Africa Press-Nigeria<\/p>\n
African online retailer Jumia on Tuesday reported a nearly 18% fall in third-quarter revenue as it shifted towards less expensive but more frequently ordered items and missed out on lockdown boosts enjoyed by international rivals.<\/p>\n
Cost-saving efforts, however, allowed Jumia to reduce its adjusted loss in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the period to 32.4 million euros ($38.3 million) from 49.9 million euros in the year-earlier period.<\/p>\n
Co-chief executive Sacha Poignonnec told Reuters that the group was not concerned by the lack of surge in demand during the pandemic, which has benefited e-commerce giants Amazon and Alibaba.<\/p>\n
Only 24% of Jumia\u2019s core markets – or four countries – instituted nationwide lockdowns and its largest market, Nigeria, had targeted lockdowns that were less restrictive than elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Revenue fell to 33.7 million euros from 40.9 million in the prior year quarter. Gross merchandise value (GMV), the total value of merchandise sold, also fell by 28%, which Poignonnec said was \u201clargely by choice\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jumia, the first Africa-focused tech start-up to list on the New York Stock Exchange, is selling fewer expensive one-off products such as electronics, focusing on cheaper but frequently ordered items like beauty and cleaning supplies, he said.<\/p>\n
It has exited three countries and closed its travel unit over the past year in an effort to create a \u201cvery different business than we had a year ago\u201d on the path to profitability, Poignonnec said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt about the potential scale of Africa for e-commerce,\u201d he added. \u201cWe want to make sure that when we reach that scale, we are profitable.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed to a 20% year-on-year drop in fulfilment costs, 55% drop in advertising expenses and the 10 cent per order in gross profit after fulfillment, up from a 2.20-euro loss last year.<\/p>\n
Jumia shares were trading at $14.31 by 1700 GMT, down 11%.<\/p>\n
It reached a market capitalisation of over $1.5 billion just after it went public in April 2019 but accusations by short-seller Citron Research that it inflated its sales figures hammered its shares soon after.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Africa Press-Nigeria African online retailer Jumia on Tuesday reported a nearly 18% fall in third-quarter revenue as it shifted towards less expensive but more frequently ordered items and missed out on lockdown boosts enjoyed by international rivals. Cost-saving efforts, however, allowed Jumia to reduce its adjusted loss in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":25161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,1438,1437],"tags":[1453],"class_list":["post-32201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-coronavirus-in-nigeria","category-files","tag-coronavirus-in-nigeria"],"yoast_head":"\n