EBlock has been on the fast track to business expansion and growth in both its home — Canada, where it launched in 2015 — as well as the United States, which it entered in 2019. 

Jason McClenahan, who is president and chief executive officer of EBlock parent company E Inc., said in an episode of the Auto Remarketing Podcast recorded at NADA Show 2022 in Las Vegas earlier this month: “We're ready for major U.S. expansion.”

The company was also busy in February when E Inc. and the EBlock brand purchased the FastLane Auto Exchange independent auto auction.

And also during February, EBlock continued to expand its U.S footprint, as the company established a stake in nine new states. Dealers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia are now able to utilize the dealer-to-dealer auction platform, as well.

All these moves were made after E Automotive Inc. completed its IPO and went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange late last year

Discussing overall results for E Inc., McClenahan said during said in the earnings call for Q4 2021 and full-year results, “We finished the year strong. Q4 was a record quarter.”

In fact, revenue for Q4 2021 came in at $23 million, up a whopping 149% from the same period of 2020. For the full-year, revenue rose to $80 million, up 164% from full-year 2020.

Taking a look at gross transaction value,  that metric came at $705 million for Q4 2021 and $2.2 billion for this past fiscal year.

Illustrating the high volume of vehicle inventory on EBlock — even amid a tight supply environment — vehicles transacted for the company came in at 45,500 in Q4 and 163,500 in fiscal 2021.

“The market continues to experience extremely tight inventory conditions due to the chip shortage. You can see the impact inventory dynamics are having on the value per vehicle, as gross transaction value as gross transaction value grew faster than transactions,” McClenahan said. “We do not expect inventory dynamics to normalize in the near term as supply chain constraints and the uncertainty from the war in Ukraine persist.”

During Q4, McClenahan said the company still managed to outgrow these inventory challenges as evidenced by the company’s KPIs.

As for volatility in used-car pricing, although prices softened a bit in Q4 of 2021, McClenahan shared that inventory still remains tight, and there won't be any dramatic freefall in prices any time soon.

“I see used inventory prices are going to continue to remain strong,” he said. “We’ve started to see a little bit of softening, but nothing alarming at all.”

Although Q4 is normally a seasonally slower period for volumes, that wasn’t the case in 2021 for E inc.

The company continued to add new marketplace participants, up 70% as of Dec. 31,  with more than 10,000 participants on its wholesale marketplaces in the last 12 months.

In 2021, the company also made its first significant push in the U.S., with the acquisition of ABS. The company noted the integration of that business into the EBlock platform is now complete.

“Our strategy in the U.S. is to have coast-to-coast coverage by the end of 2023,” said McClenahan.

Two initiatives, in particular, drove growth in the U.S. in 2021: the launch of the EBlock platform in the Southeast markets and the acquisition of FastLane Auto Exchange in Michigan, both of which the CEO said “benefit both our Canadian and U.S. market strategies.”

“We are really focused on laying the foundation in the United States to get set up for the latter half of 2022,” said McClenahan. 

He explained the FastLane acquisition provides easy access to a port of entry for vehicles that are sold in Canada and then imported into the United States for resale, giving U.S. dealers “much needed inventory from Canada”

McClenahan explained this is an example of the company’s strategy of “land meeting technology to drive long-term strategy.”

A recent example of this trend in the industry is the ADESA’s physical wholesale business sale to digital direct-to-consumer company Carvana.

“We are going to combine our market leading technology with our physical auction infrastructure and help dealers compete with the direct-to-consumer model,” said McClenahan.

He also noted during the Q&A portion of the earnings call that due to the ADESA/Carvana move, there’s perhaps now more market share in the U.S. for the disruptor — and companies assisting auto dealers in fending off pressure from the direct-to-consumer side of the business.

This effort is particularly evident on the EDealer side of the business, as the company aims to arm their dealers to compete in the digital transformation of the industry.

“The volume of consumer vehicles we are providing existing dealers to purchase is evidence of that,” McClenahan said. “Our platform allows dealers to acquire inventory directly from consumers to help defend some of the inventory challenges they’re facing and provide a better — and more transparent — experience for the consumer at the same time.”

The company also beta launched in 2021 its next generation retailing platform to a small subset of independent dealers in the Canadian market.

The next-level product enables the unification of EBlock and EDealer across one connected platform, a move the E inc. leader calls a “critical first step in our long-term product vision of bringing digital retail and digital wholesale together.”

And the company certainly has the team to cover this ambitious goal. At the end of 2021, there were 800 members on the team — double the size of employees in 2020.

The company is still on schedule for its U.S. expansion, although it is still in the early stages in the East.

“We are attracting an incredible amount of talent now to build up that infrastructure and foundation,” McClenahan said.

Although the company’s strategy in the U.S. will be similar to the roadmap pursued in Canada, there are a few market nuances to take into account south of the border.

“One nuance is different competitors, but the biggest is the amount and volume of physical independent auctions,” he said. “In the U.S., we are going to look for some strategic acquisitions in the right marketplaces, like we just did with the FastLane Auto Exchange acquisition.”

In the Canadian market, the company already “plays” on both the digital wholesale and digital retail side of the industry.

“We already enable our franchise and independent dealers to acquire inventory for consumers, and provide them with any part of that process in the digital retailing journey on our website,” said McClenahan.

This is technology the company is going to continue to build upon on its product roadmap, and one reason why it has been so focused on building the brand new EDealer platform to seamlessly integrate into the EBlock wholesale marketplace.

“We can support our franchise and independent dealers in the Canadian market to help compete with the competitors in that space trying to disrupt them,” McClenahan said.

The company is set up to continue building technology to power its digital marketplace and infrastructure, allowing dealers to buy and sell vehicles “the way they prefer.”

During the Q&A portion of the recent call, McClenahan was asked about whether the focus on digital and contactless sales would persist as COVID-19 restrictions and protocols loosen up.

The answer was a fast “no” — the digital transformation was hitting the auto industry long before the pandemic hit.

What COVID-19 did, McClenahan explained, was push the last few dealers that were maybe a little hesitant to try digital to dive in headfirst.

“I don’t believe it is going back to the way it was and ever will — it’s changed for the future,” McClenahan said.

As for the company’s future, McClenahan said the company is not going to shy away from the right acquisitions, and has a “nice pipeline” in mind in varying facets of the auto business.

“So, we are going to continue to chase those down,” he said.