Carvana earnings show tariff panic buying wasn’t just for new cars

Carvana reported earnings on Wednesday after the bell, and the used car retailer’s financials show that tariff-induced “panic buying” wasn’t just for new vehicles.

Carvana reported earnings per share of $1.61, beating expectations of $0.72. Its first-quarter sales totaled $4.23 billion, a 36% increase and better than analyst estimates of $3.99 billion.

The company appears to have also benefited from the recent sales boosts seen by major automakers. Carvana reported it sold just shy of 134,000 vehicles to retail customers on the quarter, up 46% and about 8,000 more than Wall Street was expecting.

That number still lags behind Carvana’s primary rival, CarMax, which sold more than 180,000 vehicles in its most recent quarter — though Carvana has significantly closed the gap recently.

Despite all the beats, shares fell more than 7% after-hours.

Looking ahead, Carvana said its new management opjective is to “sell 3 million retail units per year at an adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.5% within 5 to 10 years.” That would mark a massive expansion: last year, the company sold about 416,000 vehicles.