Turo on Thursday withdrew its plans for an IPO, ending a three-year wait to bring the online car-sharing network to the public marketplace, according to a regulatory filing.
Turo, which was founded in 2010, allows private car owners to rent out their vehicles through the startup’s website or app. The company — sometimes described as the Airbnb for cars — publicly filed in January 2022 for an initial public offering, but IPO conditions changed soon afterward. Its growth decelerated, too.
Turo’s decision to end its IPO plans comes just one day after peer-to-peer car-sharing company Getaround shut down its U.S. operations. Like Turo, Getaround began life as a venture-backed company. Unlike Turo, Getaround made the leap back onto the public market in 2022 via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company.
Turo is still operating in the United States — and elsewhere. As of September 2024, the company reported it had 150,000 active hosts globally, with 350,000 active vehicle listings and 3.5 million active guests. The company also operates in Canada, Australia, and France.
Its peak growth is right now behind it, however. The company reported $722 million in the nine months ended September 2024, up 8.6% from the same nine-month period in 2023. Still, those numbers lag behind Turo’s booming nine-month period in 2022 when it generated $879.7 in revenue. Similarly, the company has been profitable since 2022 on net income, but as with its revenue, profits have not recovered to the heights Turo reported in 2022.
In other words, business cratered in 2023, then recovered in 2024, but not quite to the levels needed for that IPO dream.
