Jumia’s Q1 earnings report continues to show falling losses, slow growth

Jumia has never turned a profit, but its co-CEOs Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec have made it clear in the past that the company wants that to change. It was also a point of reference in their investor comments today.

“Our first-quarter results reflect solid progress towards profitability. The drivers remain consistent: selective and disciplined usage growth, gradual monetization, and continued cost discipline. The first quarter of 2021 was the sixth consecutive quarter of positive gross profit after fulfillment expense, which reached €6.2 million, more than doubling year-over-year, while Adjusted EBITDA loss contracted by 24% year-over-year, reaching €27.0 million,” they said in a statement.

In addition to falling losses, Jumia had other positive metrics to share. The giant e-tailer saw its active customer base grow 7% year-over-year to 6.9 million. And orders also increased by 3% to 6.6 million, a reversal of the declining trend observed over the preceding two quarters. However, the total worth of goods sold via Jumia this quarter (GMV) was just €165.0 million, a 13% decrease from the €189.6 million it recorded in Q1 2020.

The company’s gross profit also reached €20.4 million in 2020, representing a year-over-year gain of 11% from €18.4 million in Q1 2020.

Jumia cited two reasons for this drop. One was currency devaluation of Nigeria’s naira, Egypt’s pound and Kenya’s shilling against the euro, the currency in which it reports. According to the company, the trio dropped 15%, 9% and 19%, respectively, against the euro in Q1 2021. And second, the company’s best-performing product category (phones and electronics) did poorly. In Q1 2020, those items accounted for 45% of its GMV volume, which fell to 37% this quarter.

JumiaPay, the payments arm of the company, continued to post modest growth. This time last year the product processed 2.3 million transactions worth €35.5 million. In Q1 2021, JumiaPay transactions rose 6.7%, to 2.4 million transactions on a year-on-year basis. The recent quarter’s total payment volume also grew 21% to €42.9 million.

Per the report, Jumia has broadened the capabilities of its payment product. It now offers SMEs on the continent access to short-term credit by leveraging business and transactional data of its sellers to pre-score credit on an anonymized basis. The company said it disbursed 380 loans in Q1 2021, up 90% from Q1 2020. These loans were given to 291 sellers across its platform, representing a 62% increase from the number of sellers that accessed last year’s loans.

Jumia reported €485.6 million of unrestricted cash at the end of the first quarter of 2021. This includes gross proceeds of about €205 million it secured from the offering completed on March 30, 2021, and €88 million cash booked in April 2021.

Before today’s earnings call, Jumia was trading at $21.60 per share. Since the market opened this morning and at the time of this writing, the company’s share price has increased by around 3.2% to just over $24.21. It seems investors remain optimistic about the company’s growth, especially its payments arm and its plans to achieve profitability, despite continued operating and adjusted EBITDA losses.