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spk06: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Jamiah's results conference call for the fourth quarter of 2020. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to Safa Damir, Head of Investor Relations for Jamiah. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. With us today are Sacha Poignonek and Jérémy Odara, co-founders and co-CEOs of Junia, as well as Antoine Maillet-Méveret, CFO. This call is also being webcast on the IR section of our corporate website. We will start by covering the safe harbor. We would like to remind you that our discussions today will include forward-looking statements Actual results may differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Moreover, these forward-looking statements may speak only to our expectations as of today. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise these statements. For a discussion of some of the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from the forward-looking statements expressed today, please see the risk factors section of our annual report on Form 20F as amended on July 8th, 2020. In addition, on this call, we will refer to certain financial measures not reported in accordance with IFRS. You can find reconfigurations of these non-IFRS financial measures to the corresponding IFRS financial measures in our earnings rate review, which is available on our investor relations website. With that, I'll hand over to Sachan.
spk05: Thank you, Safa. Thank you very much. Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining the call. I hope that you are all staying safe and well. The focus of our strategy has been very clear and remains unchanged. Build a sustainable platform to capture this great opportunity of e-commerce in Africa. And what we mean by sustainable is to bring indisputable facts and evidence that our business model positions us well to become profitable. And as you can see in our results, here are the facts for the quarter. Number one, we have reduced our adjusted BBA loss by 47%. We are now, for five quarters in a row, profitable after fulfillment at group level. The majority of our country is now breakeven before GMA. We are growing the usage of Junia in the categories which we have chosen to focus on. And we do all of the above with lower GNA expenses and lower sales and advertising expenses. So overall, we feel very strong about those results, which clearly bring more evidence of the strength of our business model. If we look into a few more details on page four, on the usage of Jumia, of course, 2020 was marked by the business mix rebalancing towards the higher share of everyday product categories. and by a strong focus on efficiency, ensuring that the usage we drive has attractive unit economics. We drove down the share of phones and electronics from 56 to 43% of GMV. We achieved a five-point improvement in cancellations, failed deliveries, and returns, which went from 30% to 25, meaning that the usage we drive is more efficient and can be better monetized. GMV and orders post-CFDR have been growing by 15% and 19% on all the business outside phones and electronics, which is the business we have deliberately chosen to reduce. On usage, for us, it was a year of choice, of growing selectively and efficiently. TPV increased by 58%, and the penetration has now reached 35% of orders at group level. We added more than 100 new digital services on the Juniapay app in order to bring more relevance and convenience to our consumers. On revenues, marketplace revenue and gross profit increased by 20% and 22% respectively, and our gross profit margin as a percentage of GNV increased by almost four points, now reaching 12%. And last but not least, we generated significant savings across all cost lines. And we now have a leaner, more efficient cost structure. Fulfillment expense went down by 10%. Sales and advertising went down by 42%. And GMA, outside share-based compensation, went down by 12%. So if you look at our P&L, we're growing the profitable usage. We're increasing the gross profit after fulfillment while decreasing GMA and sales and advertising. So mathematically, will reach breakeven if we continue to do that. On page five, in 2019, we set ourselves a clear objective, reduce our loss in absolute terms. And I think it's clear, very clear that we are delivering strongly against that objective. We reduced the adjustability loss by 10% in Q1, 26% in Q2, 50% in Q3, and 47% in Q4. And this progress, importantly, was achieved as a result of driving both more profitable usage and lower costs. On page six, you can see how we have transformed our P&L over the last two years. In 2019, we were still not making money after logistics. And overall, for every order which was placed on the platform, we were still making a loss. And you can see also our costs were going up. Now you can see how gross profit after fulfillment is continuously increasing, having rebalanced the category mix and leveraging linear cost base. Each order we now generate takes us closer to profitability. And at the same time, the cost structure is clearly becoming more efficient across the board. So once again, a clear evidence about the path to profitability at the P&L level. On page seven, if we zoom on the unit economics for the quarter, our average order value is now 29 euros. That's 19% smaller than last year. And every single component of our unit economics has improved. Gross profit per order, plus 15%. Gross profit over GMV, plus almost four points. Gross profit after fulfillment, now 15%. one Euro when it was 0.1 last year. Sales and advertising, minus 33% per order. Tech and DNA, minus 28% per order. So a lot of progress made, both on the revenues and on the costs. And this progress, as we have been talking about, has been achieved without a tailwind from COVID. We discussed already last time, and... we discussed that COVID did not lead to any drastic changes in consumer behavior on our platform and no meaningful surge of volume at Pan-African level. Rather, it had a net negative effect on the business due to localized supply and logistic disruptions that we have been experiencing throughout the year. Obviously, the situation is still evolving. We continue to monitor, in particular, the rising cases, the rollout of the vaccine and at what speed that will happen, and the overall negative impact on consumer sentiment and spending power. What's important is that all the actions that we took last year and in 2019 and 20, whether it's the increased focus on everyday categories or the cost efficiencies that we generated and also the proactive capital raise that we conducted in December, all those actions, they enhance our resilience to volatility, macro volatility, and they position us very well for the long term. And I'll conclude by sharing with you on page nine a few of the many initiatives we undertook this year. Our key priority has been helping our people, consumers, sellers, and communities we serve to stay safe, of course, and as much as possible functioning through the crisis. All those initiatives illustrate how important it is for us to drive impact beyond our day-to-day operations. I'm obviously happy to give you more color in our discussions on all this. Our mission and our values drive our actions and We are immensely grateful to our teams, our frontliners in particular, who have truly embodied these values and acted with an incredible sense of purpose, resourcefulness, and dedication. We thank you all very, very much for that. And with this, I'll hand over to Jérôme.
spk04: Thank you, Sacha. Hello, everyone. Our focus in Q4 2020, and in fact throughout the whole year, was to drive the usage with one, a high level of marketing efficiency, and two, in a disciplined and selective manner, favoring the categories that support the consumer lifetime value and the profitability. On slide 11, on the first point, you can see that in Q4 2020, we continued driving usage with very strong marketing efficiency. Having built over the past nine years one of the strongest brands in Africa, we are now able to be much more tactical and much more efficient in our sales and advertising expense. As we reduced our sales and advertising expense by 34% year-over-year, the GMT was down 21% year-over-year, reaching 231 million in Q4. Sales and advertising expense per order decreased by 33%, while orders declined by 3%. On the other hand, while the annual sales and advertising expense per annual active consumer decreased by 48% year-over-year, our annual active consumers were up 12% with growth both in new and returning consumers. It's worth noting that the GMV and the orders accelerated by 23% and 21% respectively in Q4 2020 compared to Q3 2020, supported by the Black Friday event that we did in November 2020. And despite a significant reduction in marketing spend in the 2020 edition of the event, we still registered record level of consumer engagement. Page views across our platforms reached 1.5 billion during the event, up 33% compared to last year. And our Black Friday video content registered almost 100 million views, which is three times higher compared to the 2019 event. And this speaks to the relevance of our platform and the content for our consumers. One aspect that we monitor very closely when it comes to the usage growth is the consolidation, fail delivery, and return ratio, and the trend of our usage indicators post-CFDR. If you go on page 12 and you look at the full year 2020 trends, we see meaningful improvement in this ratio, both as a percentage of the GMV and the order. The GMV ratio improved from 30% in 2019 to 25% in 2020, while the order ratio improved from 22% to 16%. This improvement means that our usage is becoming more efficient because a higher proportion of the gross usage can be monetized and our marketing investment is even more efficient on a net basis. And in fact, we have been growing the profitable usage. GMT and orders post-CFDR have been growing by 15% and 19% on all the business outside phone and electronic, which is the business we have deliberately chosen to reduce in the context of the business mix rebalancing that we undertook. If we look at page 13 at this impact of the business mix rebalancing. One, we reduced our reliance on phones and electronics, which went from contributing 56% of our GMV last year to 43% this year. Two, in parallel, our average order value decreased by 23% from 39 to 30 euros, as these everyday categories such as beauty, FMCG, fashion, which are gaining prominence on our platform, and GMV are typically lower ticket sites. And three, while smaller in average value, our orders are also more profitable as gross profit after fulfillment expense per order went from a loss of $0.10 in Q4 2019 to a profit of $0.80 in Q4 2020. So in conclusion, on usage, we grew where we wanted to and very efficiently, We have a better mix of categories today than a year ago and much better unit economics. Let's now look at JumiaPay on page 15. The TPV increased by 30% from 46 million in Q4 last year to 59 million euros in Q4 this year, taking on-platform penetration of JumiaPay as a percentage of the GMP from 15.6 to 25.7% in Q4 this year. On page 16, JumiaPay transactions increased by 10% from 2.4 million last year to 2.7 million this year, with transactions above 10 euros, 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 the orders placed on the Jumia platform in Q4 2020 were paid for using JumiaPay, compared to 29.5% last year. Through JumiaPay, we have built a checkout solution that provides our consumers and sellers with a fast payment experience. At checkout, consumers can create a JumiaPay account by linking it to the underlying payment method of their choice. JumiaPay is tailored to the relevant payment methods in Africa and encompasses more than 15 different underlying payment methods. It's also underpinned by a tech stack that recorded 99.9% uptime in 2020, including during the major commercial events such as Black Friday, where the uptime was 100%. The other aspect of JumiaPay that I'd like to spend a bit more time on is the JumiaPay app, which is a great way for us to provide consumers with more payment use case that are relevant to them and that drive the user engagement and stickiness for them. And now on the page 17. We are building JumiaPay app with a view to making it a destination for a broad range of lifestyle and financial services, all offered on a prepaid basis and powered by JumiaPay. At the end of 2020, JumiaPay app had approximately 200 services live on the app, offered by 33 partners across five countries in Africa. Since inception in 2018, the app registered over 4 million downloads and is highly rated by consumers. We are focused on building a diversified category mix on the app, with 43% of 2020 GMB coming from airtime, 40% from utilities, TV and internet payments. We are also developing newer categories where we see meaningful growth potential, such as financial services, which already account for 10% of the Jumia Pay app GMV, gaming, which accounted for 4%, lifestyle services, 3%, and transportation and travel categories, which are still nascent at this stage. The development of Jumia Pay, whether it's the checkout solution and the broader business platform, or the consumer-facing super app, are key priorities for us. And while we have accomplished a lot since the MVP of Jumia Pay four years ago, we have barely scratched the surface of the payment and fintech opportunity in Africa. And we believe that we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on this opportunity. Let's move now on monetization page 19. In the context of the 21% year-over-year GMB contraction in Q4, marketplace revenue increased by 7% and gross profit by 12% over the same period. Taking a closer look at our VARC use marketplace revenue streams on slide 26, The commissions increased by 19% year-over-year due to an increase in the share of higher commission rate categories, including fashion, beauty, or FMCG, as well as lower promotional intensity. Fulfillment revenues increased by 14% as a result of continued shipping fee adjustment, as well as pricing changes within our cross-border logistics. We initiated these changes in Q3 2020 and continue to roll them in Q4. As part of these changes, a portion of the international shipping fees that were previously charged to the sellers are now passed on to the consumers. This change resulted in some of our international logistic revenue to be recorded as fulfillment revenue instead of revenue from value-add services. This is also what drove the 27% decrease in value-add services. Marketing and advertising revenue increased by 30% as a result of the strong take-up by advertisers of GME advertising solutions. particularly during the Black Friday, where we run campaigns on behalf of over 150 different advertisers, including high-profile partners such as Wicked Bankingser, L'Oreal, Royer, P&G, Intel, and many more. We intend to further diversify our revenue mix by monetizing not only the transaction and the usage of our marketplace, but also the broader assets of our platform. And we have started to drive revenue from Dumia Logistics. Let me tell you a bit more about it on page 29. Logistics in Africa are notoriously challenging with multiple hurdles, such as a lack of address, a lack of organized and reliable capacity, storage space issues, and so on. So the pain point Jumia Logistics is addressing is very big and one that is faced by many businesses and industries in Africa. With that in mind, we conducted a pilot in 2020 to open up Jumia Logistics to third parties. Whether sellers on the Jumia marketplace or not, Business clients can now leverage the Jumia logistics platform for their fulfillment needs. As part of this pilot, we shipped almost half a million packages on behalf of more than 270 clients across five countries. We have outlined some examples for you on the page. For example, in Nigeria, we work with Kuda Bank, Nigeria's first mobile-only bank, as one of their preferred logistics partners to deliver payment cards to consumers. In Morocco, we work with Meditel, the local entity of Orange, a little global tech co-operator, to deliver SIM cards and activation kits to consumers. In Kenya, we work with Premier Food, a global food and package good producers, to offer logistics solutions from their main warehouse in Nairobi to all their distribution centers across Kenya. The results of the pilot are very promising. The traction we have with our first clients reinforce our confidence in the long-term growth potential of this revenue stream. And now I'll hand over to Antoine.
spk03: Thank you, Jeremy. Hello, everyone. Moving on to costs, I'm now on page 23. We have been driving strong efficiencies across the full cost structure. Fulfillment expense decreased by 18% in Q4 2020 compared to Q4 2019 as a result of operational enhancement across our logistics operations. These included the optimization of our cross-border shipping matrix, staff cost savings in our fulfillment centers, and a change in our delivery pricing model from cost per package to cost per stock. In addition, we were able to pass on an increasing proportion of our fulfillment expense to the combination of consumers and sellers via our fulfillment and value-added services revenue streams, respectively. The pass-through of our fulfillment expense measured at the ratio of fulfillment plus value-added services Revenue over fulfillment expense increased from 64% in Q4 2019 to 76% in Q4 2020. As a result, we are pleased to report the fifth consecutive quarter of positive gross profit after fulfillment expense, which reached a record of 8.4 million euros in Q4 2020. I'm now on page 24. Sales and advertising expense decreased by 34% from 15.5 million euros in Q4 2019 to 10.2 in Q4 2020. All marketing efficiency metrics are showing strong improvement. Sales and advertising expense per order decreased by 33% from 1.9 euro in Q4 2019 down to 1.3 per order in Q420. Annual sales and advertising expense per annual active consumer decreased by 48% from 9.2 per annual active consumer to 4.8. And sales and advertising as a percentage of GMV decreased by 88 basis points from 5.3% to 4.4%. These efficiencies are made possible by the strength of our brand. They are also attributable to continued enhancements in 2020 to our performance marketing strategy across search and social media channels, including through more granular segmentation of our target market with differentiated campaigns and content for each segment. Finally, our third major cost area is technology and G&A. and we are now seeing meaningful improvement here as the rationalization efforts undertaken in 19 and 20 start paying off. G&A expense, excluding LVC, reached 21.8 million euros, down 36% year-over-year. This was partly a result of staff cost reduction and professional fees savings, largely attributable the portfolio optimization and cost rationalization initiatives. Moving on to the balance sheet and cash flow items, our path to profitability is further supported by our asset-like business model. Capex in Q4 2020 was $0.7 million as we operate Jumia Logistics as a platform with very limited Capex requirements. Net change in working capital resulted in an outflow of $1.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. And in fact, for the full year 2020, working capital had an inflow effect of 9 million euros, thanks to improved receivables and payable cycles, as well as lower inventory needs. Cash utilization for the quarter, defined as cash used in operating and investing activities, was 27.1 million euros in Q4. This compares to a cash utilization of 52.9 million euros in Q4 2019, and represents a 49% decrease year-over-year. Cash and cash equivalents position at the end of December 2020 was 304.9 million euros. We completed a follow-on offering in December 2020 as part of which we raised 203 million euros in gross proceeds. This helped us strengthen our balance sheet and increase our operational flexibility as we scale the business towards profitability. With that, I'll hand over to Sasha for concluding remarks. Thank you. Thank you, guys.
spk05: So if we step back, once again, our strategy has been to build a sustainable platform to capture this great opportunity of e-commerce in Africa. And by sustainable, we mean to bring those facts, those evidences that the business model positions as well to become profitable. And here, why is that so important to us? Because as we discussed in the past, we operate what we think is a completely proven business model, very successful everywhere in the world, like at the Libre, Alibaba, Amazon. Two, we have a great macro opportunity. We operate in a huge continent, which we see as untapped with amazing growth prospects. And three, we have proven that we can operationally overcome the major challenges in Africa, payments, logistics, consumer, building a marketplace. And so the only remaining point, the only remaining point is to make sure that as the business scales, it is profitable. And this is why for us, we are so engaged in this phase. And the facts that I think we have been bringing over the last few quarters are significant. I think very good, and they are very clear. We have reduced our adjusted BBA loss. You have seen it, 47% last quarter. This was a clear objective, and we've delivered on it. Two, we are making money, I would say, almost structurally after fulfillment. In 2019, we were not making money after fulfillment, and now for five quarters in a row, we are doing that. The more usage of Junia, the more profit. I think it's pretty clear that the model works Three, we're still growing, and we are growing the profitable usage where we put our focus. The GMV orders post the cancellations in CFDR have been growing by 15% and 19% of all the business outside phone room electronics, and we have grown the consumers by 12% this year. We have, in Q4, a majority of our countries are now break-even consumers or profitable before tech and GMA expense. And as you have seen in the P&L Binomics, we're growing the profitable usage, we are increasing the gross profit after fulfillment, and we are doing this while decreasing GMA and travel advertising. So we are in a very good position to reach break-even if we continue to do that. This has been the strategy, this is what we are focusing on, and this is what we intend to continue to do until the job is done on the profitability question. At some point, we expect that we will have enough of those indisputable facts, or call it profitability milestones, to put the profitability question behind us. And at this point, we are going to invest more in order to accelerate the usage growth. And at that point in time, we will be very comfortable doing so. We have a huge opportunity ahead. E-commerce, food delivery, payments, logistics. In Africa, a continent with more than 1 billion people, we have an amazing platform to capture those opportunities. And with those recent results, we feel more confident than ever about the strength of our business as we are clearly seeing its financial performance coming together. Thanks for listening in and we are now ready for questions.
spk06: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question is from Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk00: Thank you, guys. A couple questions. Maybe first, just maybe from a macro perspective, what do you think will be kind of the catalyst for maybe an inflection in e-commerce adoption across some of your key markets? We've I believe seeing smartphone adoption increase meaningfully over the last couple of years, which has been kind of a callous in other kind of markets for more e-commerce adoption. So what do you think will kind of be the key cost over the next couple of years? And then I think you mentioned kind of leaning back into marketing a little bit. Should we start to see that in early 21, late 21, or how are you thinking about timing of leaning back into marketing? Thank you.
spk05: Thanks, Alan, and thanks for the questions. I think on the macro, in a way, we can call that the million-dollar question in some way. What's important here is to share a few thoughts. Number one, we've not built the business expecting or hoping an inflection. We've built our business so that as we continue to scale, if there is never an inflection, but if we just continue to grow, it works out. It's not like we have year-long sales and we must hit that inflection point or that J curve or that hockey stick or however we call it, we are geared so that if we continue gradually like this for the years to come, we will be in a very good place, right? So that's one thing which is very important. Secondly, what are today the barriers for the adoption of e-commerce when you look at it? We have published some data and now it's about a year ago, but I think it remains very true about e-commerce the barriers to use age for the people who have never used e-commerce. And we took, you know, in our largest market, some people who have never shopped online and we asked them, do you know Julia? And back then the answer was 74, 74% of the people knew Julia. We asked those people, do you consider trying? And 66% said that they were keen to try. So very good awareness, very good consideration. And then when we asked them, why are you not shopping online? The three answers which were coming out the most were, because I don't know how to shop, because I don't think products are genuine, or because I cannot check the quality of the products. And when we look at those facts, this consumer survey, the good news is that all those barriers are mental barriers. They are not infrastructure. It's not like people say, oh, I don't have internet or I need It's something that I don't have today. It's something which is, you know, getting used to it, becoming comfortable with it, gaining the trust to transact with the platform, understanding that, well, people can actually check the quality of the product with the reviews. They can return the product, you know, and so on and so forth. So it's really about this education. Now, having said those two things, look, we may hit, you know, an inflection point. There may be a point where suddenly a lot of people start buying online. And, for example, some people say that the generation which is digitally born, you know, today the people who are 18 years old, 20 years old, 20 years old, let's say, they are now born with a mobile phone. And when they will become prime consumer in our consumer target, you know, in maybe four, five, six, seven years, Well, they will be comfortable. They will know how to shop. They will know how to check the quality of the product. So those mental barriers, as the new generation sort of enters into the consumer segment market, one can argue that all those young people, they will not have those barriers, right? And by this time, we may find this inflection point. But again, we can hope for that. We can sort of construct it. But for us, we... We do not want to create a company that needs an inflection. No, we need to continue what we're doing. Last 12 months, we had 7 million roughly consumers transacting on Jumia. We operate in 11 markets where there are 600 million people and growing. So, you know, there's a lot of consumers that we can go after. And if we have to continue for some time with the same growth, then I think we're in a very good place. If there's an inflection, even better. In terms of marketing, we manage it very dynamically. And so this is something that it's a bit hard to give. I think the point where I sent your question is, When do you enter this next phase where you feel more comfortable investing more for faster growth? And when are you done with the focus on profitability? Look, I think it's hard to tell, but certainly we start to feel good about it. And when you look at the fact I mentioned in the following five quarters in a row where we're making money on after fulfillment, a bunch of countries which are profitable before GMA, We're getting there. So I think a few more cultures, but I think we're getting there. Great. Thank you.
spk06: The next question is from Camille Penaparian with Renaissance Capital. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Two questions from me, please. Firstly, could you comment on your growth outside phone and electronics category? I think it was about 15% after CFDR last year, which doesn't look particularly high given the stage of market development. So just wondering what prevents a faster growth in your view and how do you see trends evolving going forward? That's the first one. And secondly, could you update us on the competitive situation in Egypt? How does your growth there compare to the overall market or your main rival? And generally, given a tougher competitor there versus other countries, do you need to do anything differently in Egypt versus your other markets in terms of marketing investments or logistics or anything else? That's it from me. Thanks.
spk05: Thanks for those questions. And, um, I think on the first one we, with, you know, over the quarters and over the years, always wanted to appreciate the, uh, the growth together with the, with the, the, I would say equation of efficiency, both from the marketing efficiency and from a unique economic perspective. Right. And I think on this, you have seen that we have put a lot of emphasis on marketing efficiency. We've reduced the sales and advertising by almost a third, by 34% between the two quarters that we are comparing. We've reduced, of course, and we've increased the efficiency with that. So I think one needs to appreciate that. And as well, the growth can be... a function together with the marketing efficiency with the, I would say, monetization pressure that you apply, right? You can see that our pass-through of the fulfillment expense to the consumers and the sellers has been continuously increasing. So, you know, we are really being very disciplined in terms of free shipping, discounts, price subsidies, you know, and marketing campaigns and so on and so forth, right? And I think we are definitely... Happy to see that we're growing 15% considering the amount of efficiency improvements that we are generating on sales and advertising, as well as the amount of efficiency that we have driven from a gross profit perspective. And as we think about the future and when we enter the next phase, we think that we can we need some of those efficiency constraints right and that of course the growth will will go also faster so i think it's it's an equation here and and again it has to be appreciated together with the other component of the of the equation when it comes to egypt um of course egypt is a very big focus for us it's a market that we have been active for many years and overall We've been voluntarily explaining that Egypt is the second largest market for us close to Nigeria. Definitely, we very much adapt our playbook to the competitive situation in Egypt in the sense that we do not go with the same marketing formula in a country where we have more competition than a country where we have less competition. We don't put the same pressure on unique economics. And we adapt, I would say, to the competitive situation to a large extent. But most importantly, we adapt our business model and we try to focus on adapting to the local specificities. And our playbook, the Jumia playbook, and how we execute the business with the sellers, with the consumers, with the local stakeholders, with the brands, the assortment is very adapted to the local specificities. And I think for us, Egypt is our second largest market and And it's in our mind every morning and every night and every minute. And I'm not sure for our competitor it's the same focus. At the end of the day, you win e-commerce because you win the execution and you win because you have the right assortment, the right prices, the right brand, the right way to engage with the sellers, with the consumers, with the stakeholders. In Egypt, recently, we also launched Jumia Food, which is our food delivery platform. This is very new. This is for a couple of weeks now and we are launching it as we speak. The consumers, when they think about Jumia, they think about e-commerce, but they also think about Jumia Pay, right? A lot of usage on Jumia Pay to make payments and utilities and so on. And they also now can use Jumia Food. And so as we bring this relevance to the consumers, this is also for us a differentiating factor for consumers to prefer using Jumia.
spk01: Okay, great. Thank you.
spk06: Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Sarah Simon with Barenburg. Please go ahead.
spk07: Yes, hi, afternoon, everybody. I've got a few questions. First one is on marketing spending Q4. Obviously, it's stepped up versus Q3, as you'd kind of expect for the seasonality. But customer growth – didn't increase very significantly. So can you talk about what you spent the marketing money on? Second one is, you know, obviously gross profit after fulfillment expense is growing very strongly, but even if you keep all of your fixed costs below the gross profit after fulfillment line flat, you need to basically increase that number by a multiple of four. to get to break even, but you're not growing that fast at the moment. So I'm just wondering how you weigh up the idea of a sort of steady path to break even, but maybe slightly further away versus a more aggressive growth push that would lose you more money more quickly, but probably get you there faster because you don't have a balance sheet issue now, now that you've raised the capital. And then just a question, you obviously highlighted the GDP sensitivity to the post-pandemic effects. Would you agree, though, that because of the focus and the shift in emphasis towards more small and everyday items, that you should be sort of less reliant on GDP, so more resistant, let's say, to the economy if you're selling small everyday items than if you're selling big mobile phones, for example? Thanks.
spk05: Thanks, Sarah. And I think if we start with this one, I would agree with you, right? And I think the fact that we are well positioned on the everyday category is definitely positive and helps. At the same time, I mean, you see the share of business from phones and electronics. I mean, it's still 43%, right, in 2020. So there's definitely, for us, an exposure to some high-value items, And I think the sentiment among the consumer, I mean, you know, is what it is right now with all this uncertainty. So we'll see what happens. And I think what we have proven in 2020 very clearly is that, you know, we are relevant for the, we are a reflection of what the consumers do and spend. And you can see how diversified we've been showing this in the previous release. We have a lot of exposure to fashion, fast-moving consumer moods. junior food all now with the digital transactions utility etc etc so we'll see what happens I would agree with you but at the same time we still have exposure to high value categories and if you know if the market goes down in those categories we'll see what happens right so I think generally agree with you but but you know to take those those facts to keep in mind now On the marketing spend, your first question and the increase, I think on the consumer growth, we have to be always quite careful if you compare the spend of marketing between Q3 and Q4. And if you look at the last 12-month consumers, because you carry, of course, the last four quarters, you know, and when you compare the last four quarters at the end of Q3 with the last four quarters at the end of Q4, there could be some dynamics from last year that you are carrying on. So in general, this is something that one needs to be just careful because you compare two quarters in the case, and in the other case, you compare two training 12-month periods. So just this to keep in mind. And where we spend the marketing is very much a mix of data-driven very programmatic, tech-driven online marketing, which we use to drive both new users, new app users who are downloading the app, and then we use ad spend to take them back to the platform until they can convert. And then we use also that technique to bring back some old users, and we call that retargeting, specific users to bring them back to Jumia so that they can discover new products and new categories or products. you know, and so on. And then we have a lot of local marketing and local engagement. And here, of course, we have our J-Force program, which is very successful in many countries, where we have the sales consultants and, you know, dozens of thousands of consultants who are, you know, educating consumers in Brunei and helping them discover and how to use it. We also have large networks of local you can call that influencers, I guess, the local key opinion leaders who are, you know, posting videos about Jumia and explaining to their users how to use it and how to check the quality of the products, you know, and all those things I mentioned to Aaron about education. And then every once in a while for Black Friday, we have also some typical offline spend, you know, billboards and video campaigns on YouTube or on TV and things like that. So it's... It's how we do it, and usually there's a spike of marketing towards the Q4, as you pointed out. And then how do we get to profitability with the various aggregates? Yes, of course, there's many ways we can get there, as you pointed out. And when you look at the rate of growth of the gross profit after fulfillment versus the amount of costs. Of course, you have to put the amount of costs in a dynamic way, and you can see how those costs have been going down, right? So there's a possibility that those costs can go down, of course, and there's a possibility to go there with a faster growth of gross profit after fulfillment. And this faster growth of the gross profit after fulfillment can come from, of course, more usage, right? More orders, more consumers, more GMV. But it also can come from more monetization of our platform assets, right? And typically junior advertising, typically junior logistics, the revenues that we drive from those. Of course, when we bring revenue and they bring, you know, strong increase of the gross profit after fulfillment, even if it's not relating to a junior consumer, right? So I think we're, we're well, we're very confident that we can accelerate the growth of the gross profit as a procurement, either through more usage and or more revenue streams, which are not related to the usage because we've, you know, we've been launching those. And two, we feel confident that we can either keep our cost stable or even if we have to, we can still take them down. Right. So I think we have lots of ways to get there. And, uh, And I think also the point that we were trying to make is we are really focused on bringing the facts and the evidences of the path to profitability, right? And that's what matters more to us than actually reaching profitability at group level, right? We want to be very comfortable to be sure that, look, the model completely works and the evidence and facts are very clear. And rather than saying, we must absolutely break even for one full year at group level, right? It's more about continuing to bring those milestones, continuing to bring those evidences so that there's not really any doubt.
spk07: That's really helpful. Can I ask one follow-up question, which I'm sorry I forgot to ask initially. There's been quite a lot of chat about higher shipping costs coming out of China, higher freight costs. Is that impacting the business at all? And If it is, how are you passing it on to the consumer?
spk05: Yeah, very good question. And, yes, Christine, and, you know, our cross-border business from China, well, it's, you know, double-digit or, you know, 10% to 15% of the items sold, right? So that's how much we are talking about for Junia, this cross-border business, and it's been working very well. And those increasing trade costs, of course, they are a problem, obviously, and they're not helping. But at the same time, that's why I say we are so diversified and this is just one area of the business. So it's not been helping, definitely. And then we use a lot of data science to define the optimal pass-through of those trade costs. both to the consumers and to the sellers, right? And there's, of course, a relationship between how much you pass to each and the conversion rate of the items sold and the perception also. And so this has been something that I would say is a constant optimization. When you have a certain amount of freight cost, you may decide to hide that, quote unquote, into the price of the product, or you sometimes want to put it as very identified freight cost. Sometimes you want to give a bit more to the seller and to the consumer. So it's, you know, long story short, it's a dynamic equation, which is very data-driven, but something that, of course, is not helping and impacting. But again, like, you know, we are diversified, so it's, you know, it's something that we did not think was worth, like, commenting at least proactively, but we are volunteering, of course, as an answer.
spk07: Thanks a lot.
spk06: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Sasha for any closing remarks.
spk05: Well, thank you very much, as always, for your support, for attending, and we're very committed also to explain what we do and talk more, so, you know, we appreciate we're still a young company and now two years listed, so always do reach out and we will be happy to to discuss and explain and talk more about what we do. Thank you very much and stay safe, guys. Take care. Bye-bye.
spk06: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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