Cox Automotive to buy Dealertrack in $4 bln all-cash deal

[skutchhenks]

Wow. This changes a lot for the automotive world, it's an entirely new landscape now. What's the good, bad, and ugly?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/co...rack-in-4-bln-all-cash-deal-2015-06-15-891749

 

[JessicaRuth]

What makes you say it's a new landscape?

 

[JessicaRuth]

This just in:

Investigation launched into proposed sale.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Well, I guess my Dealer.com websites are soon to become part of the AutoTrader family! This should be very interesting to see at NADA. I guess DealerTrack, AutoTrader, Dealer.com, Haystak, Manheim, Vin Solutions, VAuto, XTime and KBB will be in the same booth!!! The reps at NADA will have to use the entire back of their shirts to show who they're affilitated with. Not just a small logo on the front All kidding aside, One thing that does concern me is customer data. Now, Cox and look into your company and really tell exactly what your doing. They know when you buy a vehicle (via auction), they know when and how long it takes for you to post that vehicle online, they can track all your pricing changes, track all web traffic on that vehicle, how much you spend to market that vehicle, all the loan submissions you submit on that vehicle (and who you submit them to) and your selling price and the details of the loan and when it finally sells. If they keep digging, they will be able to match customer data to website visitor data and see pretty much everything from the time the customer came into the market to the time they left of out the market. Then you follow all this up with XTime and they will know all the service intervals the customer has as well.

I do kinda see an issue though. There's a few to many roosters in the hen house. You have 2 website prividers, 2 CRM providers and 2 Paid search providers now!

My main question is for the Dealers. Do you think we may be over paying a little bit for all of these tools??? Think about it. How many of these tools does your dealership use and really how deep is Cox Automotive in your pockets??? I bet if instead of sending multiple bills from different company's each month and they consolidated all the above vendors into one bill, Dealers would probably fall out of their chairs.

Edit # 1 Damn, I forgot to add that Dealer Rater is in there too somewhere.

Edit # 2 They own Homenet as well. Forgot all about them

 

[JessicaRuth]

@Rick Buffkin DealerRater? They partnered to show ATC reviews but no acquisition - unless I missed something.

And....great questions and feedback. The duplicate products are more than 2, though. More like 5 for each

 

[Jay Juliano]

Edit # 1 Damn, I forgot to add that Dealer Rater is in there too somewhere.

False.

 

[Chris Cachor]

Now, Cox and look into your company and really tell exactly what your doing. They know when you buy a vehicle (via auction), they know when and how long it takes for you to post that vehicle online, they can track all your pricing changes, track all web traffic on that vehicle, how much you spend to market that vehicle, all the loan submissions you submit on that vehicle (and who you submit them to) and your selling price and the details of the loan and when it finally sells. If they keep digging, they will be able to match customer data to website visitor data and see pretty much everything from the time the customer came into the market to the time they left of out the market. Then you follow all this up with XTime and they will know all the service intervals the customer has as well.

From my experience in the software business, Cox would bankrupt themselves trying to get all these companies integrated with each other. I think this is a standard growth by acquisition thing and I *think* most of these companies are still operated independently. It's probably good for everyone who has options but I think the bad part is eventually there's limits to growth for Cox and probably some stagnation among the companies purchased (founders leave, increased mismanagement, etc).

From the article linked, this part caught my attention: "Integrating our platforms will be a big step forward in our shared vision of providing open, cost-effective and efficient solutions for dealers, lenders, manufacturers and consumers"

I share the same vision but it involves open APIs from each party (mainly finance) that is standardized for automotive retail, just like ADF/XML was. Cox is going to have an absolute hell of a time trying to integrate this pipeline. By the time they do, someone else will probably already have something that does the job better :/

 

[Jlewis74]

DT already had issues getting all of its other products to integrate with its DMS as it was.

This makes me glad I am with a smaller sized company.

 

[NOSPDLIMIT]

I was thinking integration also. Let Cox take the risk (If there is any) Lets hope they use the power to grow the industry instead of sucking it dry.

 

[NOSPDLIMIT]

False.