Africa-based e-commerce start-up Jumia plans New York listing

Jumia, founded in 2012 offers online shopping, logistics and payment services, claims an expanding business, although it is losing money now. The company hopes to make up current losses as the African economy picks up and the market expands.

And, with a growing young population, Jumia says its business is bound to expand along with the expanding infrastructure investments, urbanisation and rapid economic growth.

Jumia, which now counts Nigeria as its largest market, makes money both selling its own products, and taking a cut from third-party sales. In 2018, revenues were 130.6 million euros, up from 94 million euros the previous year.

The company’s prospectus did not say how many shares Jumia would sell or at what price it would be selling. 

Jumia, however, said in its filing that its entire stock was valued at 1.4 billion euros ($1.6 billion) with shares at 14.74 euros.

Jumia saw its losses rise from 165.4 million euros in 2017 to 170.4 million euros in 2018. By the end of December, its accumulated losses stood at 862 million euros.

However, Jumia in its IPO prospectus noted that the value of goods sold on its platforms is increasing at a more rapid pace than losses - from 507.1 million euros in 2017 to 828.2 million euros in 2018.

Jumia’s active users, people who buy something at least once in the past year, increased to 4 million at the end of last December form 2.7 million a year earlier.

Besides Rocket Internet, which owned 21.74 per cent of Jumia as of end-December, MTN Group held 31.28 per cent in the start-up while other, smaller shareholders like Millicom International, AXA Africa Holding and Goldman Sachs held the remaining.

Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Berenberg and RBC Capital Markets are leading the IPO.