Indonesia-listed technology major PT GoTo Gojek Tokopedia (GoTo Group) has reported a wider loss in the first three months of 2022 despite a 53% growth in gross revenue compared with the corresponding period a year earlier, prompting the company to increase its focus on steps to boost margins and cost-cutting.
Its losses in the January-March period stood at Rp6.47 trillion compared with Rp1.81 trillion in the corresponding period a year earlier, per the first earnings announcement after its April listing on the IDX following a $1.1-billion IPO.
GoTo, however, claimed to have had a strong start this year with its gross revenue growing 53% to Rp5.2 trillion and its GTV growing 46% to Rp140 trillion compared with 2021.
“We’ve seen a positive momentum for GoTo,” Andre Soelistyo, GoTo co-founder and chief executive officer, said in a press conference on Monday, noting that the listed company is set to focus on “building a sustainable business” with a “clear path to profitability” going forward.
GoTo’s path to profitability consists of new investment in fintech, developing hyperlocal delivery and speeding up monetisation, Soelistyo said.
GoTo said it reduced costs by cutting down customer incentives and marketing costs by 90 basis points (bps) and 40 bps respectively. “We focus on monetisation and business synergies (between Gojek and Tokopedia) which led to contributing margin and Ebitda margin by 100 bps and 70 bps,” he said.
On hyperlocal delivery, GoTo said it will optimise operations by using the most suitable and cheapest fleet. In new initiatives under the fintech space, GoTo plans to launch GoPay Coin in the second quarter to allow customers to earn rewards from Tokopedia that they can further spend on Tokopedia or other platforms within the GoTo ecosystem.
GoTo has forecasted its GTV for the second quarter of 2022 to be between Rp142 trillion and Rp150 trillion while gross revenue to be around Rp5.3 trillion to Rp5.6 trillion.
Its outlook for the full-year 2022 will be announced at the earnings call for the Q2 period.
GoTo, which also released its full-year 2021 report, recorded Rp21.39 trillion in losses last year, up 50.55% from the previous year. Its gross revenue was at Rp17 trillion in 2021, up 43.51% from Rp11.85 trillion in 2020 and Rp10.41 trillion in 2019.
GoTo Group CFO Jacky Lo said, in the statement, “We expect to reap significant additional benefits as we integrate Gojek, Tokopedia and GoTo Financial further and have been investing accordingly in cross-platform integration since May 2021.”
As a result of optimizing incentive spending and operating expenses, GoTo has managed to improve contribution margin and adjusted EBITDA margin by 24 and 14 percentage points, respectively, in Q12022 when compared to the previous sequential quarter (Q42021), Lo added.
The major portion of the gross revenue was contributed by its on-demand service at Rp10.27 trillion, followed by e-commerce at Rp6.26 trillion, and fintech service at Rp1.16 trillion throughout 2021.
GoTo’s GTV increased 39.81% to Rp461.6 trillion in 2021, from Rp330.18 trillion a year earlier.
Commenting on the performance, MNC Securities head of research Edwin Sebayang said, “investors want to see GoTo’s strategies to improve the bottom line and top line by cutting costs or reducing burn rate.” He pointed out that GoTo’s plan to raise profitability should reflect in its financial reports for it to attract investors.