LeasePlan intends to offer ex-lease cars to customers through a mixed online and physical retail network, it has been reported.
FleetLeasing reported that customers will be able to lease, buy or rent cars that were previously part of a fleet lease.
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Vehicles will be remarketed through both online and physical marketplaces, leveraging a network of “experience centres” that LeasePlan intends to launch across Europe.
Plans for a brick-and-mortar network had been hinted at when LeasePlan launched its “What’s Next” campaign last month.
LeasePlan declined to comment on how much of its fleet stock would be involved in the remarketing operation, or on when the initiative would fully launch in the UK.
James Dower, senior editor at cap hpi’s Black Book, told FleetLeasing that although the remarketing of ex-fleet vehicles would make sense in Europe, where the auction network is underdeveloped, it would face tougher challenges in the UK.
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By GlobalDataHe added that LeasePlan would need to carefully weigh the overhead of managing physical facilities and selecting which fleet cars are fit to be remarketed.
Results
In related news, LeasePlan also released their Q3 financial results.
Although gross profit was stable at €269m (£240m), operating income for the quarter was down 7% to €388m, while profits before tax fell 22% to €161m.
Nevertheless, data for the nine months to September was positive, with operating income up 2% to €1.2bn and profits up 1.5% to €521m.
The number of vehicles in LeasePlan’s fleet also increased by 81,000 over the nine months to September, and is now up to 1.7m.
Although the company did see a reduction in vehicle sales, it considered this to be a natural consequence of the stabilisation of residual values and used car prices.
Chief executive officer Tex Gunning said: “LeasePlan delivered yet another strong set of results in the first nine months of 2017, highlighting the strong growth and resilient nature of our business. These excellent results further demonstrate the positive impact of our ‘Power of One LeasePlan’ operational excellence initiative.
“We also made important steps in our ambition to achieve net zero emissions from our total fleet by 2030, including becoming a founding partner of the global EV100 initiative.”
