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Jumia Technologies AG (JMIA)

Q3 2024 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 7, 2024

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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 Third Quarter of 2024. There will be an opportunity to ask questions after today's presentation. [Operator Instructions] With us today are Francis Dufay, CEO of Jumia; and Antoine Maillet-Mezeray, Executive Vice President, Finance and Operations. We'll 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 annual report on Form 20-F as published on March 28, 2024, as well as others -- or other submissions with the SEC. 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 it over to Francis.

Francis Dufay

Analyst

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I will start today's call with a brief overview of our Q3 performance. I will then focus our discussion on our plans for the use of proceeds from our completed ATM offering before turning the call over to Antoine for a deeper dive into our financials. The third quarter marked a continuation of our efforts to strengthen the underlying fundamentals of our business. We made tangible progress in advancing several structural updates to our operations, building on the progress we have made over the last several quarters. This includes significant improvements to our logistics network as well as the consolidation of several of our warehouses into larger, more tech-enabled locations across our footprint. While these improvements caused temporary disruptions to day-to-day operations in the quarter, we are confident that our efforts have positioned us well to scale and drive profitable growth. Usage KPIs this quarter were mixed. While we saw improvements in active customer count and physical goods orders, we experienced softness in GMV and total orders due to currency devaluations, flat JumiaPay orders and the aforementioned warehouse consolidation. Quarterly active customers grew year-over-year for the first time since the third quarter of 2022, improving 1% to $2 million. We also continue to attract and retain what we believe to be stickier and higher-quality customers. Our Q2 90-day repurchase rate increased 304 basis points year-over-year as the number of new customers who placed an order in Q2 '24 and then placed another order within 90 days grew to 39% from 36% in Q2 '23. Attracting a higher-quality cohort has been an important proof point for our value proposition, showing we can drive repeat orders from returning customers without the use of promotions or discounts. Orders this quarter totaled 5.9 million, a 4%…

Antoine Maillet-Mezeray

Analyst

Thank you, Francis, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Starting with the top line, revenue was $36.4 million, down 13% year-over-year, up 9% on a constant currency basis. Marketplace revenue was $20.6 million, up 7% year-over-year, and up 37% on a constant currency basis, primarily driven by commissions from third-party corporate sales in Egypt, partially offset by the impact of foreign exchange devaluations. Revenue from first-party sales was $15.5 million, down 29% and down 14% on a constant currency basis, driven by lower first-party corporate sales in Egypt and the impact of foreign exchange. Gross profit was $22.9 million, up 3% year-over-year, or 30% on a constant currency basis, largely in line with the evolution of third-party sales. Gross profit as a percentage of GMV remained flat at 14% when compared to Q3 ‘23. Looking at expenses, fulfillment expenses for the quarter were $10.3 million, up 5% year-over-year, and 22% on a constant currency basis. This increase was primarily driven by one-time costs associated with ongoing warehouse consolidations and growth in orders. The impact was partially offset by currency devaluations, primarily in Nigeria and Egypt. We expect these consolidation efforts to drive operational efficiencies and cost savings in the coming quarters. Fulfillment expense per order excluding JumiaPay app orders, which do not incur logistics costs, remains flat year-over-year at $2.4 and increased 16% on a constant currency basis. Fulfillment expense as a percentage of GMV remained flat year-over-year at 6%. Sales and advertising expenses remained flat year-over-year at $4.4 million and increased 34% on a constant-currency basis, driven by targeted investments in online marketing to drive usage growth. Going forward, we expect these expenses will increase as we focus on efficient inexpensive channels as part of our customer acquisition strategy. Advertising expense per order decreased to $0.7 from…

Francis Dufay

Analyst

Thanks, Antoine. Today, we are reaffirming guidance for the full year 2024. We aim to further reduce our cash utilization for the full year 2024 as compared to full year 2023. Additionally, based on the positive impact of our growth strategy, we project an increase in both orders and GMV in 2024, excluding the potential impact of foreign exchange. As a reminder, our biggest shopping event of the year, our annual Black Friday sale is happening this November. The event kicked off on November 1st and runs until November 30th. The annual event continues to grow in popularity across countries and plays a pivotal role in promoting nationwide e-commerce adoption. It also reaffirms Jumia's commitment, providing a convenient and dependable online shopping experience. With the recent warehouse consolidations, supply enhancements, and inventory preparations, we believe we are well-positioned to capitalize on this year's event. We look forward to sharing more with you next quarter. We believe to be on the right path and are confident in Jumia's future as we accelerate growth towards profitability. We are encouraged to see continued resilience in our usage and business fundamentals despite the first quarter currency devaluation headwinds that continue to impact GMV and top line revenue. We are confident that we have the right plan, the right team in place and look forward to updating you on our progress in the future. We can now open the call for Q&A.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question today will be coming from Brad Erickson from RBC. Brad, your line is live.

Brad Erickson

Analyst

Great. Thanks, guys, and good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. So I had a few. First, there's a pretty big delta between the GMV growth, and kind of the order growth. I'm just curious, like, what's going on in terms of, like, mix or from an [ALB] (ph) perspective that's leading to that? Any drivers you want to call out? I think there's a 25 point gap between GMV and orders here. So just curious what's going on there?

Francis Dufay

Analyst

Hi, Brad. Thanks for asking. So let me take the question. So indeed, there's a pretty big gap between orders growth and physical goods at 5% and GMV growth in constant currencies of 29% this quarter. There are many, I mean, there are several different factors impacting that. One is definitely the mix, the evolution of the mix. Across countries, we have different trends of course, but we have refocused over the past two years our mix towards our key categories that are fashion, beauty, home and living, electronics and phones that typically have a higher average item value and average order value than what we saw in the past with a higher component of groceries and FMCG. So this shift in the mix that we're still seeing happen, I mean, that you're still seeing year-over-year to date, is definitely impacting our average basket size, which you can see here in those numbers. And then there's a dimension of inflation happening in the countries, countries that had like significant devaluations, but not only, where it's just driving up the prices of products, especially those manufactured outside of the country. So it's a mix of both, but definitely the shift in the mix is driving higher value baskets that are helping us to breakeven at order level.

Brad Erickson

Analyst

Got it, that's great. And then just on the order growth, you're obviously lapping a period where you're kind of intentionally pulling back on marketing and everything. So you're kind of now back to a little bit of year-over-year growth. What would sort of theoretically be required to maybe see a bigger acceleration just on the order growth specifically?

Francis Dufay

Analyst

So I think one of the assumptions when we look at orders growth and usage growth in general in e-commerce across the world is marketing, right? And it's been assumed at Jumia for many years that orders growth is heavily correlated with marketing spend. And actually marketing spend had to increase exponentially. In the context of our African markets, we believe it's very different. We believe that the greatest part of growth, and most of growth, I'm not going to say 90%, but overall growth is driven by the value proposition, which is heavily driven by supply and prices and the ability to distribute to the customers at very competitive prices with reliable service. So nothing fancy. It's not about more ads on Meta and Google, it's not about delivering same day, it's really, I mean, for heavily cost-conscious customers, it's really all about getting the best very proposition, so the right assortment at the best price. When we look at our growth today, I mean although the numbers are not very impressive yet, we're talking 1% in active consumers and 5% in orders, and we want to get to much better numbers in the future, these numbers are being delivered without increasing marketing budgets, and we believe we can still be more efficient in marketing. So the big drivers to accelerate on growth going forward in the coming quarters in 2025 will be basically consistent improved delivery on the fundamental topics. The biggest one being improving the supply, keeping and improving the supply. We've discussed that in the previous quarters. One of them -- one of the easiest examples to explain here would be getting more supply from our Chinese supplier space that we were tapping through cross-border e-commerce and also local fulfillment for our Chinese vendors. We're expanding…

Brad Erickson

Analyst

Got it. That's great color. No worries on the length of the answer. We appreciate the color.

Francis Dufay

Analyst

And just adding to that again, we believe it's not about increasing marketing budgets and we believe we can become even more efficient on marketing. The dynamics in our markets are very different from, let's say, the US, Europe, Dubai, and other countries where there's a more direct correlation with online marketing, which is mostly not the case for our customer base.

Brad Erickson

Analyst

Just a few more, if I could. On the exit of South Africa and Tunisia, I guess, just talk about that if you could. Kind of, what were the main characteristics of those countries that led you to exit or maybe to put it a little differently, what was sort of different about those countries as compared to your other current incumbent market?

Francis Dufay

Analyst

Sure, I will start with South Africa. So, I mean, first of all, it's a tough decision, and it was tough decision particularly thinking of the teams, but we had to do it. It's all about resource allocation and we're a business, so that's the kind of resources -- of decisions we have to take at some point. And the recent fundraising gave us the flexibility to make those decisions and take the short-term cost impact. South Africa is quite a unique market in Africa for e-commerce because it's a lot more mature than any other market when it comes to retail and logistics. So quite different, very different dynamics, also a very competitive market with well-established players. And Jumia had been operating in South Africa under a different brand, a different business model, mostly in retail and only focused in fashion. So we had been clear in the past that it was non-core and that it was not built along the same lines and based on the same assets than as in the other countries. So it was relatively straightforward decision, unfortunately. And then when we look at Tunisia, it's been a market where local dynamics have been rougher than in other countries. Market potential is definitely lower if you look at population and GDP, obviously. Country dynamics have been tough over the past couple of years. And in the end, it's a choice in resource allocation. We could have turned around the country, we could certainly have delivered better impact and so on, but we believe it's a better allocation of our resources, money, people, management time and focus to dedicate our attention to other countries with bigger potential.

Brad Erickson

Analyst

Got it. And then last one just on the EBITDA. You called out some of the one-time stuff that occurred, I guess, from just a free cash flow perspective. Loss was kind of flat on EBITDA Q-over-Q. I guess, besides just kind of the higher unit volumes, maybe just speak to the algorithm of sort of driving those losses down over time, which is obviously what you're guiding to. Thanks.

Francis Dufay

Analyst

Yeah. So the higher level here, the idea is the following. We've done a lot of the work on the cost base over the past 1.5 years, right. I mean, we -- for example, we divided workforce by half. We're not going to do that again in the coming weeks, as you can imagine. Going forward, it's obvious that profitability is going to be the result of both of mostly an improvement in top line revenue. So that's usage growth and strong management of our margins and further improvement of efficiency. We believe we can deliver on both. We have the first signs of our ability to grow usage at the end of this year, I mean this quarter, and we believe there's still more efficiency to be captured from across the cost base. I mentioned marketing. You saw this quarter that we moved warehouses to better fulfillment centers that will be more efficient. That will have an impact on fulfillment costs. So it could be a long list. But we believe we can still improve an efficiency through innovation, scale, and new processes and ways of working. And definitely, we will -- I mean, top line revenue growth will be a decisive contribution to breakeven.

Brad Erickson

Analyst

Got it. That's a great color. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And there were no other questions in queue at this time. I would now like to hand the call back to Francis Dufay for closing remarks.

Francis Dufay

Analyst

Thank you very much. So, as we said during the call, this is a mixed quarter in terms of results. We, of course, want to deliver better results, but looking at the bright side here, I think in this tough quarter, we see positive impact and continued progress on our key growth projects. We see active customers growing. We see repurchase rates improving. We see continued success in key projects like upcountry expansion. I mentioned Nigeria, which is a very important country for us. In the very short run, we're also seeing strong preparation and a strong buildup towards Black Friday, which is an important event to step up our volumes towards ‘25. And most importantly, we have achieved this quarter significant impact and progress on big fundamentals that drive medium-term impact. We have done decisive action in refocusing and simplifying the business. I mentioned South Africa and Tunisia. We've moved to better fulfillment -- bigger, better fulfillment centers in four of our most important markets. And we believe, ultimately, the work done this quarter confirms our growth levels for the coming years, which is an important data point as it will be a key component to our path to profitability. And this quarter delivered significant improvement on fundamentals that will help us to deliver a strong ‘25. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.