Indonesia's GoTo shares decrease over 4% as 2022 failure surges to $2.6 billion

March 22, 2023: On Tuesday, Shares of GoTo Group decreased nearly 4.62% after the Indonesian tech firm’s annual net loss for 2022 widened.

According to its latest earnings report, the full-year net loss occurred at 40.4 trillion Indonesian rupiahs ($2.63 billion).

GoTo, the combined entity amid ride-hailing giant Gojek and e-commerce marketplace Tokopedia, went public on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in April.

“GoTo has managed to whittle down it is adjusting EBITDA loss to 3.1 trillion rupiahs, marking a 16% quarter-on-quarter uptick,” said Sachin Mittal, the telecom & internet sector head of research at DBS Bank. Adjusted EBITDA measures profitability after removing a few one-off and non-recurring items from EBITDA.

The improvement started as GoTo’s mobility services segment experienced “transport fully recovered to pre-pandemic stages and showed healthy growth despite more than in fuel prices and higher tariffs,” said the firm in a press escape.

During the earnings call, GoTo Group CEO Andre Soelistyo stated that the company focused more on retaining profitable customers as these customers require less incentivization.

“This strategy enabled us to decrease incentives and product marketing in the fourth quarter of 2022 by 34%, or 2.8 trillion rupiahs, year-on-year. We expect such savings to increase more than future quarters,” he said.

“While the reduction in the loss is commendable, it decreased short of the 30% improvement that Grab Holdings has achieved,” stated Mittal of DBS Bank, to GoTo’s Southeast Asian ride-hailing and food-delivering rival. “Additionally, Sea Limited is managing to steer itself towards profitability in the fourth quarter of 2022,” he said, referring to e-commerce giant Sea competing with GoTo’s Tokopedia.

Grab’s adjusted EBITDA defeat in the fourth quarter was $111 million, down 31% from the previous quarter. Therefore, Sea Limited

 posted positive net income for the initial time in the fourth quarter of 2022.

GoTo needs help to be profitable.

In November, during an earnings call, the administration promised further cost cuts and said they anticipate a “significant part” of those cuts would be realized in the first quarter of 2023.

GoTo expects to turn profitable within the fourth quarter of 2023. However, the tech firm anticipated an adjusted EBITDA loss of between 4.6 trillion and 5.3 trillion rupiahs for 2023.

“As we look ahead, the initial two months of 2023 show even quicker progress, meaning we are on the way to reaching positive adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2023,” stated Soelistyo in the firm’s latest press release.

This month, the company announced that GoTo conducted another round of layoffs affecting 600 roles. In November, it said that it was laying off 1,300 workers.