How Carvana Weathered a 99% Stock Plunge: ‘Comfortable Being the Underdog’

(SeaPRwire) –   Carvana emerged as a standout corporate success story during the pandemic. As shoppers turned to digital vehicle purchases and the used-car market boomed, the firm became a poster child for tech-driven industry transformation. However, by 2022, the company encountered significant obstacles.

Surging interest rates, cooling demand for pre-owned vehicles, and higher financing costs created a perfect storm. Carvana, which had been scaling aggressively in anticipation of continued growth, suddenly faced intense scrutiny. With its share price plummeting 99% from its high, market observers began to doubt the company’s viability.

For Christina Keiser, Carvana’s executive vice president of strategy, this era served as a litmus test for the company’s ability to ignore external criticism and concentrate on its core objectives. She notes that the primary takeaway from this period was the necessity of ruthless prioritization.

According to Keiser, Carvana had reached a stage of its growth where it felt empowered to expand resources, launch new initiatives, and pursue multiple goals simultaneously. The 2022 downturn necessitated a shift in discipline. Management had to identify the most critical priorities, allocate resources to those specific areas, and shelve secondary ambitions.

Carvana anchored its strategy in the customer experience. Even as external sentiment soured, consumers remained receptive to the platform’s buying process, which reassured leadership that their fundamental service offering remained highly valuable.

From that point, the focus shifted to rigorous operations. The recovery strategy was built on three pillars: achieving positive adjusted EBITDA, proving robust unit economics, and returning to growth. Executives deconstructed the profitability deficit into dozens of granular operational goals, each with a designated owner and weekly performance tracking.

Additionally, Carvana finalized a crucial debt exchange in 2023, which slashed total debt by over $1.3 billion, pushed back maturity dates, and decreased near-term cash interest obligations, providing the firm with the necessary runway to implement its recovery plan.

This structure allowed for tangible progress to be monitored internally. Staff could observe real-time improvements in key metrics—such as reduced transport distances and enhanced logistics efficiency—which eventually paved the way for profitability. While these gains were not immediately visible to investors in quarterly reports, they were instrumental in maintaining internal morale and confidence during the turnaround.

Keiser emphasizes the importance of internal communication during this time. Leadership reminded the workforce that steep declines and market skepticism are often inherent to building a disruptive business. The situation also reignited the company’s original spirit. “We were back in that position of being the underdog, of being questioned,” she explains.

The crisis also established a higher threshold for what constituted a priority. Projects that offered long-term potential but lacked immediate necessity were deferred. Keiser notes that initiatives focused on long-term brand building or repeat customer engagement were sidelined in favor of efforts directly linked to operational stability, profitability, and the core customer experience.

In the 2025 500 rankings, Carvana climbed to No. 314—a 169-spot improvement from its 2021 debut—and posted record annual revenue of $20.3 billion for fiscal year 2025. For Keiser, who has been with the company since 2016, this recovery validates the firm’s durability. “We don’t need validation day to day,” she says. “We’re very comfortable being the underdog and sort of saying, ‘We’ve got something to prove.’”

Ruth Umoh
ruth.umoh@.com