Indonesia’s GoTo is losing nearly 70% of its valuation since its IPO in April

December 7, 2022: -Indonesia’s GoTo Group is yielding 68.5% of its starting value of nearly $28 billion since its starting public in April.

While the stock has decreased this year, GoTo shares sold off following pre-IPO shareholders opted out of a second offer that followed the lock-up expiration on November 30.

GoTo Group is the merged entity amid Indonesia’s two most prominent tech firms: ride-hailing Gojek and e-commerce marketplace Tokopedia. Early investors such as SoftBank and Alibaba had agreed to an eight-month lock-up period to help GoTo’s stock price following its IPO.

In October, GoTo had said to work with pre-IPO shareholders to explore a coordinated secondary offering of their shares before the lock-up expires, to facilitate a sale through the market which negotiates.

Therefore, that did not work out. On Wednesday, the previous day of the lock-up, GoTo stated those pre-IPO shareholders confirming not to proceed with the secondary offering.

The stock fell by 7% to 141 rupiahs on Thursday and continued to drop in Monday trading. It was previously seen trading near 123 rupiahs, giving the company a nearly 126 trillion rupiahs valuation.

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Other Southeast Asian tech firms have also seen their valuations fall since going public. Competitor Grab is losing 69% of its initial valuation of about $40 billion since its U.S. listing in December 2021 via a particular purpose acquisition vehicle. Indonesian e-commerce company Bukalapak is down about 70% from an initial valuation of $6 billion since its Jakarta IPO in August 2021. 

In November, GoTo Group reported its nine-month accumulated losses surged from 11.58 trillion rupiahs a year ago to 20.32 trillion rupiahs, even as its third-quarter losses shrank with cost cuts.

The group also announced in the same month that it would be laying off 12% of its workforce, or about 3,000 jobs.