POLITICA

SK Inc. Reaps 2x Profits from US Car-sharing Company

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SK Inc. announced on March 16 that it signed a contract to sell all of its stake in Turo, a peer-to-peer (P2P) vehicle-sharing platform, for US$67.5 million (approximately 88.1 billion won).

SK Inc. aims to wrap up the transaction within the first half of this year by selling its holdings to existing shareholders. The company invested US$35 million (about 39.8 billion won) in Turo in 2017 and reaped more than double the investment in profits. The rate of return is about 121 percent in Korean won.

Since being founded in San Francisco in 2009, Turo has grown into the world’s largest P2P vehicle sharing platform company, providing services in over 10,000 cities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France. Unlike a business-to-customer (B2C) vehicle-sharing model in which a car owned by a company is borrowed, Turo is using the method of sharing a car owned by an individual. It is characterized by low prices compared to existing rental cars and easy pick-up and return procedures.

SK Inc. preemptively paid attention to vehicle sharing business models. In 2015, it invested about 100 billion won in Socar, a Korean car-sharing company. In 2017, it established Socar Malaysia, a joint venture in Malaysia with Socar to enter the Southeast Asian mobility market. And in 2020, it acquired secure management rights to Socar Malaysia by making an additional stake in the company.

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