You can’t beat going through an interview transcript to quickly ascertain any given interviewee’s favourite adjective or phrase.
For HR Owen’s CEO Ken Choo it’s definitely “different” and “very different”. Choo chooses those words variously to describe the group’s impressive 5.3-acre site in Hatfield, 20 miles north of London, which sells Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Lotus and Maserati, while servicing many more; or how his team handles high-end customer relationships, by for instance putting on go-karting nights rather than formal showroom dinners for Bugatti clients; or even to contextualise the way the Chinese government deals with EV uptake in its country, versus the UK Government’s tribulations with the current trajectory of the Zero Emission Mandate.
The 51-year-old, Malaysian-born CEO might have just a few more grey hairs than last time we met – at the glitzy summer 2019 opening of the Group’s Ferrari franchise in Berkeley Square in central London – but now he seems more confident in his role. Back then he was less than two years into the job and a man of few words, despite already seeing profits-before-tax leap from £1.6m in 2015/16 to £8.3m in 2018/19 under his watch.
Sitting down for this exclusive Motor Trader interview, just before Christmas in late December 2024, inside his smart, but far from flamboyant office – somewhere he admits he doesn’t spend much time as he prefers to be more hands-on – his industry knowledge has grown considerably. The accountancy, auditing and casino hospitality experience gained in the Far East that helped him get hired still no doubt comes in handy in the day-to-day running of the HR Owen business – plus Cardiff City Football Club where he is also CEO – and both are owned by Vincent Tan, founder of parent company Berjaya Group. But his ‘car game’ is now on a usefully elevated level.
He smiles a knowing smile showing me round the backroom areas of the gleaming Hatfield site where a brand-new Ferrari nestles. “I think that’s my car” he quips, before considering the relative design merits of the elegant Cilindri versus the brutal F80. But while Choo might deal with the rarefied world of the ultra-high net worth individual, his ‘daily drivers’ are pragmatic, although still way more considered than the Toyota Corolla SE his father bought for him at age 18 and which he kept for 25 years. “These days I’m using a BMW i5 M60 for my shorter commutes and when travelling to Cardiff City FC, it’s a Mercedes S-Class. For long distance I use an engine car, in the city I use an electric car.” Equally, he’s well aware of the importance of heritage at a brand like Lotus – “they started small, nimble and simple” – but also admires the recent investment from the Chinese Geely Group into the British sporting brand. “I spoke to their group CEO Mr Feng and think they have a good future.” With HR Owen’s Rolls-Royce London and Lamborghini Manchester operations both winning their respective marque’s global dealer of the year award in 2023, Choo’s clearly doing something right on the carmaker side of customer relations too. “We talk to them very often and tell them where the market is steering,” he says. “All the manufacturers come here.”
But the strictly ‘numbers man’ side of Choo knows 2024 hasn’t been easy. In the year to 30th June 2024, pre-tax profits fell to £2.29m compared to £7.6m last time, on turnover down 1.8% to £556.6m. “It’s been a challenging 12 months,” he concedes at the start of our face-to-face chat. “The market is consolidating and throughout the world in this sector, but the UK is very resilient. HR Owen will continue to invest in the UK and our customers. If you look at the data I think this ‘blip’ is going to be for a while, but I think the UK will come back strong.”
Brands represented by HR Owen cover the cream of global luxury automotive marques: Aston Martin, BAC, Bentley, Bugatti, Czinger, Ferrari, Hennessey, Lamborghini, Lotus, Maserati, Rimac and Rolls-Royce, plus another brand imminent. But are such rarefied brands tricky to sell in such tough economic moments, even if customers with the sort of spare cash required to buy a Bugatti or Bentley are likely to be less affected? “There’s still a lot of money out there, but people are now a bit more selective,” he says. “We have clients coming to us for really specific pieces rather than just all-new cars. When the market is bubbly, people buy whatever comes, because money is ‘cheap’. Now, when the cost of funds is more expensive, people think twice, it’s natural. If you have gone on an up cycle for the last 10 years and have never been on a down cycle, you don’t have that experience. But HR Owen has been in this business for a long time.”
Choo points to the way HR Owen invested during the COVID pandemic as a good example of its ‘long game’ mission. “The Hatfield dealership was a £55 million development when we had ‘locked down’ for two years, as well making a lot of other investments when times were tough. Now, in the last few months, we see the opportunities.” In terms of product focus within the already elite world of luxury cars, limited edition hypercars are an area of interest, “number one,” he says, “because they are growing and also because they have interesting products coming up and they’re very niche and special.”
Liaison with this varied customer base needs a tailored approach too. “Even within Ferrari, a ‘limited edition’ sort of person with crazy wealth, is different to somebody who just saved up for a 296 by selling a company or something,” he reasons. “The way we manage different sets of clients is very different. We took a small number to see the new Ferrari F80 launch in the factory. That was special. Many customers want more engagement but not all. Some want us to leave them alone. It’s a fine balance.”
Perhaps in response to the current sticky economic situation and also in recognition of high-end customers too often getting bombarded with ‘dealer offers’, Choo is taking a different tack. “We are changing our approach,” he says. “Rather than pushing emails to buy a car, we now ask customers what they want and then we’ll look for the car which suits them. We don’t have a stock of 10,000 cars sitting there and try to force them down customers’ throats. If you look at the numbers of our car sales, it’s always been about 1,500 new and 1,800 used. Our strategy is different to a lot of other competitors. It takes more time, but the market is getting tougher, so you need to know your customers better. All the activities we have with our customers help us get to know what they actually want, rather than what we can sell them.”
Examples of such diverse activities include the inaugural ‘Supercar Sunday’ event held in May 2024 at the Hatfield dealership, where almost 800 people attended, to a much smaller gathering right by the Thames River for the Lamborghini Revuelto, where the new model itself dramatically arrived by barge. HR Owen also fosters relationships with non-car brands. “We do a lot of cross-marketing,” Choo confirms. “Some of our customers love Dior or Chanel so they’re not just coming into [London] to buy a car, they’re looking at everything else. We just did an event at Dior where we closed the shop and had a one-to-one personal shopping session for special pieces. Dior hosts our customers and brings its customers to us when we have events.”
In terms of benchmarking, Choo doesn’t so much look to other car dealers or brands, preferring to namecheck the small, exclusive and storied Swiss watchmaker Patek Philippe (beloved of Queen Victoria among others) rather than the bigger-selling Rolex brand. “There’s no other dealer operating as much in central London and at this category of luxury than us,” he says. “We can’t really benchmark against another car dealership, most of which are volume-driven. We are one tenth the size of a lot of motor dealers in the UK and not even ‘Top Ten’ in terms of size. But we don’t want to be huge. That’s not the game plan.”
Rather, the strategy involves growth in some areas, namely expansion in central London (which Choo can’t quite give full details about now), plus consolidation and upgrades in others, such as Ferrari and other brands’ servicing departments moved under one roof to Hatfield, with older sites including Premier Park near Park Royal, north-west London closed. High-end car storage is another area Choo is keen to explore. “We have 10,000 customers but zero car storage facilities,” he says. “But we will not go into it massively, just for selected customers, because most wealthy customers have hundreds of acres of land. But some international customers might want to leave their car here and then have us truck it to them, rather than keep it in a barn or somewhere, because our service bays are all here. It’s like a Harrods storage facility.”
Back to the figures, Choo is clear why they’re not as good as some previous years. “Our profit-before-tax numbers [in 2024] were low mainly because of two major items: high depreciation because we bought a lot of properties, while high interest rates mean the cost of finance is really high. But we are trying to manage that. It’s tough, but we’ll prevail.” He is also positive about the wider outlook: “Compared to six years ago, our net asset position today is in a very different spectrum. We have now acquired more than nine properties. We are doing two more acquisitions now. Our net asset position the last time we spoke, was maybe £20 million and now we are about £70-80 million.”
201224 Motor Trader. KEN CHOO CEO HR OWEN
And what of the wider and longer-term global multi-government moves towards electrification and its potential economic impact on the currently wobbly EV market and combustion engine-heavy new luxury and hypercar market and their future used values? “I think in the long term it will evolve,” he says calmly. “Even [EV expert and Rimac founder] Mate Rimac has mentioned in the future if there’s an engine in the car, it’s going to be a hybrid. I think pure EVs will still be relevant, but maybe at a smaller percentage than people expect. We are not China. The government strategy there is very different to the government strategy in different parts of the world. Or look at Lotus, they had an electric car [strategy] and now they’ve announced a hybrid. It depends on how quick you are as a manufacturer, respective of whether you’re in Germany, Italy or China, how quick you can steer when demand starts to change.
“I think customers will always love track days and the driving experience. There’s nothing wrong with an ‘engine car’. The only issue is carbon emissions. So if they fix the fuel problem that should solve the problem. The [invention of the] Apple watch hasn’t meant throwing away mechanical watches. We don’t think the electrification thing is going to move as quickly as people expect, but all our new properties are wired for the next 10-20 years. We can pull a point from the ground and have more fast-charging capability. And when in the UK you can’t sell [new] combustion engine cars anymore, I think the value [of old ones] is just going to go up. Imagine if you have those cars which you can’t get anywhere else in the world?”
Whichever way consumer demand and government legislation moves, Choo seems settled – he lives in leafy Chiswick, in West London – and is happy to see how the market plays out. “I’ve been in the UK for 10 years now. I got married here, had a kid here – my daughter is now four and a half – and it’s a lovely place,” he says at ease and with a smile. “We want to make HR Owen better and better by taking small steps every year. We are not trying to grow the company in a way you can’t manage. We want organic growth, invest in businesses and property assets through the profits we make
