Gojek wrote off a $17m loan to Pathao

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Hello readers,

How’s your first work week of the year so far? Mine has been a whirlwind. As accurately described by my colleague, it feels as if we’d “gotten hit by a motorcycle.”

But as busy as we’ve been, we’ve got nothing on Gojek, as the Indonesian ride-hailing decacorn is reportedly holding advanced merger talks with two different companies. It would be interesting to get a peek into the Gojek CEO’s meeting calendar or the group’s P/L and internal dashboard, but since that’s impossible, we looked at Gojek Singapore’s 2019 financial statements (its latest) instead.

Today we look at:

• Gojek Singapore’s revenue and losses
• The startup that brings farmers online
• Other newsy highlights, such as US officials considering a ban on Alibaba and Tencent stocks and Softbank eyeing airborne telecom base stations

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PREMIUM SUMMARY

Doubled revenue comes with a tenfold increase in losses

In 2019, Gojek Singapore recorded a 2.5x bump in revenue compared to the previous year’s. But along with the growth, the Singapore entity of the Indonesian decacorn also saw a 10x increase in losses before income tax. The exact figures are in our report.

To be clear, the numbers don’t reflect Gojek’s ride-hailing business in the city-state. Per the financial statements, Gojek Singapore’s principal activity is to provide data and engineering services to its Indonesian parent and other associated companies.

• A significant expense… was related to the Bangladesh-based ride-hailing startup Pathao, where Gojek Singapore has been a shareholder since 2018. Gojek Singapore had been providing loans to the company but last year, it wrote off a US$17 million loan to Pathao as an impairment loss.
• The biggest expense… was allocated to Gojek Singapore’s employee benefits, with the amount even larger than the company revenue. Most of that expense had gone to “short-term employee benefits” such as salaries and bonuses.

Read the full story with charts: Gojek suffers $17m impairment loss over Pathao investment

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STARTUP SPOTLIGHT

Making it easy for farmers to sell online

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