How Carvana survived a 99% stock plunge: ‘We’re very comfortable being the underdog’

Carvana was one of the pandemic era’s biggest corporate winners. As consumers embraced online car buying and used-car prices surged, the company became a market darling and a symbol of digital disruption. By 2022, it had hit a wall.

Interest rates were rising, used-car demand was weakening, and financing was getting more expensive. Carvana, which had been expanding rapidly for years and had prepared for another big growth year, suddenly found itself under severe pressure. Its stock collapsed 99% from its peak, and analysts questioned whether it would survive.

For Christina Keiser, Carvana’s executive vice president of strategy, the period tested whether the company could block out the noise and focus on the work at hand. The lesson she draws from that stretch is ruthless focus, she tells Fortune.

As she describes it, Carvana had been on an upward climb and reached a point where it believed it could add resources across the organization, take on more initiatives, and push on many fronts at once. The pressures of 2022 forced a different discipline. Leadership had to define the few priorities that mattered most, assign resources accordingly, and put other ambitions aside.

Carvana grounded itself first in the customer. Even as the market narrative deteriorated, customers continued to respond positively to the buying experience the company had built. That gave the leadership team confidence that the core service still........

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