Carvana Stock (CVNA) Soars on S&P 500 Inclusion: Latest Price, News, Analyst Forecasts and Risks as of December 9, 2025

Carvana’s stock has gone from near‑bankruptcy meme to S&P 500 heavyweight in under three years, and as of December 9, 2025, the story is still accelerating.

Shares of Carvana Co. (NYSE: CVNA) are trading around $450 in today’s session, hovering near all‑time highs after the company was selected for inclusion in the S&P 500 index effective December 22, 2025. ^[1]

The move caps an extraordinary run: the stock has gained roughly 120% in 2025, about 45% in the last month, and is now up more than 8,000% from its late‑2022 lows, giving Carvana a market value that exceeds both Ford and General Motors. ^[2]

At the same time, analysts are split between admiration and vertigo: fundamentals have improved dramatically, but the valuation and risk profile are… not exactly “boring blue chip”.

Below is a deep dive into the latest price action, news, forecasts, and key risks as of December 9, 2025.

1. Carvana Stock Today: Price, Performance and the S&P 500 Effect

As of early afternoon on December 9, 2025, Carvana stock is trading around $449–$450, up modestly in today’s session and sitting near record territory.

The real fireworks came over the last week:

S&P 500 inclusion: S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Carvana will join the S&P 500 as part of its quarterly rebalance, effective before the market open on December 22, 2025. ^[3]
The announcement triggered a classic “index effect” rally: the stock jumped about 9–10% on the news and kept climbing as traders front‑ran the mechanical buying that index funds and benchmarked portfolios will need to do. ^[4]
Carvana’s market cap has surged into the $90–100 billion range, now surpassing GM (~$71B) and Ford (~$52B) in equity value, despite being a fraction of their vehicle sales. ^[5]

Recent coverage notes that Carvana shares have strung together a 10‑day winning streak, with double‑digit gains on several days as shorts covered and momentum traders piled in. ^[6]

In other words: Carvana is no longer just a turnaround story. It’s now a macro‑relevant index constituent that every S&P 500 tracker must own.

2. How Carvana Pulled Off Its Turnaround

Beneath the drama in the chart, the business itself has clearly improved.

Record Q3 2025 earnings

On October 29, 2025, Carvana reported record third‑quarter results: ^[7]

Retail units sold: 155,941 vehicles
- +44% year over year
Revenue: $5.647 billion
- +55% year over year, an all‑time quarterly record
Net income: $263 million
- Net margin: 4.7%
Adjusted EBITDA: $637 million
- Margin: 11.3%
GAAP operating income: $552 million
- Operating margin: 9.8%

Management also guided for:

Q4 2025 retail units above 150,000, and
Full‑year 2025 adjusted EBITDA at or above the high end of the previously communicated $2.0–$2.2 billion range. ^[8]

Independent analyses of the quarter noted that Carvana beat revenue and EBITDA expectations, highlighting scale, automation, and operational leverage as key drivers of the improved profitability. ^[9]

Structural tailwinds: tariffs and used‑car demand

Carvana’s rebound is also riding a macro wave:

Higher tariffs and elevated prices on new vehicles have pushed more consumers into the used‑car market, improving demand for Carvana’s core business. ^[10]
Carvana’s fully online purchasing experience plus home delivery remains a differentiator in a highly fragmented used‑car landscape.

Capacity and long‑term targets

In its Q3 2025 shareholder letter, Carvana outlined an increasingly scaled infrastructure: ^[11]

Real estate and inspection/reconditioning capacity aimed ultimately at 3 million retail units per year.
By year‑end 2025, the company expects to have fully built out capacity for over 1.5 million units annually, roughly 2.5x its current run rate.
Long‑term goal: 3 million units per year at a 13.5% adjusted EBITDA margin within 5–10 years.

That combination—strong current profitability plus credible capacity for much more volume—is the backbone of the bull case.

3. Analyst Ratings and Price Targets: How Much Upside Is Left?

Here’s where things get more nuanced.

Street consensus: “Moderate Buy,” but price targets lag the stock

According to data compiled by MarketBeat and Fintel as of early December 2025: ^[12]

Rating: “Moderate Buy”
- About 18 Buy ratings and 6 Hold ratings.
Average 12‑month price target: roughly $425–$426 per share.
With the stock now near $450, that consensus implies either limited upside or a modest downside, depending on the dataset (earlier targets assumed a price around $400).

So Carvana’s recent surge has, in some sense, outrun the average analyst model.

Fresh upgrades and new targets

Despite that, several high‑profile firms have leaned even more bullish in the last few days:

Bank of America raised its price target from $385 to $455 and reiterated a Buy rating, citing Carvana’s improving fundamentals and S&P 500 inclusion tailwinds. ^[13]
UBS initiated coverage with a Buy rating and a target around $450, praising Carvana’s “best‑in‑class” digital platform. ^[14]
Deutsche Bank started coverage with a Buy rating and a $395 target. ^[15]
Wedbush upgraded the stock to Outperform with a $400 target, calling the recent pullbacks “overdone” and highlighting robust growth. ^[16]
Barclays has projected substantial market‑share gains with a target around $390. ^[17]

Some outlets summarizing the coverage argue that near‑term upside may be limited from current levels, even if the long‑term story remains attractive, simply because the stock has already discounted a lot of good news. ^[18]

Earnings forecasts and valuation

Consensus forecasts on Yahoo Finance as of December 2025 suggest roughly: ^[19]

Q4 2025 EPS: around $1.04
Q1 2026 EPS: around $1.57
Full‑year 2025 EPS: about $4.9
Full‑year 2026 EPS: around $7.0

On those numbers, Carvana trades at:

Roughly 90x trailing earnings at around $400 per share, per MarketBeat’s recent summary. ^[20]
Around 57x forward earnings, according to Reuters and other coverage comparing Carvana’s valuation to Detroit automakers. ^[21]

Those multiples are dramatically higher than Ford or GM’s single‑digit P/E ratios, underscoring just how much growth and flawless execution the market is baking in.

4. Who’s Buying, Who’s Selling: Institutions, Insiders and Sentiment

Institutional flows

Institutional interest has been rising:

Fintel data shows over 1,400 funds reporting positions in Carvana, with institutional ownership around 56–57% and total institutional shares up about 4% in the last quarter. ^[22]
A recent filing shows WINTON GROUP Ltd opened a new position in Q2, buying 9,203 shares valued at roughly $3.1 million, reinforcing the idea that professional investors are still adding exposure even after the big run. ^[23]

Heavy insider selling

At the same time, insiders have been aggressively cashing out:

MarketBeat and other trackers note that insiders have sold over 400,000 shares in the last three months, worth roughly $150–$160 million, while still owning more than 16% of the company. ^[24]
Director sales and executive transactions in late November and early December included multi‑million‑dollar blocks at prices in the $370–$400 range. ^[25]
A separate report flagged a sale by Chief Brand Officer Ryan S. Keeton, who sold about 10,000 shares for approximately $4 million on December 4. ^[26]

This insider selling has fueled accusations among some retail traders that the rally is being “sold into” by people closest to the company. Sentiment trackers cited in recent coverage suggest online retail investor sentiment scores in the 25/100 range, unusually bearish for a stock at all‑time highs. ^[27]

Options positioning: a lot of noise under the hood

Underneath the stock chart, the derivatives market is busy:

Fintel estimates a put/call ratio of around 1.4, indicating more puts than calls outstanding and suggesting that a sizable cohort is hedging or betting against the rally. ^[28]
Barchart’s December 9 analysis framed Carvana as a textbook candidate for option collars and hedged strategies after an “overheated” S&P 500‑driven surge, underscoring that even bulls are nervous about near‑term volatility. ^[29]

So the positioning picture is messy: rising institutional ownership, heavy insider selling, and options markets that look more cautious than the stock price alone might imply.

5. Balance Sheet Repair: From Debt Crisis to Breathing Room

One of the biggest drivers of Carvana’s resurrection has been de‑risking the balance sheet.

The 2023 debt exchange

Back in 2022–2023, Carvana’s massive debt load, high interest costs, and collapsing share price had many investors assuming bankruptcy was inevitable. Instead, the company negotiated a complex debt exchange that won restructuring awards and bought it years of runway. ^[30]

Key elements:

Over 96% of approximately $5.7 billion in unsecured notes were covered by an exchange deal with bondholders. ^[31]
Carvana reduced total debt by more than $1.2 billion and slashed cash interest expense by hundreds of millions of dollars over the first two years. ^[32]
Maturities that once loomed in 2025 and 2027 were pushed out into 2028, 2030 and 2031, on new secured notes with PIK (pay‑in‑kind) features to preserve liquidity if needed. ^[33]

The result: Carvana gained time, and it used that time to get profitable.

Debt risk isn’t gone, just transformed

The company still carries substantial leverage, and new debt is more expensive than the old stack. But the key near‑term default risk—those early maturities—has been dramatically reduced, which is why ratings agencies have gradually become less negative and why analysts now talk about leverage as a manageable, not existential, issue. ^[34]

That said, Carvana remains exposed to credit cycles (subprime auto performance, securitization markets) and interest‑rate conditions, which can affect its cost of funding and the appetite for its asset‑backed securities.

6. The Bear Case: Valuation, Macro Risks and Accounting Controversy

This is not a sleepy value stock. There are real risks, and critics are loud.

Macro and business risks

Used‑car demand: While tariffs and high new‑car prices have boosted used‑car demand, a reversal in that trend—or a recession that hits lower‑income consumers particularly hard—could bite Carvana’s growth and loan performance. ^[35]
Credit quality: Carvana originates a large volume of loans to non‑prime and subprime borrowers, often securitizing those loans. If delinquencies spike, funding spreads widen, or ABS demand dries up, both profits and liquidity could be hit. ^[36]
Execution risk: The company is betting on scaling to millions of units per year. Any operational missteps—logistics, reconditioning quality, technology outages—could dent margins and reputation.

Extreme valuation

We’ve already noted the valuation math, but it’s worth emphasizing: at 50–90x earnings depending on which profit metric you use, and a market cap larger than legacy giants that sell vastly more cars, Carvana is priced for very high, very durable growth. ^[37]

If growth slows, margins compress, or the macro winds shift, the downside from this altitude could be severe.

Hindenburg’s short report and accounting worries

On January 2–3, 2025, short‑seller Hindenburg Research published a detailed report accusing Carvana of being “a father‑son accounting grift”, alleging: ^[38]

Undisclosed or inadequately disclosed related‑party loan sales,
Aggressive gain‑on‑sale accounting on subprime loans,
Heavy reliance on a small number of financing partners,
Use of related‑party entities (like DriveTime) to shift costs and artificially inflate margins, and
Loan performance and extension practices that could be masking true credit risk.

Hindenburg disclosed a short position and framed Carvana’s turnaround as a “mirage” fueled by financial engineering and investor optimism rather than sustainable economics.

So far, the market has effectively shrugged the report off—Carvana’s stock is vastly higher now than at the time of publication—but regulatory, legal, and reputational risks from these kinds of allegations don’t vanish just because the share price is strong.

For investors trying to think rigorously, the right stance is probably: treat this as a set of serious allegations to investigate, not as proven fact, and weigh them against audited financials, management responses, and ongoing results.

7. Trading vs. Investing: What the Current Setup Suggests

Putting it all together as of December 9, 2025:

Bull case:
- Record growth and profitability, with Q3 2025 results beating expectations. ^[39]
- Substantial progress on deleveraging and extending maturities. ^[40]
- Massive operational capacity build‑out and a long runway in a fragmented used‑car market. ^[41]
- S&P 500 inclusion forcing passive flows to buy, plus ongoing analyst enthusiasm and high‑profile endorsements in the financial media. ^[42]
Bear case:
- Rich valuation that leaves little room for disappointment relative to consensus EPS growth. ^[43]
- Heavy insider selling and bearish options positioning that contrast with the price action. ^[44]
- Ongoing macro risk in subprime auto credit and the used‑vehicle cycle. ^[45]
- Short‑seller allegations about accounting and related‑party dealings that, at minimum, warrant due‑diligence reading. ^[46]

For short‑term traders, the stock is now deeply entangled with index flows and options dynamics. Strategies like collars and tight risk management are front‑and‑center in professional commentary for a reason. ^[47]

For long‑term investors, Carvana has evolved into a high‑growth, high‑margin, capital‑intensive business with a repaired balance sheet—but it is priced as if that success will compound almost perfectly. Owning it is less like holding a traditional carmaker and more like owning an aggressively valued tech‑enabled marketplace with big operating leverage and non‑trivial credit and governance risk.