E-commerce firm Jumia released its Q4 report on Wednesday showing 12% gross profit increase year-on-year despite pandemic-induced market woes.

Although compared to 2019, the growth was slower; the online marketplace reported adjusted EBITDA loss decreased by 47% year-on-year. Highlights of the report show that Jumia’s Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) leaped to €231m, a 23% increase from the preceding quarter.

The company attributed the growth to some of the innovative strides it made toward the end of 2020, which include Jumiapay, advertising and logistics.

“We continued to make significant strides towards breakeven during the fourth quarter of 2020. Gross Profit after Fulfillment expense reached a record €8.4 million during the quarter,” said Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec, Co-Chief Executive Officers of Jumia.

The report said Black Fridays campaign, which ran over the course of 4 Fridays in November 2020, contributed to growth recorded in the Q4. Jumia pioneered the Black Friday event on a pan-African basis in 2014 and, for its sixth edition, crossed a number of milestones.

The Black Friday campaign brought consumers a broad assortment of relevant products at attractive prices offered through a gamified and engaging experience, pushing the page views across our platforms to 1.5 billion, up 34% when compared with the 2019 event. The Black Fridays’ video content registered almost 100 million views, 3 times higher compared to the 2019 event.

Our top three selling categories in terms of items sold were fashion, beauty and home & lifestyle, the report said.

“While 2020 has been a challenging year operationally with COVID-19 related supply and logistics disruption, it has been a transformative one for our economic model, as we firmly put the business on track towards breakeven,” added Hodara and Poignonnec.

Sales & Advertising expense was €10.2 million, a year-over-year decrease of 34%. General & Administrative costs, excluding share-based compensation expense, reached €21.8 million, a decrease of 36% year-over-year.

Adjusted EBITDA loss was €28.3 million, decreasing by 47% year-over-year. JumiaPay TPV reached €59.3 million, increasing by 30% year-over-year. On-platform TPV penetration increased from 15.6% of GMV in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 25.7% of GMV in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Jumia said logistics was the backbone of the success recorded via Black Fridays, handling 4.8 million packages during the event, more than double the monthly average for the rest of the year. Logistics also reached new milestones of delivery speed with 55% of packages reaching consumers in less than 24 hours, compared to 44% in 2019.

Black Fridays also boosted Jumia’s Advertising growth. 2020 marked the first full year of operation for Jumia Advertising, with accelerating momentum in the fourth quarter of 2020.

In 2020, Jumia Advertising ran over 1,000 advertising campaigns on behalf of 370 advertisers including high profile partners such as Unilever, Nivea, L’Oreal, Xiaomi, Huawei, Intel and many more. To support the long-term growth of Jumia Advertising and accelerate the shift from analog to digital advertising in Africa, we are establishing strong relationships with brands and advertising agencies, the report said.

Jumiapay is another sector of the business which yielded growth, though mix balancing affected the run in Q4.

According to the report, annual Active Consumers reached 6.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2020, up 12% year-over-year with continued growth in both new and returning consumers. Orders reached 8.1 million, down 3% year-over-year on the back of a 14% decrease in digital services transactions on the JumiaPay app, while Orders on the rest of the platform were stable.

But GMV was €231.1 million, down 21% on a year-over-year basis, as the effects of the business mix rebalancing initiated late 2019 continued playing out during the fourth quarter of 2020. The business mix rebalancing drove an approximately 19% decrease in average order value from €35.4 in the fourth quarter of 2019 to €28.7 in the fourth quarter of 2020, affecting overall GMV performance.

On-platform penetration of JumiaPay as a percentage of GMV increased to 25.7% in the fourth quarter of 2020 from 15.6% in the fourth quarter of 2019.

JumiaPay Transactions increased by 10% from 2.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 2.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2020, with Transactions above €10, which include prepaid purchases on the Jumia physical goods marketplace and Jumia Food platforms, growing by 55% over the same period.

“Overall, 33.1% of Orders placed on the Jumia platform in the fourth quarter of 2020 were paid for using JumiaPay, compared to 29.5% in the fourth quarter of 2019,” the report added.

Jumia struggled in 2020 through various targeted changes as its e-commerce business nosedived amidst scandalous allegations of dubious practices by short-selling article from Citron. But the company lost its unicorn status as its shares plummeted. Last year also saw one of its biggest shareholders, MTN exit the company.

However, the e-commerce company recorded a decent return, diversifying its business to include new sectors that have supported growth.

Poignonnec said raising approximately €203 million in a primary offering in December 2020 helped Jumia to scale through its troubles.

“This strengthened our balance sheet, enhanced our unit economics and overall positioned Jumia to scale efficiently towards profitability. Beyond the near-term objective of breakeven, our long-term focus remains on fueling the growth of our e-commerce and payment platforms in Africa for decades to come,” he said.

Create that future and believe in the promises of the tomorrow as you sojourn on your career. In the deepest of the night, it takes a ray of sunlight for that curtain to fade. If you are a student, the challenge is to get the best from school despite any obstacle. Look into the horizon and see the promises of good grades. Some say grades do not matter – they are wrong.

Grades measure your focus, tenacity and commitment to set an objective and accomplish it. That your “A” is a validation you can have a WIN. The letter means nothing but the process is what matters. That process shapes you to make As in life!

Many years ago, a young man joined us in Diamond Bank Lagos. He received his first paycheck. I saw him crying – and I asked him what was happening. He told “Somebody, I could have missed this pay if my circumstances had resulted in dropping out of school”. He went to narrate how he ate once for 6 months! I responded, “Pally, that was history, now you can feed a small village. Most here have similar experiences”.

Do not doubt the promises of tomorrow. #TakeAction. And #Believe.

Greetings. We are excited to announce that Tekedia Institute has unveiled Tekedia Career Center. This Center which is hosted in Tekedia Hub is the Institute’s resource ecosystem for our members to access relevant career development support. 

Through it, we will connect our partners with our members and network of alumni. Our goal is to create a strong network of relationships with learners, alumni, recruiters, faculty, and all stakeholders in our Institute. In the Hub, the handle is @career. We will use this handle to offer many services including mentoring, career guidance, career support, resume review support, etc.

Please like the page – https://hub.tekedia.com/career. It is built to support career aspirations. In Tekedia Institute, career is not just about jobs, but development, fulfillment, and more. Our vision is to help our members become better innovators and growth champions in companies they work, by supporting them on their career journeys. 

Last year, we organized Tekedia Career Week and brought HR directors from leading companies like Coca Cola and Jobberman, to speak to our community on career planning. This year’s Career Week is coming in Q4.

We wish you a profitable week.

Regards,

Tekedia Team

Good People, we made the LinkedIn News Editors’ Pick on the article on Apple and Tesla (see here – https://lnkd.in/eU3CTuj ). Yes, Apple might have bought 100 companies in the last few years, but it missed a really amazing one when it passed buying Tesla at about $20 billion, despite having piles of cash in its treasury! Today, Tesla is worth more than $650 billion! In a world of perception demand, sometimes, the most critical element is not really what the financial ratios show but what the perception of the future tells us.

The interesting thing is that all products that succeed at the level of perception are usually disruptive in their sector or industry. Google search cannot be considered to fall in the category of perception because many people already craved for better search because neither Microsoft nor Yahoo was offering a good one. So a product could be disruptive and yet not a percepting product. However, all percepting products are disruptive.

Building and analyzing companies based on their financials will miss leverageable factors which the future could unlock, and which no current financial model can pick. That is why even though Tesla does not sell up to 5% of cars which Toyota sells (sold about 9.5 million last year), the markets believe that Tesla is worth more – and a better company!

Beyond Customer Need and Expectation, Perception is King of Market

The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in this video shared his views on cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. Clearly, his view is extremely pessimistic. Yet, it is a good thing that the governor is speaking, as that will help that debate the central bank and Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) have promised for the fledgling sector.