Nathan Coe

Nathan Coe
Nationality	Australian
Education	University of Sydney (BCom (Hons))
Occupation	Business executive
Company	Autotrader Group plc
Title	Chief Executive Officer, Autotrader Group plc
Children	2

Nathan Coe is an Australian business executive who has been chief executive officer of Autotrader Group plc, the operator of the United Kingdom's largest online marketplace for new and used cars, since March 1, 2020. A commerce graduate of the University of Sydney, he worked as a consultant at PwC and then ran mergers, acquisitions and corporate development for the media and internet businesses of the Australian telecommunications company Telstra before moving to Auto Trader in 2007.

Coe was hired to oversee Auto Trader's transition from a printed classified magazine to a purely digital business, and over the following decade he led product and technology, served as joint operations director, and joined the board in April 2017 as chief operating officer. He added the role of chief financial officer later that year. In April 2019 the company named him as the successor to chief executive Trevor Mather, and he took over the role weeks before the first COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom.

As chief executive, Coe suspended charges to car retailers while showrooms were closed in 2020, raised equity to protect the balance sheet, and then pursued a strategy of moving more of the car purchase online, including the 2022 acquisition of the leasing marketplace Autorama and the development of the Deal Builder online reservation product. Group revenue rose from £368.9 million in the year to March 2020 to £624.3 million in the year to March 2026.

The mandatory roll-out of Deal Builder in November 2025 provoked a protest by car dealers, some of whom cancelled or downgraded their advertising packages. Coe publicly apologised for the speed of the roll-out and for the company's communications, while declining to withdraw the product. Over the same period the company's share price fell sharply, a decline Coe attributed to investor uncertainty about the effect of artificial intelligence on online marketplaces rather than to the dealer dispute. As of October 2026 he remains chief executive and an executive director of the company.

Early life and education

Coe's published biographies say little about his family background or upbringing. He studied at the University of Sydney, graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce with honours. In a profile on Autotrader's website he recalled that his first car was a Nissan Pulsar, bought "with a bit of help from my parents", which he said he disliked; his father later took it to a scrapyard and kept the $50 it fetched, "claiming it was danger money for driving it there".

Career

PwC and Telstra

Coe began his career as a consultant in corporate finance at the professional services firm PwC. He then moved to the Australian telecommunications company Telstra, where he led mergers and acquisitions and corporate development for its media and internet businesses. Autotrader's account of his career says the role involved him in "a wide range of internet, media and technology businesses in multiple countries". Speaking to Computer Weekly in 2025, Coe described starting out in mergers and acquisitions in the early 2000s, when the internet was "really starting to kick off", and said: "I've kind of been born and bred on the internet and in technology businesses. I was buying and selling companies, but building stuff is what I really like doing, so I pretty quickly became involved in tech."

Auto Trader, 2007 to 2017

Coe joined Auto Trader in 2007 to oversee its transition from a magazine business to a purely digital company. According to Coe, the decision to become a digital business was taken in 2007 with the backing of investors, at a time when about 60 percent of the company's revenue still came from its magazines, and the company "ended up doing that probably more aggressively than imagined". Auto Trader published its last print magazine in 2013.

The company's 2017 annual report credited Coe with launching a number of new business areas and with leading Auto Trader's early entry into, and growth in, mobile and online services. He has said that he "ran product and tech at AutoTrader for years", and the Automotive 30% Club's profile of him records that he led the product and technology function before his board appointments. For the two years before April 2017 he was joint operations director, sharing responsibility for the day-to-day running of the business. Auto Trader floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2015.

Chief operating officer and chief financial officer, 2017 to 2020

With effect from April 1, 2017, Auto Trader appointed Coe to its board as an executive director in the newly created role of chief operating officer. Chairman Ed Williams wrote that Coe had "been central in shaping Auto Trader into one of the UK's leading digital businesses" and that the creation of the board-level post reflected the board's "confidence in his abilities and strong leadership qualities". His salary on joining the board was set at £350,000.

Later in 2017 chief financial officer Sean Glithero left the company after 11 years. The 2018 annual report states that Glithero stepped down on September 21, 2017 and that Coe, as chief operating officer, took on the additional role of chief financial officer from that date, reducing the board from seven members to six; the company's online board biography dates his appointment as chief financial officer to July 2017. Coe held both posts until he became chief executive.

On April 29, 2019, Auto Trader announced through the London Stock Exchange that chief executive Trevor Mather would retire and that Coe would become chief executive designate from May 1, 2019, continuing to be responsible for finance until he took over. In the same announcement deputy chief financial officer Jamie Warner was named chief financial officer designate and operations director Catherine Faiers was promoted to chief operating officer and appointed to the board. Williams described Coe as a "natural and outstanding replacement" who had "been instrumental in shaping Auto Trader into one of the UK's leading digital businesses". Mather said: "Nathan has effectively been running the business alongside me since 2017. He is more than ready to lead the Company." Analysts at AJ Bell, quoted in the trade press, said the challenge for Coe would be to keep increasing earnings in a softening car market.

Chief executive officer, 2020 to present

Succession and the COVID-19 pandemic

Mather stepped down from the board on February 29, 2020, and Coe became chief executive on March 1, 2020, slightly earlier than the March 31 date originally announced. Warner joined the board as chief financial officer on the same day. On his appointment his base salary rose from £377,000 to £568,000.

In his first chief executive's statement, Coe wrote that the company "very quickly found ourselves in perhaps the most challenging circumstances that the Company has ever faced" and described its approach in a crisis as being to "prepare for the worst and act decisively and quickly". Car retailers in the United Kingdom were required to close their showrooms from March 24, 2020. Auto Trader stopped charging retailers for advertising from April 1, 2020 for as long as they were unable to open, extended payment terms for March services by 60 days, and allowed retailers to list additional stock at no extra charge, which the company said put up to 80,000 more cars on the site. When showrooms in England were permitted to reopen from June 1, 2020, it offered a 25 percent discount for that month.

To conserve cash, the company furloughed just over 25 percent of its employees under the government's Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, topping up their pay so that most remained fully paid, and made no redundancies. The executive directors, including Coe, gave up 50 percent of their salaries during the period and agreed to forgo annual bonuses for the year ended March 31, 2020. On April 1, 2020 the company placed about 46 million new shares, raising net proceeds of £182.9 million; the 2021 results said the placing had strengthened the balance sheet while also helping to accelerate the company's digital retailing plans. Over the year to March 2021 the company provided free advertising to retailers in April 2020, May 2020, December 2020 and February 2021, and later repaid all the money it had received under the furlough scheme.

The decision to waive retailer fees reduced revenue by 29 percent to £262.8 million in the year to March 2021, and operating profit fell 38 percent to £161.2 million. The company said the support "improved our standing with customers" and that retailer numbers were significantly higher at the end of the year than 12 months earlier. Coe also set out the company's longer-term aim in his first statement: to digitise more of the car purchase so that consumers could receive quotes, apply for finance and ultimately complete "a full online transaction on Auto Trader".

Recovery and digital retailing, 2021 to 2025

In the year to March 2022 revenue rose 65 percent to £432.7 million and operating profit 88 percent to £303.6 million, with the operating margin returning to 70 percent; the company resumed dividends and share buybacks, returning £237.1 million to shareholders. Products launched in this period included guaranteed part-exchange valuations and a trial of online vehicle reservations in 2020 and 2021, Retailer Stores in April 2021, and the Auto Trader Connect data and stock-management platform in April 2022.

Under Coe the company assembled the components of what it called its Deal Builder journey, which lets a buyer value a part-exchange, apply for finance and reserve a car online. It completed initial development of the product in the year to March 2023, when about 50 retailers were trialling it, and had about 1,100 retailers using it by March 2024, when a small monetisation trial was under way. In 2024 the company launched Co-Driver, a set of tools using artificial intelligence to help retailers produce listings, and in 2025 it rebranded as "Autotrader", written as one word.

Coe told Computer Weekly in January 2025 that digital retailing was potentially the company's largest technology project, describing it as making the technology Auto Trader used to run its own business available to retailers so that they could sell online. "This is not us taking interest in selling the cars, but allowing our retailers to get all the advantages of selling in an omnichannel way," he said. In a 2022 Car Dealer documentary he said the company had "no plan to be a retailer".

Deal Builder roll-out and dealer protest, 2025 to 2026

In November 2025, under Coe, the company began moving retailers onto Deal Builder as a mandatory part of its advertising service. The change allowed buyers to reserve a car for £99 and replaced the "Call Seller" and "Message" buttons on listings with "Reserve for £99" and "Call Seller"; buyers also had to create an account before sending an enquiry. Dealers complained that reserved cars appeared to be off sale, that they risked letting down customers when the same car was sold through another channel, and that the changes reduced the number of enquiries they received. One Facebook protest group with about 1,900 members called for coordinated cancellations on November 12, 2025. Coe told Car Dealer at the time that he and his team were "listening" to the feedback.

On November 14, 2025, Coe appeared on the Car Dealer podcast and apologised. "When we look back, it turns out that perhaps we went a little bit too quickly, and that's caused some retailers to be confused," he said, adding: "To have caused that confusion and retailers angst, I am really sorry about that probably moving too fast, and then some of the communications." Coe ruled out withdrawing the product: "Rolling back deal builder isn't something that we're going to do. We're very convinced that it's the right thing for retailers. It's the right thing for car buyers." He said 59 dealers had cancelled on the day of protest and announced a change to listing pages so that a single button would show all contact options.

A survey of 700 members of the Independent Motor Dealer Association, published later that month, found that 70 percent had reduced or downgraded their packages and that 165 had cancelled or given notice to cancel; Autotrader said the figures did not match its own data. In December 2025 Coe told journalists that he had been "surprised" and "hurt" by the level of criticism, while welcoming what he called constructive feedback, and he defended the company's pricing with the remark: "We know we are not cheap... the best product isn't always the cheapest." In January 2026 he said that "just under 100" dealers had downgraded or left the platform.

The company's response, as described in the 2026 annual report, included pausing the automatic roll-out, holding open listening sessions, establishing customer advisory groups and introducing a "request a reservation" option. Coe wrote that "sentiment has now improved" and that the company had "recognised the need to change both our approach and aspects of the product to better accommodate the needs of some retailers". By March 2026 more than 6,700 retailers were using Deal Builder, compared with about 2,000 a year earlier, and 137,000 deals with a full reservation had been placed during the year.

Results for 2026 and outlook

For the year to March 31, 2026, Autotrader reported group revenue up 4 percent to £624.3 million and group operating profit up 4 percent to £392.7 million. The average number of retailer forecourts fell 0.5 percent to 13,942, and was 1.7 percent lower in the second half; Coe attributed this to difficult trading conditions and to "concerns with the speed and nature of our Deal Builder product roll-out", calling it "disappointing". The company said revenue in April 2026 was flat year on year. Guidance for the year to March 2027 was for group operating profit of £395 million to £415 million.

Coe's 2026 statement placed artificial intelligence at the centre of the company's plans. He wrote that the shift in AI capability "will be as big if not a bigger technology transition than the internet, mobile, big data, cloud and machine-learning", and said that fewer than 1 percent of Autotrader's audience then came from generative AI chat assistants. He described the launch in January 2026 of Buying Signals, a product that flags high-intent enquiries to retailers, and an integration with ChatGPT. During the year he was interviewed for the BBC's Big Boss interview series, which the company highlighted in its annual report.

Leadership and management style

Coe has described Auto Trader's technology operation as deliberately kept in-house. "We're very, very principled when it comes to our technology and the way we do it," he told Computer Weekly in 2025. "One of those principles is that because what we do is technology, we want full-time AutoTrader staff working on it... We don't use any outsourcing providers at all." He said staff worked in the office "more than they are out of the office, in an in-person, highly collaborative environment", and that the company had adopted agile development about a decade earlier and was then making more than 1,000 software releases a week. He has also distinguished the company's long-standing use of machine learning for vehicle valuation from what he called the less intelligent use of AI as "plugging ChatGPT into something to write an email".

Coe has emphasised culture in his annual statements, writing in 2026 that culture "is as tangible and important to our performance as our strategy, competitive position, product and technology". The same report disclosed that employee engagement had fallen from 91 percent to 72 percent, which Coe attributed to "restructures, external factors and a tighter approach to working in the office". During the year the company completed a move to new offices at Circle Square in Manchester.

On pricing, Coe has defended both the company's margins and its annual price increases. In a 2022 Car Dealer documentary he said: "I think that our margins are very, very high. But you've got to remember that we operate a very different business to a retailer... in the marketplace space, the sorts of business that we are, those margins are more normal," and said he did not feel embarrassed by them. In January 2026 he confirmed a 5.5 percent rise in package prices from April 1, 2026, lower than the previous year's 8 percent, describing the process of setting prices as "a bit of science and it's a bit of art". Asked why promotional offers excluded dealers on the lowest "Starter" tier, he said: "It's just a pretty standard thing in business. You pay more, you get more."

Coe has described his interest in inclusion as coming from "a humbling and growing appreciation of just how different the world of work is for people from different backgrounds", and has argued that diversity "has nothing to do with 'box-ticking'".

Major deals and strategic decisions

• KeeResources (October 2019). While Coe was chief executive designate and chief financial officer, Auto Trader acquired KeeResources, a provider of vehicle data and software that had been a supplier to the company. The company said that "strategically we believe it is important to own such a valuable data source".
• Equity placing (April 2020). In Coe's first month as chief executive the company placed about 46 million shares for net proceeds of £182.9 million, which it described as "an insurance policy against a protracted lockdown".
• AutoConvert (July 2020). The company acquired AutoConvert, a finance, insurance and compliance software platform for retailers, as one of the building blocks of its online car buying journey.
• Autorama (2022). In March 2022 Auto Trader agreed to buy Autorama (UK) Limited, a marketplace for leasing new vehicles, for initial consideration of £150 million in cash plus up to £50 million of deferred consideration in shares subject to performance conditions. Autorama had net revenue of £26 million and an EBITDA loss of £6 million in calendar 2021. The deal completed on June 22, 2022. Autorama continued to lose money: its operating loss was £2.0 million in the year to March 2026, down from £4.3 million.
• Webzone disposal (October 2022). The company sold Webzone Limited, a disposal that removed 245 retailers from its customer count.
• Share buybacks. In the year to March 2026 the company bought back 58.5 million shares, 6.6 percent of its issued share capital, and returned £463.2 million to shareholders including dividends. The board said the share price did not reflect the company's fundamentals and set out plans to return about £600 million in the year to March 2027, including about £500 million of buybacks, taking leverage to about 1.0 times.

Financial and market performance

The table below shows group results for each financial year ending March 31 during Coe's tenure as chief executive, as reported by the company.

Financial year	Group revenue	Group operating profit
2020	£368.9 million	£258.9 million
2021	£262.8 million	£161.2 million
2022	£432.7 million	£303.6 million
2023	£500.2 million	£277.6 million
2024	£570.9 million	£348.7 million
2025	£601.1 million	£376.8 million
2026	£624.3 million	£392.7 million

Sources:

The fall in group operating profit in the year to March 2023 reflected Autorama's losses and £44.1 million of central costs relating to the acquisition; the core Auto Trader business that year grew operating profit by 10 percent to £332.9 million with a 70 percent margin. In the year to March 2026 the core business earned an operating profit of £408.0 million at a 70 percent margin, and basic earnings per share rose 8 percent to 34.17 pence.

The average number of employees, excluding contractors, was 849 in the year to March 2020. In the year to March 2026 the average number of employees including contractors was 1,244, down from 1,267 the year before.

The share price fell substantially from mid-2025. In January 2026 Car Dealer reported that it had fallen by more than 30 percent in six months, and in May 2026 that it was down 45 percent over the previous year. Coe said the fall was "not at all" connected to the dealer protest, arguing that listed marketplaces worldwide, including, in his words, "realestate.com in Australia, CarSales, Baltic Classifieds Group, Rightmove", had been re-rated because of "investors' concerns about AI".

Remuneration

Coe's single total figure of remuneration, as disclosed in the company's annual reports, was £523,000 for the year to March 2021, when no bonus scheme operated and long-term incentive awards lapsed; £1.673 million for 2022; £1.281 million for 2023; £2.985 million for 2024 as first reported, later restated at £3.156 million after long-term incentive awards were revalued at vesting; £2.404 million for 2025; and £1.641 million for 2026. For 2026 his salary was £711,000 and his annual bonus paid out at 39.7 percent of the maximum, with 65 percent deferred into shares. His salary from July 1, 2026 is £733,635, an increase of 2.75 percent. At March 31, 2026 he beneficially owned 3,430,087 shares in the company, a holding the company valued at 2,255 percent of his salary against a guideline of 200 percent.

Board memberships and outside roles

Coe sits on the board of Autotrader Group plc as an executive director and is a member of its Disclosure Committee. As of October 2026 the company lists him as holding no external public company appointments. He is a patron of the Automotive 30% Club, a voluntary group of automotive industry leaders that aims to fill at least 30 percent of key leadership positions in member organisations with women by 2030. On his appointment he said that the club's mission "aligns closely with my own views".

Controversies

The principal controversy of Coe's tenure has been the Deal Builder roll-out of November 2025, described above, in which groups of independent dealers organised cancellations and the Independent Motor Dealer Association's chairman, Umesh Samani, said: "The erosion of trust is real, and whether or not it results in mass cancellations, it poses a long-term risk to Auto Trader's relationship with the independent sector." The association's members also cited "repeated price rises not matched by added value" and "mandatory customer account creation that weakens dealer-buyer relationships". Coe apologised for the manner of the roll-out but kept the product, and the company later acknowledged that the dispute had weighed on retailer numbers and on revenue growth in the second half of the year to March 2026.

The company's pricing and profitability have drawn criticism from car dealers throughout Coe's tenure. A 2022 Car Dealer investigation noted that the company's pre-tax profit of £301 million represented a margin of about 70 percent, and quoted the Auto Express editor-in-chief Steve Fowler calling the platform "kind of a necessary evil for car dealers". Coe responded that the company's margins were normal for a marketplace business. The decision in January 2026 to exclude dealers on the lowest package from promotional offers was criticised by some who had downgraded during the protest and who said they felt "punished".

Personal life

Coe is the father of two daughters, whom he has credited, along with colleagues, with shaping his views on inclusion in the workplace.

See also

• Trevor Mather
• Autotrader Group

External links

• Autotrader Group plc corporate website
• Nathan Coe, Autotrader leadership team profile