Ernie Garcia is the largest shareholder of Carvana, an online marketplace for used cars purchases that's run by his son and had revenue of $2 billion in 2018. The elder Garcia is also the founder and chairman of DriveTime Automotive Group, the Phoenix-based operator of used car dealerships that had revenue of $3.3 billion in 2018.
Ernie Garcia's net worth of $5.94B can buy ...
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Garcia is calculated to own about a 40 percent economic stake in Carvana, according to a June 2019 stock exchange filing. This excludes the shares he controls for the sole benefit of his son, worth about $1.5 billion on July 7, 2019.
He's calculated to own 98 percent of closely held DriveTime Automotive Group, based on the ownership detailed in its 2013 annual report. The company had $3.3 billion of revenue in 2018, according to Inc. magazine. It's valued using the enterprise value-to-sales and price-to-earnings multiples of three publicly traded peers: America's Car-Mart, Carmax, Sonic Automotive.
The cost of his investment in Carvana is included as a liability less proceeds from his share sales.
Garcia declined to comment on his net worth on Oct. 4, 2018.
Ernie Garcia II was born in May 1957 and became a real estate developer in Arizona.
Garcia pleaded guilty to bank fraud in 1990 for his bit roles in the demise of California thrift Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which sparked a national political scandal. Garcia avoided prison time by testifying for federal prosecutors. He received three years of probation and was fined $50, the minimum fine the court could assess. He has since had his civil rights restored, according to DriveTime filings.
He laid the groundwork for DriveTime in the 1990s, when he bought a rental-car company called Ugly Duckling out of bankruptcy. Merging that operation with a financing company, he built a financier of used cars for subprime borrowers.
Garcia’s son, Ernie III, joined DriveTime in 2007 after earning an engineering degree from Stanford. He helped the company develop tools to assess consumer credit, set vehicle prices and structure deals, a Carvana biography says. He named CEO at Carvana’s founding in 2012. The company went public in 2017.