Baillie Gifford, an Edinburgh-based asset management firm long known for its preference for pre-IPO technology companies, is an African e-commerce giant, according to the latest 13G/A filing released by the asset management firm. Downgraded Jumia shares.
Baillie Gifford disclosed ownership of 18.75 million shares, representing 13.69% of Jumia, according to the filing. In Jumia’s previous filing a year ago, the asset management company held 19.85 million shares and owned 10.06% of the company at the time. This means that the stock will decrease by 5.50% of him and the ownership will decrease by 0.67% of him.
The Scottish asset management firm has been an early backer of reputable private and public technology companies such as Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Tesla, Airbnb, Spotify, Lyft, Palantir and SpaceX until its 100th anniversary. It has also invested in deals in other regions, including China’s Alibaba and his NIO, and Africa-based internet companies Naspers and Jumia.
Baillie Gifford bought a stake in Jumia in 2019, three years after the e-commerce giant went public. Jumia’s largest institutional investor, Scottish Mortgage Trust Company, has sold and bought back a portion of its stake each January since. Baillie Gifford remains the largest shareholder of the e-commerce platform.
Last November, after several years of reporting losses, Jumia made changes to its management team after appointing Francis Dufay as acting CEO to replace co-founders Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, who stepped down from their co-CEO roles. I was. The move was accompanied by immediate cuts in various product lines and workforces, including laying off several executives from its Dubai office. All this is in pursuit of missed profits for the company.
In Q3 2022, African e-tailers made significant progress, cutting losses by 13% from $52.5 million to $45.5 million. Despite these advances, public trust in e-commerce organizations seems to be waning. Jumia’s stock has fallen 51% over the past year, with shares dropping to $3.88 a share for him after Wednesday’s news. It has a market capitalization of $404 million and trades at just over $4. The e-tailer closed out the third quarter with his $284.7 million liquidity position. Of that amount, $104.3 million is cash and cash equivalents.
Baillie Gifford’s decision to sell a portion of her stake may have something to do with Jumia’s performance on the stock exchange. On the one hand, this could be a way to cut the losses investment firms began suffering last year, especially in the face of rising interest rates and fears of a recession, especially in growth stocks that have been hit hard. (Last week, after losing more than $14 billion in shares of Tesla and Shopify, the investment group admitted that 2022 will be a “year of humility,” according to the Financial Times.) Still, it doesn’t explain why the fund group, with his over $230 billion AUM, increased its positions last week in loss-making companies such as his Chinese EV maker NIO and Wix.com. Jumia’s next earnings call next month should shed more light on this issue.
But it’s not all gloomy for Jumia. That’s because other big shareholders, including DE Shaw, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, have taken a different route and increased their stake in the company, owning 2.21%, 1.27% and 1.40% of him respectively. per Nasdaq.
