Zomato shares tank 9 percent on Friday after the firm posted reported a loss in the December 2021 quarter. The food-aggregator company posted a net loss of ₹63.2 crore in Q3FY22, however, this was way less than its loss of ₹352 crore in Q3FY21.
The steep narrowing of losses came in on the back of a consolidated exceptional gain of ₹316 crore in the December quarter.
Post the earnings, the stock shed as much as 9.1 percent to its day's low of ₹85.85 on BSE. At 10:18 am, the stock was trading 6 percent lower at around ₹89 per share in comparison to a 1.7 percent or 993 points decline in BSE Sensex at 57,932.
The firm's revenue from operations jumped 82 percent to ₹1,112 crore in Q3FY22 as against ₹609.4 crore in the year-ago quarter. Its gross order value (GOV) grew 84.5 percent YoY and 1.7 percent QoQ to ₹5,500 crore.
"We believe that the weak QoQ growth in GOV was primarily due to reduction in customer delivery charges, in addition to a soft impact of post-Covid reopening (including some shift from delivery to dining out),” Zomato said. Gross Order Value is the total value of an order placed on Zomato including taxes, customer delivery charges.
Its total number of orders grew 93 percent YoY and 5 percent QoQ. It added that the average monthly active food delivery restaurants have grown by 6x and average monthly transacting customers have grown by 13x on Zomato over the past 5 years.
"The consumption of restaurant food has grown manifold in India on the back of higher accessibility, choice and affordability of restaurant food. The restaurant industry in India is highly fragmented with ~90 percent of the revenue coming from standalone restaurants and only ~10 percent from chains. In this ecosystem, we have played our part by helping small restaurants level the playing field for themselves and get discovered by new customers," Zomato further stated in its results filing.
The firm further announced that it has set aside $400 million to invest in quick commerce stating that this category offers a huge addressable market and is synergistic with its food delivery business.