AutoCanada shut its loss-making C2C finance and Kijiji instant-offer units
The Canadian dealer group wound down two online side businesses that lost $6.0M a year, buying back iA Financial's 10% stake for $8M to refocus on dealerships.
What was changed
AutoCanada, the Canadian dealership group, announced on 28 September 2026 that it is ending its online consumer-to-consumer finance-and-insurance business and its Kijiji-based instant cash offer business. Alongside the shutdown it repurchased iA Financial Group's 10% common equity interest in 15154871 Canada Inc. for $8 million in cash, concluding the investment arrangement tied to the two ventures.
The numbers behind the decision: over the trailing 12 months to 30 June the two businesses generated roughly $3.6 million of revenue and incurred $6.0 million of net losses. CEO Samuel Cochrane framed the refocus plainly: 'our priority is clear: to be the best operator of automotive dealerships and collision centres in Canada. This requires disciplined allocation of capital and management attention.' He added the group 'will act decisively when an initiative is loss-making, does not meet our return requirements or distracts from our core operations.'
The unwind leaves the commercial relationship intact: iA Financial remains a provider of third-party insurance and warranty products across AutoCanada's dealer network. In a separate disclosure the same day, Robert Steele bought 264,450 AutoCanada shares at $22.00 apiece ($5.82 million) through WAGS Investments, lifting his controlled stake to about 10.41% of shares outstanding.
Why it worked
The units were subscale by any measure — $3.6M of revenue against $6.0M of annual net losses — and sat outside the dealership-and-collision core.
Cochrane's stated test is return requirements and management attention, and the ventures failed both.
Buying back iA Financial's 10% stake for $8M untangled the co-investment structure so the shutdown could be executed cleanly.
Keeping iA as a product supplier preserved the parts of the relationship that serve the core network.
What can be applied
A disciplined operator prunes subscale experiments as soon as they miss return requirements — ending them protects the core business from capital and management-attention drift.
Aftermath
AutoCanada continues as a pure dealership and collision-centre operator, with iA Financial still supplying insurance and warranty products across its network. The same-day filing showing Steele raising his stake to 10.41% was separate from, and did not affect, the shutdown.