Jumia, the leading online eCommerce ecosystem in Africa, has reported a growth by 64.5 percent in its Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) to 197,9 Million Euros (MEUR), representing (+113% in constant currency) in the fourth quarter of 2017.
According to a press release issued by the company yesterday on its trade performance in the continent, the Q4, 2017 volume compared with the 120,2 MEUR recorded in the corresponding period of 2016.
The company reported that in the quarter under review, its marketplace platforms significantly scaled the number of orders with a year-on-year growth of +94%.
It clarified further: “Jumia Group saw GMV increase by 41,8 % year over year from 357,5 MEUR in 2016 to 507 MEUR in 2017 (+79% in constant currency), mainly driven by improved macro-economic conditions, as well as a stronger relevance of the marketplace, notably with a significant increase in the number of active merchants as well as products and services available.
“Jumia is increasingly addressing daily needs of consumers across its markets, resulting in a strong increase in the number of orders and growth of customer base”, it added.
Commenting on the impressive Q4, 2017 impressive performance, the company’s co-CEOs, Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, stated: “We made great progress in 2017 with significant growth of the business, driven by technological innovations and improved relevance of the offering of goods and services. This growth is demonstrating the robust momentum in our core businesses and markets, and the increased adoption of online services by African consumers.
“We are also seeing good results from our strategy to further develop our logistics platform and our payment platform. Our customers continue to benefit from increasing access to great services, quality products, improved customer experience and the tremendous convenience of being able to shop online”, the eCommerce experts added.
Major highlights of Jumia’s performance in 2017 are, reaching the threshold of 550 million visits across Africa in 2017, increase in the number of products available on the platform which skyrocketed from 50,000 in 2012 to over 5 million, and recording a huge success of Black Friday with more than 100 million visits, breaking all previous sales records across all top-line drivers.
Others include, the launching of the company’s own payment platform, JumiaPay, to further facilitate transactions between merchants and consumers and tailor its solutions to specific local needs and requirements. Jumia launched a consumer-facing payment mobile application (`Jumia One´), enabling customers to easily access digital services such as Airtime/Data, TV, Utilities.
According to the company, Jumia One is gradually integrating more online and financial solutions to help consumers save time and money and access a large set of different services from a one stop shop App.
In addition, Jumia also handled over eight million packages through the Jumia logistic platform, a unique achievement and maintenance of close control over its logistics through a fully integrated network of local providers, using Jumia technology and data, amongst others feats.
The company also reported adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for 2017 at a negative 120.1 MEUR, while EBITDA margin as a percentage of GMV was -23.7% compared to -25.5% in 2016, reflecting the continued investment in building the ecosystem as well as the continuous improvement in efficiency.
EBITDA is essentially a company’s net income with interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization added back to it.
