Jumia had a fair outing yesterday in its first quarterly earnings call: GMV grew by 58%, leading to a 102% increase in Marketplace revenue, but the company made a surprising decision –  it will not provide direct rebuttal to the Citron’s accusation.

In the wake of the report, a slew of American law firms said they were investigating possible disclosure violations and invited investors who may have lost money on the stock to contact them. In response, Jumia brought forward its first-quarter earnings announcement that was scheduled for Thursday to today.

• That release showed that Jumia’s first-quarter loss widened from a year earlier to $51m, and gave no indication of when it might become profitable.

That seems very strange as Citron has called it a “fraud“. We will see how it works for the business.

I agree with this summary by The Africa Report: “Failure to provide a detailed rebuttal of Citron’s claims will do little to reassure Jumia’s investors, who deserve to hear management’s side of the story. Other African companies may end up paying the penalty.” The Citi reaction is certainly not good enough; investors will like to hear from Jumia directly.

Personally, I do think Jumia showed a promise in its first call; expect recovery from the paralysis of the accusation.

Shares of Jumia Technologies (NYSE: JMIA) were bouncing up and down today after the African e-commerce specialist posted its first quarterly earnings report as a publicly traded company, showing sluggish top-line growth and a widening loss despite some promising signs. Shares fell as much as 17.8% in morning trading but recovered most of those losses and were down just 3.2% as of 12:46 p.m. EDT as investors tried to make sense of the report.

Jumia showed off some impressive figures as gross merchandise volume (GMV) increased 58% to 240 million euros, which drove a 102% increase in marketplace revenue to 16 million euros. However, first-party revenue fell 21% to 15.6 million euros, which was in part due to a strategic shift to focus on higher-margin third-party marketplace revenue. Therefore, overall revenue rose just 12.3% to 31.8 million euros, or $35.6 million, which was short of estimates at $39.8 million.

Active customers grew to 4.3 million from 4 million in the fourth quarter and 3 million in the quarter a year ago. On the bottom line, the company’s net loss widened from 34.1 million euros to 45.8 million. Jumia did not report results on a per-share basis.

Just after the quarter ended, Jumia also entered into a partnership with Mastercard (NYSE: MA), which made a 50-million-euro private placement concurrent with the IPO, to focus on the e-commerce company’s JumiaPay payment platform as well as co-branded products like credit cards

JUMIA FULL Financial Report

GMV grew by 58%, leading to a 102% increase in Marketplace revenue

Jumia continued to deliver cost efficiency improvements

JumiaPay entered into a strategic partnership with Mastercard who also made a €50 million investment in Jumia

LAGOS, Nigeria–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jumia Technologies AG (NYSE:JMIA) (“Jumia” or the Company) announced today its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2019.

“Jumia delivered excellent results during the first quarter of 2019: strong GMV growth of 58% leading to 102% growth in marketplace revenue, year-on-year improvement of 356 basis points of Operating loss as a percentage of GMV and further development of JumiaPay, highlighted by the investment by and partnership with Mastercard,” said Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-CEOs of Jumia. “We believe that Jumia is increasingly relevant for consumers and sellers in Africa. Looking ahead, we remain focused on our core operations, driving consumer adoption and engagement on our marketplace, increasing the penetration of JumiaPay, while continuing to improve our financial profile and making a sustainable impact on the continent.”

Business highlights

• The €50 million investment by Mastercard into Jumia, in a concurrent private placement with our Initial Public Offering, marked another milestone in the development of JumiaPay and a validation of its potential. We are partnering with Mastercard on a number of initiatives, including the development and marketing of co-branded products (i.e., cards, virtual cards and quick response codes).
• In the first quarter of 2019, our marketplace continued to gain depth and diversity as we focused on attracting quality sellers to our platform and providing our consumers with an expanding range of products and services. An example of this strategy is the partnership we announced this quarter with the technology leader Xiaomi. As part of this partnership, we are opening the Mi official store on our platform with the ability to offer a number of Xiaomi products on an exclusive basis. This demonstrates the attractiveness of Jumia as a destination of choice for high profile international brands, giving them access to millions of potential consumers in Africa with one partnership.

Financial highlights

• Gross Merchandise Volume (“GMV”) grew this quarter by 58% on a yearly basis, on the back of strong marketplace growth, leading to a 102% increase this quarter in Marketplace revenue on a yearly basis. Our strong GMV growth combined with the attractive value proposition we offer both sellers and consumers are a key engine of monetization, which we derive from diversified revenue streams such as Commissions, Fulfillment, Value Added Services, Marketing and Advertising services.
• Gross Profit margin as a percentage of GMV increased from 5.6% in the first quarter of 2018 to 6.5% this quarter, as a result of the increased GMV monetization rate. Our Gross Profit also exceeded Fulfillment expense this quarter.
• We continue to have a strong focus on cost efficiency. Leveraging our strong brand awareness and highly localized marketing approach, we have been able to gain 205bps of marketing efficiency this quarter, bringing the Sales & Advertising expense from 7.2% of GMV in the first quarter of 2018 to 5.1% in the first quarter of 2019.
• Adjusted EBITDA loss as a percentage of GMV improved from negative 19.8% in the first quarter of 2018 to negative 16.4% in the first quarter of 2019.

Microsoft seems to be putting deep focus on Nigeria. It reported weeks ago that it was opening an AI research unit in Lagos. Now, it is going to also build development centers in Africa with Lagos as one of the centers. The company plans to spend $100 million in the next five years to build the development centers in partnerships with local partners and governments. Microsoft also plans to hire in Lagos and Nairobi, another development center, about 100 full-time developers by the end of 2019, and expand the number to 500 by Q4 of 2023.

Microsoft Corp.  plans to spend more than $100 million over five years to open its first development centers in Africa to work with local partners and governments, as well as hire engineering talent.

Initial sites will be in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, and Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. The software giant plans to hire 100 full-time developers at the two sites by the end of this year and expand to 500 by the end of 2023, Microsoft said in a statement Tuesday.

The Redmond, Washington-based company plans to use the sites to recruit African engineers to work in areas such as cloud services, which use artificial intelligence and applications for mixed reality – where customers use goggles to project 3-D images onto the real world

This is looking better here – they used to send salespeople. Now, we are getting engineers and technical fellows that will build AI and Mixed Reality technologies in Lagos.

The current marginal GDP growth in Nigeria is largely due to technology – let us keep it going. Without telecoms and startups, Nigeria will possibly be on recession. So, technology is playing a major role, and as entities like Microsoft come onboard, we will see more growth in the economy.

By Nnamdi Odumody

According to the WHO Global Status Report on Road Safety 2017, there are 1.35 million fatalities from road accidents every year due to preventable crashes, and between 20 and 50 million sustain non fatal injuries.

The Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report shows that in the first quarter of 2018, about 1292 people died in 2,482 road accidents in Nigeria. Speed Violation was reported as the major cause of road accidents in Q1 and it accounted for 50.81 percent of the total road crashes reported. Between July and September 2018, no fewer than 126 lives were lost in road accidents.

From the data, a total of 28,195 lives were lost in 68 months i.e. 415 lives every month, 14 persons every day and two lives every four hours.

The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) stated that in May 2017 there were 33.7 deaths per 100,000 people in Nigeria from road accidents which is one of the highest in Africa with Zimbabwe the worst in the world with 74.5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. The world average is 17.4 while Africa is 26.6. Norway has the least road fatality in the world with two deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to International Transport Forum Road Safety Annual Report for 2018.

Derq, a spin off from MIT based in Detroit and Dubai, wants to prevent these horrible tragedies from happening. It has a mission to eliminate road accidents and save lives by using proprietary artificial intelligence and V2X (Vehicle to Everything) technology. It can predict and prevent car accidents before anyone else on the road.

Its goal is to predict and prevent collisions at any time, independent of vehicle model, autonomy and surroundings. In Detroit and Dubai, Derq’s software monitors vehicles, pedestrians, bicycles, scooters and other vulnerable road user interactions to predict and prevent collisions, creating up to two additional seconds of warning time for drivers and vehicles.

Its V2X technology is designed to support improved automotive safety, automated driving and traffic efficiency and is based on globally recognized 3^rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specifications with ongoing evolution designed to offer forward compatibility with 5G. Its technology spans driver behavior modeling, deep learning methods, advanced driver assistance, perception and sensor fusion, V2I Communication and Embedded Systems Design.

Derq won the first prize for Artificial Intelligence pitch at the 2019 SXSW Pitch.

Nigeria will need this as we are losing many people on road accidents in the nation.

By Nnamdi Odumody

FC Barcelona and Argentina superstar Lionel Messi is worth about $400million. He earns about $84 million annually in salary and other bonuses from FC Barcelona. He owns a four star hotel in Barcelona, Catalunya, real estate and has a lifetime contract with Adidas which will earn him $12 million per annum and other endorsement deals bringing $27million annually with Gatorade, Pepsi, Chinese social network Weibo, Huawei and Israeli technology company Sirin Labs which produced the first blockchain smartphone.

Leveraging on his fan base in China, a collaboration among MediaPro, Leo Messi Management and Phoenix Group has resulted in the development of a theme park-  Messi Experience Park in Nanjing, China which will be opened in 2020.

The park will feature robotic attractions with audiovisual productions, Mixed Reality, Synthetic Characters and Holographic Technology, Performing Arts Event Centre, Gastronomy, Merchandising and a Hotel, High Speed Train link to Shanghai, Inbuilt Metro station to aid transport to the park as well as various attractions across 46,000 sqm public spaces.

A total sum of 170 million euros has been invested in the project which will be the world’s biggest theme park dedicated to football.

MediaPro hopes to receive about 40 million visitors annually with 80 percent of them from China while the remaining 20 percent will come from outside the Middle Kingdom. The expected price per ticket is $41.

In 2018, a Chinese football club Hebei Fortune wanted to buy Lionel Messi in a world record 1.4 billion euros from FC Barcelona.

In today’s highly competitive and diverse job market, it is very imperative and necessary to stay relevant. So, the best thing to do is to position yourself for the future of work!

The World Economic Forum and so many other global reports and studies have revealed that Data Analytics is one of the top skillS for the future. If you are not analytical with data, you might not be relevant in the new dynamics of work.

Utiva runs one of the best data analytics accelerators in Nigeria and you should attend the introductory session.

Welcome to the registration page for the Utiva Data Analytics Academy Introductory Class! A session that helps professionals and entrepreneurs understand the relevance of big data and data analytics to the future of work and how they can leverage on this knowledge area to significantly scale their career growth.

It is a 3-hour hands-on session that eventually leads to the Utiva Data Analytics Academy.

During this event, you will be introduced fully to the Utiva Data Analytics program and how we can help you find your feet in the Big-data Ecosystem. This class is a STRICTLY BY INVITATION

It’s a free session for professionals only – a 3-hour session that helps you start your journey as a data analyst.

Scheduled to run on the 18th of May, 2019.

Strictly by registration and invitation. Venue is Lados.

You can register here: http://bit.ly/2vH8gLv