Zomato Ltd’s fiscal third quarter net loss widened over five-fold on-year to Rs 343 crore from Rs 66 crore, mainly due to an exceptional gain in the same quarter last year. The company’s revenue from operations in the October-December 2022 quarter jumped 75% to Rs 1,948 crore from Rs 1,112 crore in the previous year. Zomato shares rose 3.5% ahead of the Q3 earnings announcement. In the previous session, Zomato share price jumped 8.5% to Rs 53.75. The stock has rallied 13% in the last two trading sessions.
Brokerage Kotak Institutional Equities estimated a consolidated net loss of about Rs 500 crore for the online food delivery aggregator on an operating loss of Rs 463 crore. “Overall EBITDA loss of Zomato expands sequentially on account of full quarter consolidation of Blinkit,” the brokerage said. Meanwhile, Emkay Global expected Zomato to report a loss of Rs 320.50 crore for the December quarter compared with Rs 378.90 crore in the year-ago quarter. Net sales were seen rising 65% on-year to Rs 1,834.80 crore compared with Rs 1,112 crore in the year-ago quarter. Ebitda margin was expected at -19.7% against -44% in the year-ago quarter.
At the operating level, EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) loss declined to Rs 366.2 crore in the third quarter of this fiscal over from Rs 488.8 crore in the corresponding period in the previous fiscal.
The gross order value (GOV) growth in food delivery in the third quarter was 0.7% on-quarter. Orders declined on-quarter while AOV grew. In 2022, customers who ordered >50 times a year grew by 50% on-year to 2.7 million as compared to 1.8 million in 2021. The number of customers ordering more than 100 times a year (2 orders every week) increased by 70% on-year. The company added 23.0 million new customers in 2022 as compared to 23.6 million in 2021.