CarLotz started buying and selling shares Friday on the Nasdaq trade underneath the “LOTZ” ticker image, turning into the newest on-line used-vehicle firm to go public.

CarLotz, which focuses on used-vehicle consignment, introduced final yr it could turn out to be a publicly traded firm by finishing a reverse merger with Acamar Companions Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition firm. It is the identical technique Shift Applied sciences used to go public final October.

Shares within the firm closed Friday’s buying and selling down 3.1 % to $11.92..

CarLotz CEO Michael Bor instructed Automotive Information final week that going public ought to assist increase the corporate’s profile and visibility.

“I believe it should do nice issues for our means to supply autos,” he mentioned. “I am additionally actually enthusiastic about dramatically enhancing the model consciousness that we have now.”

Bor added that the corporate had traditionally been “overly environment friendly” with its advertising and marketing spend. “Nonetheless right this moment, even in markets the place we have been working, individuals haven’t heard of us.”

CarLotz relies in Richmond, Va., and has eight hub places in Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Florida and Illinois. The corporate plans to broaden with three to 4 extra hubs per quarter going ahead: Places in Seattle and Orlando are set to open subsequent month.

Bor, a former funding banker, has mentioned CarLotz needs to be seen much less as a service provider that buys low and sells excessive and extra as a service that streamlines the used-vehicle promoting course of. Whereas rivals cope with auctions, wholesalers, consumers and different events, CarLotz seeks to break down every thing right into a unified platform.

The corporate sells retail autos, however the bulk of its enterprise — and the fastest-growing half — is gross sales it brokers on behalf of company companions corresponding to fleet administration firms, leasing firms, banks, credit score unions, sellers, automakers and others.

Nonetheless, the corporate has pleasant relationships with wholesale public sale firms, Bor has mentioned, and KAR International, the mother or father firm of public sale large ADESA, is a minority shareholder in CarLotz.

CarLotz’s reverse merger was funded by a mixture of $311 million cash-in-trust from Acamar Companions and $125 million of personal funding in public fairness proceeds.