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Auto Dealer Stocks Falling Hard on Hyundai-Amazon Partnership Is Too Much Fear-Mongering

At the Los Angeles auto show on Nov. 16, Hyundai announced a partnership with Amazon in which, starting next year, some of its dealers will sell new vehicles on Amazon.com. The news sent each of the six franchise dealers and CarMax down about 5%-8%, which we think is a large overreaction predicated on fears of Amazon taking share away from dealers. Such a risk is not even possible on new vehicle sales due to state franchise laws, nor do we think it is likely that Amazon wants to do all aspects of auto retailing such as handling and disposing of trade-ins, service, and finance and insurance offerings. Service is a very underappreciated benefit that dealers provide customers when comparing the traditional auto industry to digital retailing and electric vehicle startups' direct sales formats. Should Amazon directly sell used vehicles someday, CarMax would have more competition, but it also has the ability to sell via brick-and-mortar, digital-only, or any combination of both depending on what the customer wants, something a digital-only retailer cannot offer. Our auto coverage has been implementing omnichannel tools for years and we doubt that any of their management teams are surprised by the Amazon news.