An ad looking for a French fluent commercial was the beginning of it all. For the founder and director of OK Mobility, the Franco-Moroccan Othman Ktiri, the commercial vocation comes as standard despite being an agronomist and lover of marine biology. However, the automotive world, in which he has built an empire, and cars as something beyond an object with which to trade do not particularly interest him. With more than 450 employees and 35 offices in seven countries, this multinational company based in Palma de Mallorca that offers mobility solutions through the sale and rental of pre-owned vehicles has taken the step of seeking financing in BME’s Alternative Fixed Income Market (MARF) with an initial issue of promissory notes worth € 80 million. A challenge for its founder, who with this operation intends to show “solvency and transparency” and obtain a source of financing that allows him to diversify his business.
His beginnings as a salesperson at a branded dealership led him to discover the opportunities that the automotive world offered to someone with the idea of entrepreneurship. In 2005 he decided to make the final leap, left the dealership and created his own pre-owned car distribution company under the name Logic Auto, which became the seed of what is now OK Mobility.
“Spain is a tourist country, but, unlike France and Italy, it did not have the capacity to absorb the volumes of new cars that the tourist industry converts into pre-owned ones. It was necessary to find a way out for them and what I did was to place the surpluses in various countries of the European Union ”. The business grew rapidly and, five years later, Ktiri saw that the traditional world of distribution did not cover all the needs of the market and opted to broaden horizons with what was then a growing business, that of car rental. He decided to keep his location in Mallorca and take advantage of the attraction pole of one of the largest tourist squares in the world.
Split the risk
In the midst of the economic crisis, when local companies in rent a car They had problems financing their purchases, he proposed to lease them their cars and get them back at the end of the season. The OK Rent a Car brand emerged in 2010 from one of those car orders that another rental company didn’t pick up and went unpaid. “They did not come to collect the 100 cars they asked for and I had to put them on the market on my own. That’s where OK Rent a Car was born, when I managed to rent them to a tour operator, who began to send us reservations little by little. A month later we were already overbooked, ”says Ktiri, who confesses that he never thought of entering the rental market with his own brand. Now he has changed his mind and considers that it is better to have direct contact with the end customer “and divide your risk” rather than concentrate it in a single company.
Eleven years after the startup of the company’s rental division, the pandemic has not slowed OK Mobility’s growth. With a turnover of 294 million euros in 2020 and an operating result (ebitda) of 17.1 million euros, the company sells more than 20,000 vehicles a year and has more than two million customers in the different branches of rent a car. “In 2021, the ebitda generated by the rental division is far exceeding that generated by the sales business,” says Ktiri, who this season has not canceled “not a single order for vehicles”, despite the uncertainty The situation derived from the pandemic led other companies to halt their purchase plans before the summer, causing them to run out of enough units to rent in the months of season that they managed to overcome. This year it has received many requests that they have not been able to satisfy for car rental to other rent a car, companies that are buying in the group’s retail stores in order to complete their fleet.
On the horizon, however, looms the microchip crisis, which has caused a decline in vehicle manufacturing worldwide and leads to delays in the delivery of cars at dealerships. A problem that for OK Mobility has become an opportunity by revaluing the price of its fleet, both for rent and for sale. “As there is no supply of new vehicles, the supply of pre-owned cars is appreciating a lot. In the short term it is an ideal situation to maximize profitability, but in the future projection the outlook is complex for the entire sector, a challenge to which we are going to respond successfully ”.
One of the great challenges for the future for the company is to face the changes that environmental regulations stipulate to restrict the circulation of gasoline and diesel vehicles. In the case of the Balearic Islands, the Climate Change Law provides that rental companies convert 10% of their fleet into electricity annually to reach 2035 with the entire rental vehicle plant in the archipelago without combustion cars. Ktiri censures these goals because he believes they are unrealistic, and not only because of the lack of infrastructure, but also because of the lack of “supply and availability” of electric vehicles. “If I want to go buy 4% of my fleet in electric vehicles, I am incapable because there are not enough. Not to mention the price, which is absolutely barbaric, ”he stresses. The current subsidy, he says, is higher for an individual than for a company that buys several lots of electric cars at once.
In the short term, OK Mobility is focused on fulfilling its geographic expansion plan until 2026 by opening new offices and working for the vertical integration of the company by bringing together the purchase and rental divisions. It is also reinforcing the entry of its branches in the airports of the public network to improve the quality of the customer experience and minimize costs. “We will be in more destinations. Mobility is very fashionable ”, he concludes.
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