On-line used-car retailer Vroom Inc. introduced Tuesday it has begun an preliminary public providing of 18.75 million shares of frequent inventory.

In a submitting with the U.S. Securities and Trade Fee, the retailer pointed to alternative within the extremely fragmented used-car area and sought to color itself as an organization in development mode because it studies losses.

Vroom expects the providing worth to be $15 to $17 per share. That vary would yield $281 million to $319 million.

The corporate has utilized to listing its shares on the Nasdaq International Choose Market beneath the VRM ticker image.

Very like Carvana, Vroom has sought to take advantage of the fragmented used-vehicle area by providing a straightforward on-line different for looking for and shopping for automobiles and vehicles. In its SEC submitting, the corporate referred to as the used-vehicle area a “huge market ripe for disruption.” It highlighted $814 billion in used-vehicle gross sales final 12 months within the U.S., with 40 million autos offered. Inside that, there was solely a 0.9 p.c e-commerce penetration and 9 p.c market share for the highest 100 sellers.

Vroom additionally pointed to what it says is a “scalable and versatile mannequin.” It has a car reconditioning middle within the Houston space and makes use of a sequence of third-party partnerships to help its reconditioning efforts all through the U.S.

“Our method is a hybrid method, which we view as asset-light,” firm CEO Paul Hennessy instructed Automotive Information in December, shortly after Vroom closed a $254 million funding spherical that introduced the 6-year-old agency’s whole capital raised at that time to $721 million. “So we’ll have a few our personal reconditioning factories after which proceed to scale by working at the side of different certified, third-party reconditioning services.”

The net-based firm has seen sturdy top-line development in income whereas reporting losses, because it sees itself investing “in development to scale our firm responsibly and drive in direction of profitably,” Vroom mentioned in its SEC submitting.

Its income within the first quarter rose 60 p.c to $235.1 million, however its web loss was $41.1 million, in contrast with a web lack of $27.1 million within the first quarter of 2019.

For all of final 12 months, the corporate’s income grew 39 p.c to $1.2 billion, whereas its web loss widened to $143 million from $85.2 million in 2018.

Goldman Sachs & Co., BofA Securities, Allen & Co. and Wells Fargo Securities are the lead book-running managers and representatives of underwriters within the proposed providing.