns than we can. To the extent that any competitor has existing relationships with dealers or auto manufacturers for marketing or data analytics solutions, those dealers and auto manufacturers may be unwilling to partner with us. If we are unable to compete with these competitors, the demand for our marketplaces and related products and services could substantially decline.

We must maintain proper and effective internal control over financial reporting and any failure to maintain the adequacy of these internal controls may adversely affect investor confidence in our company and, as a result, the value of our Class A common stock.

We are required, pursuant to Section 404 and the related rules adopted by the SEC, to furnish a report by management on, among other things, the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting on an annual basis. This assessment includes disclosure of any material weaknesses identified by our management in our internal control over financial reporting, such as those described above. In addition, our independent registered public accounting firm must attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting under Section 404. Our independent registered public accounting firm may issue a report that is adverse to us in the event it is not satisfied with the level at which our controls are documented, designed or operating. We may not be able to remediate the material weakness described above and/or any future material weaknesses that may be identified, or to complete our evaluation, testing and required remediation in a timely fashion. We are also required to disclose significant changes made to our internal control procedures on a quarterly basis. Our compliance with Section 404 requires that we incur substantial accounting expense and expend significant management efforts. Any failure to maintain internal control over financial reporting could severely inhibit our ability to accurately report our financial condition or results of operations. If we are unable to assert that our internal control over financial reporting is effective or our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting when it is required to issue such opinion, we could lose investor confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, the market price of our Class A common stock could decline, and we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by Nasdaq, the SEC or other regulatory authorities. Failure to remedy the material weakness described above and/or any future material weaknesses that may be identified, or to implement or maintain other effective control systems required of public companies, could also restrict our future access to the capital markets.

We expect our results of operations to fluctuate on a quarterly and annual basis.

Our revenue and results of operations could vary significantly from period to period and may fail to match expectations as a result of a variety of factors, some of which are outside of our control, including the continued effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other macroeconomic issues, such as increased interest rates. Our results may vary as a result of fluctuations in the number of dealers subscribing to our marketplaces, the size and seasonal variability of our advertisers’ marketing budgets, and the impact of vehicle arbitrations in a given period in connection with our IMCO product and the wholesale sale of automobiles. As a result of the potential variations in our revenue and results of operations, period-to-period comparisons may not be meaningful and the results of any one period should not be relied on as an indication of future performance. In addition, our results of operations may not meet the expectations of investors or covering analysts, which may adversely affect the trading price of our Class A common stock.

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We could be subject to adverse changes in tax laws, regulations and interpretations, plus challenges to our tax positions.

We are subject to taxation in the United States and certain other jurisdictions in which we operate. Changes in applicable tax laws or regulations may be proposed or enacted that could materially and adversely affect our effective tax rate, tax payments, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows. In addition, tax laws and regulations are complex and subject to varying interpretations. There is also uncertainty over sales tax liability as a result of recent U.S. Supreme Court and Massachusetts Supreme Court decisions, which could precipitate reactions that could adversely increase our tax administrative costs and tax risk, and negatively affect our overall business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows. We are also regularly subject to audits by tax authorities. Any adverse development or outcome in connection with any such tax audits, and any other audits or litigation, could materially and adversely impact our effective tax rate, tax payments, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the retaliatory measures imposed by the U.S., U.K., European Union and other countries and the responses of Russia to such measures have caused significant disruptions to domestic and foreign economies.

The Russia and Ukraine conflict had an immediate impact on the global economy resulting in higher prices for oil and other commodities, including vehicle components. Economic sanctions and bans, together with Russia's own retaliatory measures have disrupted supply chains and economic markets. The global impact of these measures is continually evolving and the future impact cannot be predicted with certainty. In particular, the Russia and Ukraine conflict has further impacted the ability of certain manufacturers to produce new vehicles and new vehicle parts, which may result in continued disruptions to the supply of new and used vehicles. Further, there is no assurance that when the Russia and Ukraine conflict ends, countries will not continue to impose sanctions and bans.

While these events have not materially interrupted our operations, these or future developments resulting from the Russia and Ukraine conflict, such as a cyberattack on the U.S. or our suppliers, could disrupt our operations, our customers' operations, or the activity of consumers on our websites.

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Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments.

Not applicable.

Item 2. Properties.

We do not own any real property. Our principal executive offices are located in Cambridge, Massachusetts where we lease a total of approximately 185,064 square feet of space in various parcels in three buildings with lease terms through 2033. We also lease office space in Addison, Texas, Dublin, Ireland, and San Francisco, California for our CarOffer, European and Autolist operations, respectively. We sublease two of our leased office spaces for part of the remaining terms of the leases. Our U.S. Marketplace segment utilizes the offices in Cambridge Massachusetts and San Francisco, California. Our Digital Wholesale segment utilizes the office in Addison, Texas. The Other category of segment reporting utilizes the office in Dublin, Ireland. We believe that our current facilities are suitable and adequate to meet our current needs. We believe that suitable additional space or substitute space will be available in the future to accommodate our operations as needed. In 2019, we entered into a lease for office space at 1001 Boylston Street in Boston, Massachusetts, which we expect to occupy in 2024.

Item 3. Legal Proceedings.

From time to time we may become involved in legal proceedings or be subject to claims arising in the ordinary course of our business. We are not presently subject to any pending or threatened litigation that we believe, if determined adversely to us, would individually, or taken together, reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on our business or financial results.

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures.

Not applicable.

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PART II

Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities.

Market Information for Common Stock

Our Class A common stock has been listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “CARG” since October 12, 2017. Prior to that date, there was no public trading market for our Class A common stock. Our initial public offering, or IPO, was priced at $16.00 per share on October 11, 2017.

On February 28, 2023, the last reported sale price of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market was $17.05 per share.

Holders

As of February 21, 2023, we had six record holders of our Class A common stock. The actual number of stockholders is greater than this number of record holders, and includes stockholders who are beneficial owners but whose shares are held in street name by brokers and other nominees. The number of record holders does not include stockholders whose shares may be held in trust by other entities.

Dividends

We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our common stock. We currently anticipate that we will retain future earnings to fund development and growth of our business, and we do not anticipate paying cash dividends in the foreseeable future.

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Performance Graph

This performance graph shall not be deemed “soliciting material” or to be “filed” with the Securities and Exchange Commission for purposes of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, or otherwise be subject to the liabilities under that section, and shall not be deemed to be incorporated by reference into any filing of CarGurus, Inc. under the Exchange Act or the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.

The following graph shows a comparison from December 31, 2017 through December 31, 2022 of the cumulative total return for our Class A common stock, the Nasdaq Composite Index and the S&P 500 Index. On December 31, 2017, the last reported sale price of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market was $29.98 per share. All values assume a $100 initial cash investment and data for the Nasdaq Composite Index and the S&P 500 Index assume reinvestment of dividends, if any. Such returns are based on historical results and are not intended to suggest future performance.

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Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities

None.

Purchases of Equity Securities

The following table summarizes information about our purchases of our equity securities for each of the months during the year ended December 31, 2022:

Item 6. Reserved.

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Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.

You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations together with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes and other financial information included elsewhere in this report. Some of the information contained in this discussion and analysis or elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including information with respect to our plans and strategy for our business and our performance and future success, includes forward‑looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. See “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements.” You should review the “Risk Factors” section of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results described in or implied by the forward‑looking statements contained in the following discussion and analysis.

In this discussion, we use financial measures that are considered non‑GAAP financial measures under Securities and Exchange Commission rules. These rules regarding non-GAAP financial measures require supplemental explanation and reconciliation, which are included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Investors should not consider non‑GAAP financial measures in isolation from or in substitution for, financial information presented in compliance with United States generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP.

This section of this Annual Report on Form 10-K discusses 2022 and 2021 items and year-to-year comparisons between 2022 and 2021. This section of this Annual Report on Form 10-K also discusses 2021 and 2020 segment revenue and segment operating income (loss) from operations and year-to-year comparisons between 2021 and 2020 segment revenue and segment operating income (loss) from operations. Discussions of all other 2020 items and year-to-year comparisons between 2021 and 2020 can be found in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Part II, Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021. The period‑to‑period comparison of financial results is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Company Overview

CarGurus, Inc. is a multinational, online automotive platform for buying and selling vehicles that is building upon its industry-leading listings marketplace with both digital retail solutions and the CarOffer digital wholesale platform. The CarGurus platform gives consumers the confidence to buy and/or sell a vehicle either online or in-person, and it gives dealerships the power to accurately price, instantly acquire, effectively market, and quickly sell vehicles, all with a nationwide reach. We use proprietary technology, search algorithms and data analytics to bring trust, transparency and competitive pricing to the automotive shopping experience.

We are headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts and were incorporated in the State of Delaware on June 26, 2015.

We operate principally in the United States. In the United States, we also operate as independent brands the Autolist online marketplace, which we wholly own, and CarOffer digital wholesale marketplace, in which we hold a 51% equity interest. In addition to the United States, we operate online marketplaces under the CarGurus brand in Canada and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, we also operate as an independent brand the PistonHeads online marketplace, which we wholly own.

We have subsidiaries in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom and, prior to the first quarter of 2022, we had two reportable segments – United States and International. Effective as of the first quarter of 2022, we revised our segment reporting from two reportable segments to one reportable segment. Effective as of the fourth quarter of 2022, we revised our segment reporting from one reportable segment to two reportable segments – U.S. Marketplace and Digital Wholesale. See Note 13 of the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further segment reporting and geographical information.

We derive our revenue from marketplace revenue, wholesale revenue, and product revenue. Marketplace revenue is included in the U.S. Marketplace segment and Other category of segment reporting. Wholesale revenue and product revenue are included in the Digital Wholesale segment. We generate marketplace revenue primarily from (i) dealer subscriptions to our Listings packages, Real-time Performance Marketing, or RPM, digital advertising suite, and Digital Retail, (ii) advertising revenue from auto manufacturers and other auto‑related brand advertisers, and (iii) revenue from partnerships with financing services companies. We generate wholesale revenue primarily from (i) transaction fees earned from facilitating the purchase and sale of vehicles between dealers, or Dealer-to-Dealer transactions, (ii) transaction fees earned from sale of vehicles to dealers that we acquire at other marketplaces, and (iii) transaction fees earned from performing inspection and transportation services, inclusive of Dealer-to-Dealer transactions, other marketplace to dealer transactions, and IMCO transactions (as defined below). We generate product revenue primarily from (i) aggregate proceeds received from the sale of vehicles to dealers that were acquired directly from customers, or CarGurus Instant Max Cash Offer, or IMCO transactions, and (ii) proceeds received from the sale of vehicles that were acquired through arbitration.

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For the year ended December 31, 2022, we generated revenue of $1,655.0 million, a 74% increase from $951.4 million of revenue for the year ended December 31, 2021.

For the year ended December 31, 2022, we generated consolidated net income of $79.0 million and Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA of $187.7 million, compared to consolidated net income of $110.4 million and Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA of $270.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2021.

See “Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest” below for more information regarding our use of Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure, and a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to our consolidated net income.

COVID-19 Update

For the past three years, the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to control its spread have resulted in significant disruptions to the global economy as well as businesses and capital markets around the world. The ultimate extent of the impact of the pandemic will depend on future developments that remain highly uncertain and cannot currently be predicted, including outbreaks of new variants and the availability and effectiveness of vaccines.

Our operations have been affected by a range of factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including periodic changes in restrictions that vary from region to region in which we operate and may require rapid response to new or reinstated orders. Many of these orders resulted in changes to our on-site work policies and staffing and restrictions on the ability of consumers to buy and sell automobiles by restricting operations at dealerships and/or by closing or reducing the services provided by certain service providers upon which dealerships rely. In addition, these restrictions and continued concern about the spread of the disease have impacted car shopping by consumers and disrupted the operations of car dealerships, which has adversely affected the market for automobile purchases. These effects from the COVID-19 pandemic on our revenue caused us to implement certain cost-savings measures across our business, which previously disrupted our business and operations.

We continue to monitor and assess the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our commercial operations, including the impact on our revenue. See the “Risk Factors” section of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further discussion of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business.

Key Business Metrics

We regularly review a number of metrics, including the key metrics listed below, to evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends affecting our business, formulate financial projections, and make operating and strategic decisions. We believe it is important to evaluate these metrics for the United States and International geographic regions. The International region derives revenues from marketplace revenue from customers outside of the United States. International markets perform differently from the United States market due to a variety of factors, including our operating history in each market, our rate of investment, market size, market maturity, competition and other dynamics unique to each country.

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Monthly Unique Users

For each of our websites (excluding the CarOffer website), we define a monthly unique user as an individual who has visited any such website within a calendar month, based on data as measured by Google Analytics. We calculate average monthly unique users as the sum of the monthly unique users of each of our websites in a given period, divided by the number of months in that period. We count a unique user the first time a computer or mobile device with a unique device identifier accesses any of our websites during a calendar month. If an individual accesses a website using a different device within a given month, the first access by each such device is counted as a separate unique user. If an individual uses multiple browsers on a single device and/or clears their cookies and returns to our site within a calendar month, each such visit is counted as a separate unique user. We view our average monthly unique users as a key indicator of the quality of our user experience, the effectiveness of our advertising and traffic acquisition, and the strength of our brand awareness. Measuring unique users is important to us and we believe it provides useful information to our investors because our marketplace revenue depends, in part, on our ability to provide dealers with connections to our users and exposure to our marketplace audience. We define connections as interactions between consumers and dealers on our marketplace through phone calls, email, managed text and chat, and clicks to access the dealer’s website or map directions to the dealership.

Monthly Sessions

We define monthly sessions as the number of distinct visits to our websites (excluding the CarOffer website) that take place each month within a given time frame, as measured and defined by Google Analytics. We calculate average monthly sessions as the sum of the monthly sessions in a given period, divided by the number of months in that period. A session is defined as beginning with the first page view from a computer or mobile device and ending at the earliest of when a user closes their browser window, after 30 minutes of inactivity, or each night at midnight (i) Eastern Time for our United States and Canada websites, other than the Autolist website, (ii) Pacific Time for the Autolist website, and (iii) Greenwich Mean Time for our U.K. websites. A session can be made up of multiple page views and visitor actions, such as performing a search, visiting vehicle detail pages, and connecting with a dealer. We believe that measuring the volume of sessions in a time period, when considered in conjunction with the number of unique users in that time period, is an important indicator to us of consumer satisfaction and engagement with our marketplace, and we believe it provides useful information to our investors because the more satisfied and engaged consumers we have, the more valuable our service is to dealers.

Number of Paying Dealers

We define a paying dealer as a dealer account with an active, paid marketplace subscription at the end of a defined period. The number of paying dealers we have is important to us and we believe it provides valuable information to investors because it is indicative of the value proposition of our marketplace products, as well as our sales and marketing success and opportunity, including our ability to retain paying dealers and develop new dealer relationships.

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Transactions

We define Transactions within the Digital Wholesale segment as the number of vehicles processed from car dealers, consumers, and other marketplaces through the CarOffer website within the applicable period. Transactions consists of each unique vehicle (based on vehicle identification number) that reaches "sold and invoiced" status on the CarOffer website within the applicable period, including vehicles sold to car dealers, vehicles sold at third-party auctions, vehicles ultimately sold to a different buyer, and vehicles that are returned to their owners without completion of a sale transaction. We exclude vehicles processed within CarOffer's intra-group trading solution (Group Trade) from the definition of Transactions, and we only count any unique vehicle once even if it reaches sold status multiple times. Digital Wholesale includes Dealer-to-Dealer Transactions and IMCO Transactions. We view Transactions as a key business metric, and we believe it provides useful information to investors, because it provides insight into growth and revenue for the Digital Wholesale segment. Transactions drive a significant portion of Digital Wholesale segment revenue. We believe growth in Transactions demonstrates consumer and dealer utilization and our market share penetration in the Digital Wholesale segment.

Quarterly Average Revenue per Subscribing Dealer (QARSD)

We define QARSD, which is measured at the end of a fiscal quarter, as the marketplace revenue primarily from subscriptions to our Listings packages and RPM digital advertising suite during that trailing quarter divided by the average number of paying dealers in that marketplace during the quarter. We calculate the average number of paying dealers for a period by adding the number of paying dealers at the end of such period and the end of the prior period and dividing by two. This information is important to us, and we believe it provides useful information to investors, because we believe that our ability to grow QARSD is an indicator of the value proposition of our products and the return on investment, or ROI, that our paying dealers realize from our products. In addition, increases in QARSD, which we believe reflect the value of exposure to our engaged audience in relation to subscription cost, are driven in part by our ability to grow the volume of connections to our users and the quality of those connections, which result in increased opportunity to upsell package levels and cross-sell additional products to our paying dealers.

Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest

To provide investors with additional information regarding our financial results, we have presented within this Annual Report, Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest, each of which is a non‑GAAP financial measures. These non‑GAAP financial measures are not based on any standardized methodology prescribed by United States generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, and are not necessarily comparable to any similarly titled measures presented by other companies.

We define Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA as consolidated net income, adjusted to exclude: depreciation and amortization, impairment of long-lived assets, stock‑based compensation expense, acquisition-related expenses, other income, net, and provision for income taxes.

We define Adjusted EBITDA as Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA adjusted to exclude Adjusted EBITDA attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest.

We define Adjusted EBITDA attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest as net (loss) income attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest, adjusted to exclude: depreciation and amortization, impairment of long-lived assets, stock‑based compensation expense, other expense (income), net, and provision for income taxes. These exclusions are adjusted for redeemable noncontrolling interest of 38% by taking the noncontrolling interest's full financial results and multiplying each line item in the reconciliation by 38%. We note that we use 38%, versus 49%, to allocate the share of income (loss) because it represents the portion attributable to the redeemable noncontrolling interest. The 38% is exclusive of CO Incentive Units, Subject Units, and 2021 Incentive Units (as each term is defined in Note 2 to our consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K) liability classified awards which do not participate in the share of income/(loss).

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We have presented Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA within this Annual Report, because they are key measures used by our management and board of directors to understand and evaluate our operating performance, generate future operating plans, and make strategic decisions regarding the allocation of capital. In particular, we believe that the exclusion of certain items in calculating Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA can produce a useful measure for period‑to‑period comparisons of our business. We have presented Adjusted EBITDA attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest because it is used by our management to reconcile Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA to Adjusted EBITDA. It represents the portion of Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA that is attributable to our noncontrolling interest. Adjusted EBITDA attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest is not intended to be reviewed on its own.

We use Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA to evaluate our operating performance and trends and make planning decisions. We believe Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA help identify underlying trends in our business that could otherwise be masked by the effect of the expenses that we exclude. Accordingly, we believe that Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA provide useful information to investors and others in understanding and evaluating our operating results, enhancing the overall understanding of our past performance and future prospects, and allowing for greater transparency with respect to key financial metrics used by our management in its financial and operational decision‑making. We use Adjusted EBITDA attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest to reconcile Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA to Adjusted EBITDA. It enables an investor to gain a clearer understanding of the portion of Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA that is attributable to our noncontrolling interest.

Our Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest, are not prepared in accordance with GAAP, and should not be considered in isolation of, or as an alternative to, measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. There are a number of limitations related to the use of Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest rather than consolidated net income and net (loss) income attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest, respectively, which are the most directly comparable GAAP equivalents. Some of these limitations are:

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For the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2021, the following table presents a reconciliation of Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA to consolidated net income, the most directly comparable measure calculated in accordance with GAAP for each of the periods presented.

 

For the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2021, the following table presents a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest to net (loss) income attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interest, the most directly comparable measure calculated in accordance with GAAP, for each of the periods presented.

Components of Consolidated Income Statements

Revenue

We derive our revenue from marketplace revenue, wholesale revenue, and product revenue. Marketplace revenue is included in the U.S. Marketplace segment and Other category of segment reporting. Wholesale revenue and product revenue are included in the Digital Wholesale segment. We generate marketplace revenue primarily from (i) dealer subscriptions to our Listings packages, RPM, digital advertising suite, and Digital Retail, (ii) advertising revenue from auto manufacturers and other auto‑related brand advertisers, and (iii) revenue from partnerships with financing services companies. We generate wholesale revenue primarily from (i) transaction fees earned from Dealer-to-Dealer transactions, (ii) transaction fees earned from sale of vehicles to dealers that we acquire at other marketplaces, and (iii) transaction fees earned from performing inspection and transportation services, inclusive of Dealer-to-Dealer transactions, other marketplace to dealer transactions, and IMCO transactions. We generate product revenue primarily from (i) aggregate proceeds received from the sale of vehicles that were acquired through IMCO transactions, and (ii) proceeds received from the sale of vehicles that were acquired through arbitration.

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Marketplace Revenue

We offer multiple types of marketplace Listings packages to our dealers for our CarGurus U.S. platform (availability varies on our other marketplaces): Restricted Listings, which is free; and various levels of Listings packages, which each require a paid subscription under a monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual subscription basis.

Our subscriptions for customers generally auto-renew on a monthly basis and are cancellable by dealers with 30 days' advance notice prior to the commencement of the applicable renewal term. Subscription pricing is determined based on a dealer’s inventory size, region, and our assessment of the connections and return on investment ("ROI") the platform will provide them and is subject to discounts and/or fee reductions that we may offer from time to time. We also offer all dealers on the platform access to our Dealer Dashboard, which includes a performance summary, Dealer Insights tool, and user review management platform. Only dealers subscribing to a paid Listings package have access to the Pricing Tool, Market Analysis tool and IMV Scan tool.

We offer paid Listings packages for the Autolist and PistonHeads websites.

In addition to displaying inventory in our marketplace and providing access to the Dealer Dashboard, we offer dealers subscribing to certain of our Listings packages other subscription advertising and customer acquisition products and enhancements marketed under our RPM digital advertising suite. Through RPM, dealers can buy advertising that appears in our marketplace, on other sites on the internet, and/or on high-converting social media platforms. Such advertisements can be targeted by the user’s geography, search history, CarGurus website activity and a number of other targeting factors, allowing dealers to increase their visibility with in-market consumers and drive qualified traffic for dealers.

We also offer dealer advertising products for the PistonHeads website.

We also offer dealers subscribing to certain of our Listings packages other subscription advertising and customer acquisition products and enhancements such as Digital Retail, which allows shoppers to complete much of the vehicle-purchase process online through the Dealers’ Listings page. Digital Retail is comprised of (i) the Digital Deal Platform, which gives dealers higher quality leads through upfront consumer-provided information, (ii) Area Boost/Geo Expansion, which expands the visibility of a dealer’s inventory in the search results beyond its local market, and (iii) Hard Pull Financing, which provides loan information.

Marketplace revenue also consists of non-dealer advertising revenue from auto manufacturers and other auto-related brand advertisers sold on a cost per thousand impressions, or CPM basis. An impression is an advertisement loaded on a web page. In addition to advertising sold on a CPM basis, we also have advertising sold on a cost per click basis, or CPC basis. Pricing is primarily based on advertisement size and position on our websites and mobile applications. Auto manufacturers and other brand advertisers can execute advertising campaigns that are targeted across a wide variety of parameters, including demographic groups, behavioral characteristics, specific auto brands, categories such as Certified Pre-Owned, and segments such as hybrid vehicles. We do not provide minimum impression guarantees or other types of minimum guarantees in our contracts with customers. Advertising is also sold indirectly through revenue sharing arrangements with advertising exchange partners.

We also offer non-dealer advertising products for the Autolist and PistonHeads websites.

Marketplace revenue also includes revenue from partnerships with certain financing services companies pursuant to which we enable eligible consumers on our CarGurus U.S. website to pre-qualify for financing on cars from dealerships that offer financing through such companies. We primarily generate revenue from these partnerships based on the number of funded loans from consumers who pre-qualify with our lending partners through our site.

Wholesale Revenue

The Buying Matrix on the CarOffer platform enables buying dealers to create standing buy orders and provides instant offers to selling dealers. Wholesale revenue includes transaction fees earned from Dealer-to-Dealer transactions, where we collect fees from both the buying and selling dealers. We also sell vehicles to dealers that we acquire at other marketplaces, where we collect a transaction fee from the buying dealers.

Wholesale revenue also includes fees earned from performing inspection and transportation services, where we collect fees from the buying dealer. Inspection and transportation service revenue is inclusive of Dealer-to-Dealer transactions, other marketplace to dealer transactions, and IMCO transactions.

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Wholesale revenue also includes arbitration in which the vehicle is rematched to a new buyer and not acquired by us. Arbitration is the process by which we investigate and resolve claims from buying dealers.

Wholesale revenue also includes fees earned from certain guarantees offered to dealers (which include 45-Day Guarantee and OfferGuard products), where we collect fees from the buying dealer or selling dealer, as applicable.

Product Revenue

The Buying Matrix on the CarOffer platform enables consumers who are selling vehicles to be instantly presented with an offer. Product revenue includes the aggregate proceeds received from the sale of vehicles through IMCO transactions, including vehicle sale price and transaction fees collected from the buying dealers. Product revenue also includes proceeds received from the sale of vehicles acquired through arbitration, including vehicle sale price and transaction fees collected from buying dealers. Arbitration is the process by which we investigate and resolve claims from buying dealers. We control the vehicle in these transactions and therefore act as the principal.

Cost of Revenue

Marketplace Cost of Revenue

Marketplace cost of revenue includes expenses related to supporting and hosting marketplace service offerings. These expenses include personnel and related expenses for our customer support team, including salaries, benefits, incentive compensation, and stock-based compensation; third-party service provider expenses such as advertising, data center and networking expenses; amortization of developed technology; amortization of capitalized website development; amortization of hosting arrangements; and allocated overhead expenses. We allocate overhead expenses, such as rent and facility expenses, information technology expense, and employee benefit expense, to all departments based on headcount. As such, general overhead expenses are reflected in cost of revenue and each operating expense category.

Wholesale Cost of Revenue

Wholesale cost of revenue includes expenses related to supporting and hosting wholesale service offerings, including Dealer-to-Dealer transactions and vehicles sold to dealers acquired at other marketplaces, on the Buying Matrix on the CarOffer platform. These expenses include vehicle transportation and inspection expenses; net losses on vehicles related to guarantees offered to dealers through Dealer-to-Dealer transactions; personnel and related expenses for employees directly involved in the fulfillment and support of transactions, including salaries, benefits, incentive compensation and stock-based compensation; third-party service provider expenses; amortization of developed technology; amortization of capitalized website development; and allocated overhead expenses. We allocate overhead expenses, such as rent and facility expenses, information technology expense, and employee benefit expense, to all departments based on headcount. As such, general overhead expenses are reflected in cost of revenue and each operating expense category.

Product Cost of Revenue

Product cost of revenue includes expenses related to vehicles sold to dealers through IMCO transactions and vehicles sold to dealers acquired through arbitration. These costs include the cost of the vehicle and transportation expenses.

Operating Expenses

Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of personnel and related expenses for our sales and marketing team, including salaries, benefits, incentive compensation, commissions, and stock-based compensation; expenses associated with consumer marketing, such as traffic acquisition, brand building, and public relations activities; expenses associated with dealer marketing, such as content marketing, customer and promotional events, and industry events; consulting services; software subscription expenses; travel expenses; amortization of hosting arrangements; and allocated overhead expenses. A portion of our commissions that are related to obtaining a new contract are capitalized and amortized over the estimated benefit period of customer relationships. All other sales and marketing expenses are expensed as incurred. We expect sales and marketing expenses to fluctuate from quarter to quarter as we respond to changes in the macroeconomic and competitive landscapes affecting our existing dealers, consumer audience and brand awareness, which will impact our results of operations.

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Product, Technology, and Development

Product, technology, and development expenses, consist primarily of personnel and related expenses for our research and development team, including salaries, benefits, incentive compensation, and stock-based compensation; software subscription expenses; consulting services; and allocated overhead expenses. Other than website development, internal-use software, and hosting arrangement expenses, research and development expenses are expensed as incurred. We expect product, technology, and development expenses to increase as we invest in additional engineering resourcing to develop new solutions and make improvements to our existing platform.

General and Administrative

General and administrative expenses consist primarily of personnel and related expenses for our executive, finance, legal, people & talent, and administrative teams, including salaries, benefits, incentive compensation, and stock-based compensation; expenses associated with professional fees for audit, tax, external legal, and consulting services; payment processing and billing expenses; insurance expenses; software subscription expenses; and allocated overhead expenses. General and administrative expenses are expensed as incurred. We expect general and administrative expenses to increase as we continue to scale our business.

Depreciation and Amortization

Depreciation and amortization expenses consist of depreciation on property and equipment and amortization of intangible assets and internal-use software.

Other Income, Net

Other income, net consists primarily of interest income earned on our cash, cash equivalents and investments, foreign exchange gains and losses and interest expense.

Provision for Income Taxes

We are subject to federal and state income taxes in the United States and taxes in foreign jurisdictions in which we operate. For the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2021, a provision for income taxes was recognized as a result of the consolidated taxable income position.

We recognize deferred tax assets and liabilities based on temporary differences between the financial reporting and income tax bases of assets and liabilities using enacted tax rates in effect for the year in which the temporary differences are expected to be recovered or settled.

We regularly assess the need to recognize a valuation allowance against net deferred tax assets if, based upon the available evidence, it is more likely than not that some or all of the deferred tax assets will not be realized. As of December 31, 2022 and 2021, valuation allowances were immaterial.

We assess our income tax positions and recognize an income tax benefit or expense based upon our evaluation of the facts, circumstances, and information available at the reporting date. For the year ended December 31, 2022, income tax expense and liability related to uncertain tax positions, exclusive of immaterial interest or penalties related to uncertain tax provisions, was $0.6 million, which would favorably affect our effective tax rate, if recognized. For the year ended December 31, 2021, no income tax expense and liability related to uncertain tax positions was recognized.

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Results of Operations

For the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2021, our consolidated income statements are as follows: