Tech

Indonesia's GoTo has lost almost 70% of its valuation since its April IPO

Key Points
  • Indonesia's GoTo Group has lost almost 70% of its initial valuation of $28 billion since its Jakarta debut in April.
  • Last week was GoTo's roughest as early backers passed on a secondary share offering ahead of the stock's lock-up expiration.
  • In October, GoTo had said it was working with pre-IPO shareholders to explore a coordinated secondary offering of their shares before the lock-up expired to facilitate an orderly sale through the negotiated market.

In this article

Indonesian giant GoTo Group surged as much as 4.96% in Friday's morning trade.
Rafael Henrique | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Indonesia's GoTo Group has lost 68.5% of its initial value of 400 trillion rupiah ($28 billion) since its initial public offering in April.

While the stock has ticked lower most of the year, GoTo shares sold off after pre-IPO shareholders opted out of a secondary offering following the lock-up expiration on Nov. 30.

GoTo Group is the merged entity between Indonesia's two largest tech companies: ride-hailing giant Gojek and e-commerce marketplace Tokopedia. Early investors such as SoftBank and Alibaba had agreed to an eight-month lock-up period to support GoTo's stock price following its IPO.

In October, GoTo had said it was working with pre-IPO shareholders to explore a coordinated secondary offering of their shares before the lock-up expired to facilitate an orderly sale through the negotiated market.

However, that did not work out. On Wednesday, the last day of the lock-up, GoTo said those pre-IPO shareholders decided to not proceed with the secondary offering.

The stock fell by 7% to 141 rupiah on Thursday and continued to drop in Monday trading. It was last seen trading near 123 rupiah, giving the company a valuation of about 126 trillion rupiah.

Other Southeast Asian tech companies have also seen their valuations fall since going public. Competitor Grab has lost 69% of its initial valuation of about $40 billion since its U.S. listing in December 2021 via a special purpose acquisition vehicle. Indonesian e-commerce company Bukalapak is down about 70% from an initial valuation of $6 billion since its Jakarta IPO in August 2021.  

In November, GoTo Group reported its nine-month accumulated losses surged from 11.58 trillion rupiah a year ago to 20.32 trillion rupiah, even as its third-quarter losses shrank with cost cuts.

The group also announced in the same month that it will be laying off 12% of its workforce – or about 3,000 jobs.