Bitauto Holdings Limited ("Bitauto" or the "Company") (NYSE: BITA), a leading provider of Internet content and marketing services for China's fast-growing automotive industry, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to establish a joint venture ("JV") company, with China Yong Da Automobiles Services Holdings Limited ("Yong Da Group"), one of China's leading automotive dealership groups, and Youxinpai (Beijing) Information Technology Co., Ltd. ("UXIN"), a leading professional electronic auction service provider for used cars in China.
By partnering with Yong Da Group and UXIN, Bitauto's proprietary used car website, taoche.com, will benefit from an expanded inventory of available-for-sale used cars. China's used car market has huge, long-term growth potential yet remains under-served. The joint venture will ultimately help better serve the market by ensuring greater numbers of car buyers across China, have easy access to authentic, transparent and comprehensive used cars information.
"Bitauto is delighted to partner with Yong Da Group and UXIN," said Mr. William Bin Li, chairman and chief executive officer of Bitauto. "We continue to execute on our long-term, used car strategy. This new partnership will help extend our already leading position and strengthen our existing competitive advantages within China's used car industry. We look forward to delivering customers with more extensive used car information via our taoche.com website and are confident this will ensure it remains the go-to website for used car listings in China."
Mr. Zhang De'an, chairman of Yong Da Group commented, "As a leading network of auto dealerships, we have access to a vast pool of used car information. We are pleased to share this with Bitauto and UXIN and look forward to drawing on each other's resources and expertise. We are confident the partnership will help provide our auto dealerships with more effective marketing activities and promote our used car inventory to a broader range of potential consumers."
Mr. Chris Dai Kun, chairman and chief executive officer of UXIN added, "We are thrilled to partner with Bitauto and Yong Da Group. Through the joint venture, we look forward to bringing our leading online auction platform and technology to more auto dealers. The online-to-offline trend in the used car sales grows fast. We are confident that the new partnership can truly facilitate the development of China's online used car market."