Carvana Co (CVNA) Stock Near Highs as Analyst Upgrades, Insider Sales and Record Q3 Results Collide

Updated: November 30, 2025

Carvana Co (NYSE: CVNA) stock is ending November in full drama mode: trading near the top of its 52‑week range, boosted by a wave of bullish analyst calls, shadowed by insider selling, and backed by genuinely strong earnings.

On Friday, November 28, Carvana shares closed at $374.50, up about 4.8% on the day, in a trading range between roughly $357 and $376. That puts the online used‑car retailer about 9% below its 52‑week high around $413 and up roughly 44% over the past year. ^[1]

Here’s what’s driving CVNA as of November 30, 2025, and how the latest news fits into the bigger turnaround story.

Key takeaways

Price: CVNA closed at $374.50 on November 28, 2025, after a sharp weekly rally, with a 52‑week range of roughly $148–$413. ^[2]
Story: A cluster of analyst upgrades and high price targets contrasts with heavy insider selling and persistent concerns about leverage and valuation. ^[3]
Fundamentals: Q3 2025 brought record units, revenue and profits, but margins are under pressure and the company still carries multi‑billion‑dollar debt. ^[4]

Where Carvana stock stands now

Carvana’s share price has staged yet another comeback act in 2025.

Last close (Nov 28, 2025): $374.50
Day’s range: About $357.50–$375.77
One‑year performance: +43.8% over the last 12 months
52‑week range: Roughly $148.25 to $413.33 ^[5]

Different data providers peg Carvana’s market capitalization in the low‑to‑mid tens of billions of dollars; one real‑time snapshot around the latest close puts it near $53 billion. ^[6]

In short: CVNA is trading like a high‑beta growth stock again — not the distressed, near‑delisting story it briefly looked like in 2022.

Fresh bullish calls are powering the latest rally

Wedbush crowns Carvana the “new used car king”

The latest leg higher began earlier this week after Wedbush upgraded Carvana from Neutral to Outperform and lifted its price target from $380 to $400, calling Carvana the “new used car king.” ^[7]

Key points from Wedbush and related coverage:

Wedbush now expects Carvana to overtake CarMax by used‑car unit volume in Q4 2026, six months faster than previously forecast. ^[8]
Analysts highlighted that Carvana’s earlier pullback from around $400 to the low $300s looked overdone given its growth trajectory and CarMax’s own struggles. ^[9]
Articles summarizing the call note that Carvana shares have gained around 60% year‑to‑date despite recent volatility. ^[10]

That upgrade helped fuel a multi‑day run that saw CVNA jump from around $311 on November 21 to just under $375 by November 28, including daily moves of 6–7% several times during the week. ^[11]

Rate‑cut hopes add a macro tailwind

On November 28, Benzinga highlighted Carvana as a beneficiary of growing expectations for a Federal Reserve rate cut in December, arguing that lower rates matter twice for this business: ^[12]

Demand side – Lower APRs make sub‑prime and near‑prime auto loans cheaper, expanding the pool of customers who can afford used‑car payments.
Funding side – Cheaper financing cuts the cost of inventory and improves pricing in the securitization market for Carvana’s auto loans, which can boost gross profit per unit.

In that piece, Wedbush’s long‑term framing is even more ambitious: Carvana is modeled toward 3 million annual unit sales by 2033 with steadily improving margins. ^[13]

Other bullish analyst moves

The Wedbush upgrade came on top of a stack of earlier positive calls:

Barclays initiated coverage in mid‑November with an “Overweight” rating and a $390 price target, which pushed the stock up more than 2% on the day. ^[14]
BTIG recently reiterated a Buy rating and a $450 price target. ^[15]
Jefferies has maintained a Buy rating with a target reportedly around $475 in recent analyst‑rating round‑ups. ^[16]
Across Wall Street, 23 brokerages tracked by MarketBeat assign Carvana an average rating of “Moderate Buy”, with an average 12‑month target near $421 and high estimates up to $450–$500. ^[17]

So the bullish narrative is clear: Carvana is being treated as a leading e‑commerce winner in used cars, with analysts leaning into a multi‑year growth and margin expansion story.

Insider selling and institutional buying: a noisy signal

All that optimism hasn’t stopped company insiders from cashing in.

Chief Brand Officer Ryan Keeton sells $3.5 million in stock

Over the past few days, several outlets have flagged an insider sale by Chief Brand Officer Ryan S. Keeton:

On November 25, 2025, Keeton sold 10,000 Class A shares at $350 each, for total proceeds of $3.5 million, according to multiple Form 4 summaries. ^[18]
After the sale, he still directly owns about 94,958 shares, now worth roughly $35 million at recent prices. ^[19]

MarketBeat’s broader insider‑activity analysis shows that insiders sold about 366,000 shares worth $133.7 million over the past three months, leaving insiders with about 16.4% ownership of the company. ^[20]

Insider selling near highs isn’t automatically bearish — executives diversify, pay taxes, etc. But the sheer dollar amounts, layered on top of a huge rally, naturally make investors wonder whether management thinks the easy money has already been made.

New institutional money still coming in

On the other side of the ledger, Virtue Capital Management LLC disclosed taking a new position of 2,710 Carvana shares in a recent filing — a modest stake, but another datapoint showing that smaller institutions are still willing to climb aboard at these levels. ^[21]

Taken together, the ownership picture looks like this:

Insiders are net sellers in recent months but still hold a meaningful stake.
The shareholder base continues to broaden, a typical pattern as a turnaround story matures and moves from “deep value” and short‑squeeze territory into mainstream institutional portfolios.

Fundamentals: record Q3, genuine turnaround

The bullish calls would be a lot more fragile if the fundamentals weren’t improving. But here, Carvana has real numbers to point to.

Q3 2025 – records across the board

In its Q3 2025 earnings release, Carvana reported:

Retail units sold: 155,941, up 44% year‑over‑year, an all‑time high.
Revenue: about $5.65 billion, up 55% year‑over‑year, also a record.
Net income: $263 million, for a 4.7% net margin.
Adjusted EBITDA: $637 million, with an 11.3% adjusted EBITDA margin. ^[22]

Zacks and other breakdowns show that:

EPS of $1.03missed the consensus estimate (around $1.30–1.33),
Revenue beat expectations by more than 10%,
Gross profit and units grew strongly, but per‑unit profitability ticked down compared with the prior year, reflecting some margin compression. ^[23]

Carvana guided for:

Q4 2025: more than 150,000 retail units sold.
Full‑year 2025: Adjusted EBITDA between $2.0 and $2.2 billion, expecting to land at or above the high end of that range. ^[24]

Balance sheet: better, but still heavy

Carvana’s earnings headline — “record profits” — masks an underlying issue: debt and leverage.

As of September 30, 2025, Carvana held about $2.1 billion in cash and around $4.8–5.1 billion in long‑term debt, down modestly from year‑end 2024 but still significant. ^[25]
Earlier analyses of the company’s restructuring pointed to a debt‑to‑equity ratio above 200% even after a major deal in 2023 that cut annual interest expense by roughly $430 million and pushed out maturities. ^[26]

Credit‑rating agencies still classify the company’s debt as speculative‑grade, and some commentators describe the turnaround as a potential “mirage” if the macro backdrop turns sharply worse or the used‑car cycle rolls over. ^[27]

Valuation: growth story or priced‑for‑perfection?

This is where the bull–bear argument gets spicy.

High multiples and “undervaluation” narratives

Simply Wall St’s latest deep dive on Carvana notes that:

The stock is up roughly 88% year‑to‑date and about 44% over 12 months,
At the recent close of $374.50, one popular fair‑value narrative pegs intrinsic value around $419, implying Carvana might still be roughly 10% undervalued. ^[28]

However, the same analysis points out that:

Carvana’s price‑to‑earnings multiple around 84x is far above the industry average (roughly 18x) and above its own “fair” PE estimate of about 39x. ^[29]

So you have this odd combo:

Fundamental models that say there’s a bit of upside left if the growth story plays out perfectly,
Headline valuation metrics that scream “expensive” by almost any traditional retail or auto‑sector standard.

Zacks: strong growth, weak value

Zacks’ performance review after Q3 framed it similarly:

CVNA is up about 17% since the earnings report,
The stock earns a Growth Score of “A”,
But it gets an “F” for momentum and a “D” on value, leading to an overall VGM score of “C” and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), signaling expectations for “in‑line” returns over the next few months. ^[30]

In other words, even some of the fans are reluctant to call this an obvious bargain at current levels.

Key risks investors are watching

The latest news cycle has focused heavily on upgrades and rallies, but there’s no shortage of bear arguments.

1. Leverage and the credit cycle

Carvana is still carrying multi‑billion‑dollar debt, and a big part of its business model depends on auto‑loan credit quality and the ability to securitize those loans on favorable terms. ^[31]

Analysts and commentators have flagged:

Rising auto‑loan delinquencies in parts of the market,
The company’s greater exposure to lower‑prime borrowers,
The risk that a turn in credit conditions could squeeze both demand and funding costs at the same time. ^[32]

2. Margin pressure despite revenue growth

While Q3 revenue smashed expectations, Carvana’s per‑unit gross profit and EBITDA margin actually slipped a bit year‑over‑year, reflecting the reality that growing fast while expanding into older, cheaper vehicles and more sub‑prime customers isn’t cost‑free. ^[33]

Bulls frame this as “investing in growth,” but skeptics see it as a sign that the easy efficiency wins might already be behind the company.

3. Competition and execution risk

Analysts expect Carvana to overtake CarMax in unit volume in a few years, but that assumes:

CarMax doesn’t successfully reaccelerate,
New digital competitors don’t undercut Carvana’s economics,
Carvana keeps executing operationally across logistics, reconditioning, and customer experience at scale. ^[34]

Any stumble — operational, regulatory, or reputational — could hit a stock that’s already priced for a long runway of success.

4. Volatility itself

Carvana’s stock has a history of spectacular boom‑and‑bust cycles, including a roughly 9,000% rebound off its 2022 lows and violent sell‑offs whenever sentiment swings. ^[35]

That volatility cuts both ways:

Great for traders,
Stressful for anyone who doesn’t love watching double‑digit moves in a single session.

What to watch next for Carvana stock

As of November 30, 2025, the Carvana story is in what you might call its “prove‑it” phase. The market has already rewarded the turnaround, and the stock now sits in a narrow space between “still‑undervalued winner” and “priced for perfection.”

Key catalysts to watch from here:

Q4 2025 earnings and 2026 guidance
- Can Carvana hit or beat its target of >150,000 units in Q4 and deliver the promised $2.0–$2.2 billion in 2025 adjusted EBITDA? ^[36]
- Any change in 2026–2027 margin targets will likely move the stock quickly.
Interest‑rate decisions and credit trends
- A real rate cut and improving funding conditions would support the bullish macro narrative described by Benzinga and others. ^[37]
- Conversely, a surprise re‑tightening or spike in sub‑prime auto delinquencies would be particularly painful for Carvana’s model.
Analyst and rating‑agency actions
- With multiple firms already at $400–$475 price targets, upgrades have less room to shock. Downgrades or cautious notes about valuation could swing sentiment. ^[38]
- Any move toward investment‑grade or improved outlooks from credit‑rating agencies would be a strong positive surprise; the opposite is also true.
Insider and institutional flows
- Continued large insider sales at these levels would add to valuation concerns. ^[39]
- Steady accumulation by long‑term institutions could help stabilize the shareholder base and dampen volatility.

Bottom line

As of November 30, 2025, Carvana is no longer just a meme‑stock comeback story. It’s a profitable, rapidly growing e‑commerce platform that has convinced a lot of Wall Street analysts it can stay on top — while still carrying a high‑wire combination of leverage, lofty expectations and extreme volatility.

If you zoom out, CVNA has become a kind of real‑time case study in modern growth investing: how much you’re willing to pay, in both valuation and stress, for a company that might fundamentally reshape an old, clunky industry.

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