Earnings Labs

Jumia Technologies AG (JMIA)

Q1 2020 Earnings Call· Wed, May 13, 2020

$6.92

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Jumia's Results Conference Call for the First Quarter of 2020. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to Safae Damir, Head of Investor Relations for Jumia. Please go ahead.

Safae Damir

Management

Thank you. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our first quarter 2020 earnings call. With us today, are Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of Jumia; as well as Antoine Maillet-Mezeray, CFO. This call is also being webcast on the IR section of our corporate website. We will start by covering the Safe Harbor. We would like to remind you that our discussions today will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Moreover, these forward-looking statements may speak only to our expectations as of today. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise these statements. For a discussion of some of the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from the forward-looking statements expressed today, please see the Risk Factors section of our [indiscernible]. In addition, on this call, we will refer to certain financial measures, not reported in accordance with IFRS. You can find reconciliations of these non-IFRS financial measures to the corresponding IFRS financial measures in our earnings press release, which is available on our Investor Relations website. With that, I'll hand over to Sacha.

Sacha Poignonnec

Management

Thank you and welcome everyone. Thanks for joining the call. Before diving into Q1 of course, I would like to give some context on how COVID-19 is affecting our business so far and the actions that we have taken in response to that. The COVID-19 is bringing a complex combination of health, economic and operational changes. First, I want to start by acknowledging the hard work of our teams working on the frontlines caring out essential duties and in particular those in our warehouses and delivery house. Our mission of facilitating consumer’s access to goods and services helping sellers reach those consumers in a seamless way, while making a positive impact on the African continent has never been more relevant. And in these difficult times, we think that we had a crucial role to play, helping the consumers and communities we served stay safe and as much as possible functioning through the crisis. We are also hopeful that it will accelerate and help accelerate the long-term shifts towards e-commerce. Let me walk you through how we have adapted to the situation, as well as the business impact that we have observed so far. I'm now on Page 3. Our number one priority has been and remains the health and safety of our team, consumers, and community. We took rapid action to adjust all our operations. We implemented work from home across all our offices. We took actions to operate our logistics infrastructure in accordance with high standards of safety and hygiene. Measures we put in place includes setting up separate team shifts, checking employees temperature, sanitizing facilities several times a day, we required the use of masks and gloves, as well as sanitizers for the handling and delivery of the orders. And all members of our warehouse staff and our…

Jeremy Hodara

Management

Thank you, Sacha, and hello everyone. If you'd like to join me on Page 9, please. Let's take a closer look at our top line growth dynamics. We decided to rebalance our business mix last year, and we further accelerated the shift in the first quarter in light of the changes in the demand as a result of the COVID-19. As part of the business mix rebalancing, and to support our path to profitability, we decreased the promotional intensity and consumer incentives under lower consumer lifetime value business, and in parallel we increased our focus on everyday product categories to drive long-term consumer adoption and usage. Looking at the GMV growth trends on the chart on the left hand side, what we see is that the majority of product categories for GMV growth are both 20%. Phone and accessories and to a lesser extent electronics were affected by enhanced promotional discipline as part of the business mix rebalancing. The mobile phone category was also affected by the scaling down of the mobile week's promotional campaign in certain markets also as a result of the COVID-19 supply disruption. The suspension of all the processing and delivery at Zando, our fashion platform in South Africa due to strict confinement measures negatively impacted the fashion category. In terms of items sold, we have seen consistent growth across all product categories with the exception of mobile phones. Volume growth was particularly strong in the FMCG categories, which surpassed 80% year-over-year, and as mentioned by Sacha earlier, growth of the grocery category further accelerated in the last 15 days of March as the confinement measures were put in place in a number of countries. Moving on to our top line growth drivers at group level on Slide 10. We see the GMV was €190 million…

Antoine Maillet-Mezeray

Management

Thank you, Jeremy. Hello, everyone. We are now on Page 17. In parallel with growing usage and consumer adoption of our platform, we seek to monetize this usage and transactional activity in a granule manner. Marketplace revenue reached €19.1 million in Q1 2020, a 22% year-over-year, while gross profit increased by 21% over the same period. Let's now take a look at our various Marketplace revenue streams on Slide 18. Commissions, which are fees charged to our sellers, increased by 35% year-over-year. Commissions grew despite GMV reduction, thanks to the category [indiscernible] balancing enhanced promotional discipline and a reduced [indiscernible] of consumer incentives, which are partly accounted for as deductions from commission revenue. Fulfillment, which comprises delivery fees charged to consumers increased by 29% in the first quarter of 2020 on a year-over-year basis in parallel with orders growth. Value-added services, which includes revenue from services charged to our sellers, such as logistics services, packaging or content creation decreased by 3% in the first quarter of 2020, on a year-over-year basis. This was largely a result of a sharp reduction in international logistics revenue starting from February, as our cross-border business was affected by the manufacturing facilities shut down in China, and cargo disruption. Here, I would like to point out that we made changes to the pricing of Jumia global products, which will cause a shift of a large part of international logistics revenue from the value added services accounts to the fulfillment of new accounts. Marketing and advertising, which corresponds to the revenue generated from the sale of a diversified range of ad solutions to sellers and advertisers, increased by 34% in Q1 2020 on a year-over-year basis. While marketing and advertising revenue grew by triple digit rates in the first two months of the quarter, compared to…

Sacha Poignonnec

Management

Thank you very much. And just a few remarks before we open to Q&A. Of course, the current situation is challenging in many respects, but it also gives us even more confidence on the relevance of Jumia, e-commerce and online payments in Africa. When we look ahead, one, we think that for some time there will often be here and there some level of supply and logistic disruption, but we have a lot of levers to navigate them and we also expect them to be more short-term and somehow eventually resolved. Two, we are preparing for potentially very tough economic times ahead. You already know that we started many actions last year, the portfolio optimization, exit from travel, [three] countries, cost reductions, promotional discipline. And in a way, this is very good for us because we are somewhat ahead of the curve from that perspective and I want to say that we have not stopped our efforts and cost discipline and expense reduction and we have continued to carry on some actions already in Q1. Three, during those challenging times, combined or not with the need for social distancing or sometimes periods of confinement, we have seen consumers turn to Jumia as we strive to give them the best prices and a very convenient and safe experience and we believe that this – you know will continue and we will continue to see strong consumer adoption and usage. And four, similarly on the seller side, we have already started seeing unprecedented demand to join the Jumia platform and especially from big brands. And this is of course, very good for us because it enables us to bring more choice and selections which helps consumer adoption and also to drive the trust on Jumia. We believe those dynamics will help accelerate the shift towards online on both the demand and supply sides, which again, gives us a lot of confidence in the relevance of the company and for Jumia in Africa. We remain committed to reducing our adjusted EBITDA loss in absolute terms in 2020 while driving consumer adoption and usage. And now I want to thank you for your attention and we are ready to open up the call for Q&A.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And today's first question comes from Mark Mahaney with RBC. Please go ahead.

Mark Mahaney

Analyst

Okay, let me try two things. One, the trends that you're seeing at the end of the last quarter and into this quarter in Morocco and Tunisia looks so different than what you're seeing in your overall company in the other markets. Could you explain, again, why you would see a surge in what looks like an order volume and specifically in those two markets versus the others? And then secondly, could you just, again, address the liquidity issues for the company? It sounds like you're able to bring down – your goal is to bring on EBITDA losses for the full-year. Do you think you've got enough? How far do you think the existing cash can take you? How do you think about what an appropriate, you know, minimum level of cash you need to have in order to run the business with confidence? Thank you.

Sacha Poignonnec

Management

Thanks Mark. On the first question, you know, here we’ve put four of our geographies as well as the Jumia Food business, right, or category or service. And here is more of an illustration to show that we have some positives and some negatives, and where we see the positives is because there's a combination of confinement measures, but which are not disrupting the supply in a way in which is detrimental to addressing this demand, right? So, pretty much everywhere and that’s the demand is there, right? But the question is more the ability for the supply and to some extent, the logistics and payments to fulfill that demand. And in Morocco and Tunisia, we have typical examples of situations where we have the demand and the supply and the logistics, which are working together. And in Nigeria, we have a very big disruption in supply. So, if you have a very big disruption in supply, then of course, you know, you can't generate the right level of demand. And so, this, you know, surge in those two countries is really driven by the combination of those elements. And let me know if that answers your question? On the second one, you know, you have seen our cash level. We have about €190 million, where we have made very clear that we want to drive gradual reduction and a clear trend in the reduction of our cash burn on a quarterly basis and the same for the adjusted EBITDA loss. I think you see already in Q1 that some of the choices that we have made are starting to pay off. And for now, that's what – you know that's what we comment on. And then, we continue to be committed to the strategy which will drive the lower cash burn on a quarterly basis and trend towards profitability. And that's where – you know that's where we'll take it.

Mark Mahaney

Analyst

Sacha, one follow-up, do you have visibility into when some of those confinement measures will change and supply challenges you're seeing will be lifted in some of your other, you know, larger – in some of your larger markets like Nigeria? Are conditions on the ground improving enough that it looks like the confinement measures that affect your supply base are going to be changed this month or next month, any visibility there?

Sacha Poignonnec

Management

Yes. And you can see already on the chart, at the end of April, Nigeria was almost back at the level of the beginning of March, right? And so, already a number of – you know a number of signs were happening and we're driving the business back to normal. I think here maybe it’s worth that I sort of tell you the type of actions we do to secure the supply, right? And there's a large number of actions that we're doing. One is that we are strengthening the partnerships with the big sellers and the big sellers tend to have more, you know, stock, more inventory and stronger operations. Two, we're leveraging Jumia Express, our own warehouses, where we can store the goods from the sellers. So, as soon as the sellers can access the inventory, they can put it on Jumia Express. Three, we can do retail. As you know, we have the ability to do [1P] and sometimes we decide to engage into [1P], especially if we want to secure the supply, and in some cases, that can be very helpful. We have multi-warehousing capabilities. Sometimes in the countries you have transportation between regions, which is disrupted. So, it's very interesting to locate some of the Jumia Express inventory in the region where the consumers are ordering from. We have a lot of new big sellers and big brands, which are joining, which is also bringing that. And, you know, we have a multi-category approach, a multi-country approach and because we are a marketplace, we have, you know, dozens of thousands of sellers that we can go to. So, in a way, you know, we are leveraging and pulling a lot of levers to drive both minimal disruption and using all the tools and the levers we have to minimize the disruption. If there is disruption, the good news is we are – we have so many countries that when a country is down, well, there's a country which is up, right, which is the benefit of being Pan-African, multi-category, a marketplace because when parts of the business is suffering temporarily, then you have another part which is doing well, which is one of the big benefits of our platform, which is somehow not de-risk it completely, but we have a lot of – you know we have a lot of levers to de-risk it.

Mark Mahaney

Analyst

Thank you, Sacha.

Operator

Operator

Our next question today comes from Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Aaron Kessler

Analyst

Great. Thanks, guys. Maybe just a couple questions, first is maybe on engagement or consumer engagement, if you could talk a little bit to traffic you've seen, maybe app downloads, just trying to get a sense for kind of how consumers are responding in terms of that demand? And then, maybe on the expense side, should we kind of think about Q1 as kind of a base level? Or is that not fully reflected? Should we expect a further kind of reductions in kind of Q2 and as we think about expense levels throughout the year as well? Then third, just any update on Egypt? Obviously, with, I think, your second biggest country, if you can provide any updates on Egypt as well? Thank you.

Sacha Poignonnec

Management

Yes. Thanks, Aaron. On the first one, definitely, you know, we've seen engagement curves in terms of traffic, app downloads, which are similar to the – you know somehow to the curve of items sold. So, where the demand has been surging, of course, it's been also coming together with a very strong engagement, very strong app download and overall, you know, a lot of good dynamics on traffic and engagement. I think we have that situation pretty much everywhere. People are turning to online and they're looking for solutions. And, you know, this is overall driving a lot of goods engagement and we are seeing, most importantly, I think you're seeing this from the number. Those are happening at really very good marketing efficiency levels, right, because you can always – you have to always look at the growth of the usage together with the evolution of the sales and advertising expense, so I think here, definitely the engagement is helping a lot. If you take our expense levels, you know, we have three types of expense, fulfillment, sales and advertising and G&A. The fulfillment, to some extent, it will depend on a lot of factors whether the cross-border business will, you know, come back or stay where it is, and whether, you know, more pickup stations or more door delivery and all those factors, right, that we explained. What matters here is that we are able to pass a healthy part of those expenses to the consumers and to the sellers. And if you look at the evolution of fulfillment expense together with the evolution of fulfillment revenue and value added services, you can see very healthy development. So in a way, we will continue to capture some efficiency at fulfillment level and we will continue to see…

Aaron Kessler

Analyst

Great. And just lastly on Egypt, any update there on the performance of Egypt?

Sacha Poignonnec

Management

Oh, yes. On Egypt, Egypt is in the upper part of the chart. So, it's – you know it's doing well and it's benefited from good trends. So, it's a country which is – you know which is closer to the blue and the red than the green and the orange.

Aaron Kessler

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Sarah Simon with Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Sarah Simon

Analyst · Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi. I've got a couple of questions. One was for – well, two of that for Antoine. Antoine, can you just remind us what you were saying about the shift of revenue between – out of Jumia Global logistics that were coming of value-added services? I didn't really understand that bit. That was one. And then, the second question was on competition. Sacha, obviously, some of your competitors are single-country players and I'm just wondering whether you think that through this process, those single-country players are losing market share to you and how you see the competitive landscape at the moment relative to kind of pre-COVID? Thanks.

Antoine Maillet-Mezeray

Management

So, maybe Sacha, can you take the first one …

Sacha Poignonnec

Management

Antoine, do you want to take the first one, please?

Antoine Maillet-Mezeray

Management

I was not able to hear it, sorry. The line…

Sacha Poignonnec

Management

Oh! No, the first one is just – no problem. It's clarifying the impact of the reclassification of the Jumia Global revenues, so remaking the point and re-explaining the reclassification, the upcoming reclassification.

Antoine Maillet-Mezeray

Management

Okay. Okay, so yes. So first, this was not yet included in our financial statement since it was on [past end of March]. And what we’re going to do is that we're going to shift a part of the international logistics revenue from the value-added services account to the fulfillment revenue accounts. So, it's more a matter of reclassification than anything else.

Sarah Simon

Analyst · Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Okay. So, we should expect further contraction in value-added services, at least in that bit, but fulfillment would be better?

Antoine Maillet-Mezeray

Management

Yes.

Sarah Simon

Analyst · Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Can you give us an idea of the kind of proportion of value-added services revenue that that represents?

Antoine Maillet-Mezeray

Management

Well, it's a little bit too early to comment on that at this stage. We'll have more clarity at the end of Q2, I guess.

Sarah Simon

Analyst · Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the question …

Sacha Poignonnec

Management

It is something that would not change the gross profit after fulfillments. Right. Sorry, I think Sarah had a question in competition as well. Hopefully after that I will take, and you know, I agree with you, it's a huge benefit for us to the Pan African because, you know, it makes us the natural partner for all the global brands gives us, you know, more economies of scale and also for [talent, mobility] and for de-risking the business as well, right. Because sometimes when you're in a given geography, and the given geography is not going the way you want than you are suffering so much more. So, yes, I think it's been a very good asset for us to have this kind of African presence and it's driving a lot of value. Market share is very hard to measure because no one else publishes data, and we have some competition in free markets namely. And then we have a lot of local players and initiatives. At the moment, we are really focusing on growing the markets, and growing the usage. So, you know, of course, I think all the benefits of being Pan African are paying out and we think we're doing very well, but at the same time, there's really no reliable data on market share. So, right now, we're really focused on driving a lot of consumer usage, and having a lot of users coming to Jumia, a lot of sellers coming to Jumia driving a lot of sufficient, you know, transactions and we think that's the right strategy and that when you do that, ultimately, you're in a good position. So, it's a bit of a vague answer, I’m sorry Sarah, but there is no, really no data on this and, and we're focusing on doing what's right and driving the business forward here.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to the management team for any final remarks.

Sacha Poignonnec

Management

Thank you everyone, and as always, we are available if you need any follow up and most importantly, I hope everyone is safe and stay safe. Thank you, guys. Take care. Bye, bye.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.