BlaBlaCar, the French vehicle-sharing giant, has no limits. For the first time in its ten years of life, it makes its billing data public after closing 2022 with a turnover of 197 million euros, double that of the previous year —very affected by the restrictions of the pandemic— and 52% more than in 2019, the last exercise of normality. Spain has established itself as the group’s second market after France, where most of its activity is concentrated, and turnover in Spanish territory already borders on 10% of the group’s total business.
Company sources classify its financial results as “solid” and allow us to look at this year “with great confidence”. In fact, it expects to close the year with positive Ebitda and with growth of 30%, so that these figures allow the group to reach the break-even point. “Our goal is not only to be profitable, but to have solid, organic and sustainable growth,” they add.
2023 will be a year of records
Florent Bannwarth, BlaBlaCar’s director of operations for Spain and Portugal, explains to this medium that the company, with different business branches open abroad, will continue to focus on improving car sharing services, which in his opinion have a “great potential for improvement”. In 2019 they achieved their all-time high in travelers, with more than 8 million, a figure that they hope to leave far behind this year after the last few months have been saved with successive registrations of users and trips.
The key to this success lies in the concept of capillarity. “BlaBlaCar began to develop in large axes, but now we seek to reach small towns, where our growth potential lies”, he comments. Regional trips are growing at double digits as a result of the expansion of the brand towards the towns, to the point that, today, the average age of users has risen from 24 to 32 years; 45% of the trips have intermediate stops and the application already allows reaching more than 6,000 locations throughout Spain.
High speed competition
On the contrary, where demand has suffered is in the large corridors, affected by the arrival of competition to the high-speed train, although these falls are offset by the increase in connections to new locations. High-traffic axes such as Madrid-Valencia are at levels of users similar to or lower than those of 2019, as a result of the drop in rail prices.
Bannwarth ensures that measures such as discounts on public transport, with discounts of up to 90% on the price of buses or recurring trains “do not have an impact on the number of drivers”, thus “they do not remove BlaBlaCar traffic on the road”. However, they do expect a certain impact after the entry into force of the summer discounts for young people, which entail 50% discounts on high-speed trains beyond those previously announced.
Taking advantage of the pandemic break, the company chose to turn its commercial and technological strategy towards the concept of multimodality, trying to combine its car-sharing business with the bus services it has had in the neighboring country since 2019, and which it now also carries out. international routes in Spain.
As he explained to La Información, his next challenge involves the integration of train tickets into his platform, seeking to become a ‘door-to-door’ travel provider: “We were convinced by the strategic line of connecting small towns and integrating train and bus” , defends Bannwarth. In France, he is already in talks with the railway operator SNCF to carry out this integration, waiting to carry out the same plan in Spain.
