Jumia’s Q3 (for the period ended September 30 2021) results show that the eCommerce giant continue to incur losses despite increased revenues. In its financials released yesterday, it highlighted the business accelerating usage growth across its key KPIs – Orders increased by 28% to 8.5 million year-over-year; Annual Active Consumers increased by 7.3 million, 8% year-over-year; and GMV increased by 8% year-over-year reaching $238mm. Revenue grew by 8.5% year on year to $42.7 million
According to the co-CEOs, Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec, the acceleration strategy was beginning to pay off. In their own words, “Our growth acceleration strategy initiated at the end of the second quarter of 2021 is starting to pay off. We are making investments in Sales & Advertising and Technology to further enhance consumer education, brand consideration as well as the relevance and convenience of our platform. We believe that these investments are long-term in nature and that accelerating growth will ultimately contribute to profitability, leveraging the strong efficiency gains achieved throughout 2020 and the first half of 2021. We are more than ever confident about the strong growth potential of our markets and our ability to build a growing business across e-commerce and fintech activities.”
The investments in Sales Advertising reached $24 million, an increase of 227.9% year on year and Technology investment grew by 27.3% to $9.4 million.
These investments brought about an operating loss of $64 million, a decline of 92.6% when compared to 2020 loss value of $33.3 million.
A bright spark in the company’s operations was in JumiaPay. JumiaPay transactions reached 3 million, up 34% year-over-year. The company continued releasing more products and features to enhance both consumer and merchant experience on payment platform. It also continued expanding the range of digital and financial services available to consumers on the JumiaPay app.
