PT Global Digital Niaga Tbk—the parent company of the Indonesian e-commerce player Blibli, online travel agency Tiket.com, and supermarket chain Ranch Market—narrowed its losses in 2023 despite a dip in revenues.
The firm, listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) under the ticker symbol BELI, recorded 3.26 trillion rupiah in net revenues in Oct-Dec 2023, a 31.4% drop from 4.75 trillion rupiah in the same period a year earlier. Its net revenues in full-year 2023 stood at 14.7 trillion rupiah, down 3.61% from 15.3 trillion rupiah in 2022.
Losses in 2023 narrowed by around 33% to 3.68 trillion rupiah, compared with 5.54 trillion in the previous year. It did not disclose its losses for the three months ended Dec 31, 2023.
Blibli has been an outlier in Indonesia’s e-commerce space due to its omnichannel strategy. The firm added 40 electronics retail stores in 2023. It operated 166 consumer electronics stores and 65 premium supermarkets as of end-2023.
PT Global Digital Niaga managed to grow its total processing value (TPV) in 2023 thanks to Tiket.com’s performance and its offline stores.
The firm’s TPV grew 17% in 2023 to 72.14 trillion rupiah ($4.53 billion), compared with 61.40 trillion rupiah a year earlier. The growth came despite a 16% drop in the firm’s Q4 TPV to 17.51 trillion rupiah, from 20.81 trillion rupiah in the year-ago period.
TPV measures the gross value of payments successfully processed through a payment platform over a given timeframe—or transactions that actually happened.
“The point of our profitability strategy is optimising our product mix, prioritising products with higher margins, and aligning the third-party sellers’ seller rates to align with our profitability roadmap,” Kusumo Martanto, Blibli’s CEO and co-founder, said in a statement.
Martanto noted that 2023 was the year when efficiency became the key factor guiding the company’s operations. “We leverage data to optimise advertising spending, utilise automation and technology to simplify operational processes, and innovate media usage to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of our marketing,” he said.
BliBli’s improved cost structure can be seen in its consolidated operating expenses as a percentage of TPV declining to 8.3% in full-year 2023 from 10.2% in 2022.
That, in turn, resulted in an improvement in consolidated EBITDA as a percentage of TPV by 310 basis points (bps) year-on-year to -4.6% in full-year 2023 from -7.8% in full-year 2022.
According to the company’s IDX filings, BliBli managed to trim its selling expenses by 21.44% to 2.28 trillion rupiah in 2023. Still, the firm showed increases in its administrative and other expenses.
“In 2023, Blibli’s EBITDA improved by 1.4 trillion rupiah, due to lower sales & marketing expenses. This resulted in a 30% lower EBITDA loss of 3.35 trillion rupiah in 2023,” said Niko Margaronis, an analyst at BRI Danareksa Sekuritas. However, Margaronis added that there is no guidance yet on EBITDA breakeven. “The Marunda warehouse [in West Java] will start operating in stages in FY24, and we reckon there are uncertainties as to how to predict its cost structure,” he said.
The filing also showed that Blibli was still running on negative cash flow at the end of 2023, recording minus 3.79 trillion rupiah in net cash used in operating activities. Blibli, however, had 462.11 billion rupiah in net cash from investing activities.
The company had total assets of 12.8 trillion rupiah as on Dec. 31, 2023, while its total liabilities stood at 5 trillion rupiah.
“Throughout 2023, we focused on improving profitability,” said Ronald Winardi, Blibli’s CFO.
Winardi mentioned several key initiatives that have been used throughout 2023 such as the rationalisation of the firm’s product mix across the 1P retail segment while maintaining its focus more on certain more profitable product categories, which has resulted in better gross profit generation and healthier gross margin.
The 1P retail segment refers to the first-party relationship with a retailer.
Blibli published its earnings over the Easter weekend. On Monday, shares of Blibli dropped 0.84% to 472 rupiah apiece a few hours after market opening.
