BENGALURU (Reuters) -Indian food delivery firm Zomato Ltd reported a smaller third-quarter loss on Thursday, helped by a one-time gain, while revenue jumped due to increased demand for restaurant meals.
Zomato’s dining out business, which offers customers discounts and offers when they eat out at partner restaurants, strengthened as eateries and bars reopened due to a fall in COVID-19 cases during the quarter, while the company’s core food delivery business continued to grow.
“The revival of in-restaurant dining (in the third quarter) led to some green shoots in our dining-out ad-sales business,” the Gurugram-based firm said in a regulatory filing https://bit.ly/33eIov4. This is the company’s third earnings report since its stellar initial public offering in July last year.
Gross order value, or the total monetary value of all food delivery orders placed on the company’s online platform, rose 84.5% to 55 billion rupees compared with a year earlier.
The company’s consolidated net loss narrowed to 632 million rupees ($8.42 million) for the three months ended Dec. 31, from 3.53 billion rupees a year earlier.
The company was helped by a one-time gain of 3.16 billion rupees from the sale of its stake in Fitso, an online platform that connects people to sporting venues.
Revenue from operations rose 82.5% to 11.12 billion rupees.
Zomato shares have lost 25% since listing amid weakness in the broader market on valuation concerns and expectations for monetary policy tightening by global central banks.
($1 = 75.0250 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Anuron Kumar Mitra in Bengaluru;Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Vinay Dwivedi)
