SaaS firm Pinewood upgrades guidance as it eyes US expansion – UKTN

Pinewood has upgraded its earnings guidance as the car dealership software firm prepares for major overseas expansion.

The Birmingham-based business, formerly known as Pendragon, today raised its guidance for underlying EBITDA in FY27 to £30m from £27m.

The London-listed firm has laid out its vision for global growth in a capital markets event with shareholders. That includes a rebrand to Pinewood.AI and more details on its joint venture in the US with dealership group Lithia Motors.

New York-listed Lithia motors acquired the dealership groups owned by Pendragon, including Stratstone, Evans Halshaw, California and Car Store, in February 2024 after which Pendragon rebranded to Pinewood and became a pure play software-as-a-service business.

Lithia has since acquired a major shareholding in Pinewood, with the two firms establishing a US joint venture under which Lithia will rollout Pinewood software into its own systems as well as support taking the product to market to encourage adoption by dealership rivals.

Pinewood CEO Bill Berman told UKTN that establishing a joint venture would be key to the company’s success in growing its US operations, to crack a market that UK businesses often struggle to break into. In accounts published last week, London-based fintech Zilch confirmed it had put its US operations on hold after previously eyeing the territory as a key growth market.

“The tech is great and the tech would work with or without having a partnership with Lithia. The challenge is if you don’t have an anchor tenant, it’s like building a big building — it’s much better to have half the floors leased out before you build it,” Berman said.

“If we tried to do this by ourselves without having a partner like this, we’d have to sit here and go and get all the development work done. We’d have to start pounding on doors and it would just be a very long road, a very laborious and time-consuming effort, and that’s what makes it so difficult to break into that type of a market.”

Pinewood shares rose 1.4% to 340p after markets opened on Thursday. The stock has risen by more than 13% over the past week following the announcement that the company had struck a fresh 5 year contract to provide services to Marshall Motor Group.

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