Nigeria-based e-commerce company Jumia has filed documents with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission for a long-awaited initial public offering. If all goes smoothly, Jumia will be the first venture-backed African tech company valued at more than $1 billion to list on a major global stock exchange.
Still to be determined are Jumia’s valuation on the NYSE, its share price and the date when public stock sales will be for sale.
There are also no guarantees, based on past performance, that Jumia will make a profit anytime soon, Quartz reported.
Jumia claims to be the only e-commerce company operating successfully in multiple African regions, and has 4 million active customers —
people who bought something at least once in the past year — as of December 2018. A pan-African e-commerce conglomerate, Jumia’s businesses include financial services, search engine, food and beverage
Germany-based Rocket Internet owned 21.74 percent of Jumia as of the end of 2018 and MTN Group held 31.28 percent. Smaller shareholders
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Total funding for Jumia so far is $767.7 million, according to
Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Berenberg and RBC Capital Markets are leading the IPO, according to Business Of Fashion.
The SEC filing shows Jumia’s losses far exceed the revenue it has generated — a familiar problem for some of the biggest tech companies in the world.
Uber, which has yet to turn a profit, is preparing to go public in 2019.
Jumia’s losses grew to almost $1 billion as of December 2018. The company said in its SEC filing that there’s no guarantee it will “achieve or sustain profitability” or “pay any cash dividends” in the foreseeable future.
The company also has competition from South African rival Takealot and Egypt’s
Several
Founded in Lagos in 2012 with backing from Rocket Internet,
The most popular items on Jumia’s
Based on the experience of other global startups, “online retail can be a game of capital attrition to outpace competitors and reach critical mass before turning a profit,” Jake Bright reported for Tech Crunch. “With its unicorn status and