Why GoTo’s shares jumped following Q1 results, while Bukalapak and Blibli are flat

When it rains, it pours.

Three listed Indonesian tech companies – GoTo, Bukalapak, and Blibli – released their earnings for the first quarter of 2023 over the last two working days of April.

Markets seem to have reacted well to GoTo’s results, which were released on April 27. As of May 4, its share price was up 9%. However, share prices of Bukalapak and Blibli, which reported their earnings on April 28, have remained relatively unchanged.

Their performance tells the story of how Indonesia’s digital economy is performing so far this year.

Quality, not quantity

All three companies facilitated a higher value of transactions on their respective platforms in Q1 2023 compared to the same period a year before.

For ease of comparison, we use gross transaction value (GTV) for GoTo – which measures the value of paid transactions of products and services on the platform, inclusive of refunds – and total processing value (TPV) for Blibli and Bukalapak, which measures the value of payments net of reversals.

As the largest platform, GoTo saw the slowest year-on-year growth at 6%, while transactions on Blibli expanded by 78% off a much smaller base. Bukalapak fell in between, with its TPV increasing by 19%.

One factor driving Blibli’s strong TPV growth may be the strong recovery in Indonesia’s travel industry as the firm operates an online travel agency.

Despite the positive year-on-year figures, all platforms saw a quarter-on-quarter decline in transaction volumes, with GoTo down by 8%, Bukalapak off by 3%, and Blibli seeing a 14% drop.

Some of this is seasonal: The fourth quarter is typically busier than the first, as consumers are out and about during the holiday season.

However, there were other factors at play.

For example, GoTo attributed the decline in GTV to a reduction of “low-quality transactions” on its ecosystem as well as the deprioritization of its Mitra Tokopedia B2B marketplace offering, which it described as “non-core.”

Bukalapak president Teddy Oetomo / Photo credit: Bukalapak

Similarly, in the results briefing accompanying the release of its financial statements, Bukalapak president Teddy Oetomo attributed the slowdown to a deliberate effort to limit traffic generation features to its remittance service and other verticals as it focuses on bringing its Mitra business into a contribution margin-positive position.

GoTo impresses on revenue

Impact of employee cuts

Bukalapak, the king of cash

What comes next