As platform companies – the likes of Grab, GoTo, Sea Group, DeliveryHero, Uber, DoorDash, and Meituan – became new additions to the public equity market, we now often see, in headlines or in chatter, mentions of quarterly results of platform companies. “Company A has widened their loss” or “Platform B has doubled its users while improving on profitability”, for example. 

If we dig deeper – reality is always quite nuanced. There is a myriad of metrics that companies use to report their business, differently

That was the driver for Momentum Academy to produce our latest report “Apples to Apples: Benchmarking Shopee, Grab, GoTo and other major tech platforms” .

Launching today, this report seeks not to prove which platform company is better (or worse) than its peers, but rather to put the differences in reporting key metrics in a clear, comprehensive and comparable way such that you can draw your own conclusions in an informed manner. 

Get a copy of your report today here. We will also be doing a briefing on this topic on Thursday, 23 Feb, 3PM – 4PM SGT. You can register for the briefing here. If you would like to have this sharing and other insights for your leadership team, you are welcome to contact Momentum Academy ([email protected]). 

 

Other key insights from the report:

Differences in Total Payment Volume (TPV) depends on the breakdown of the businesses 

 

Platforms report user numbers with different definitions and across different time spans. There are some ways to make sense of these.

 

Cash is important

The measurement of cash, an indication of how long (and how flexibly) the platform is able to pursue further growth especially in the currently challenging capital environment, can be vastly different and challenging to compare in an apples to apples way.

 

A forecast of how platforms net cash liquidity will evolve over the next years 

 

What the future holds for platform companies

It is important to note, however, the numbers, reported or derived, are not everything. This is not only because such numbers mainly reflect the recent history, or a snapshot at a recent quarter end. There are many important factors to consider beyond metrics – notably Leadership, People, Organisation and Product, as we have indicated in our recent book. These factors evolve as well.

All these and more are covered in our “Apples to Apples: Benchmarking Shopee, Grab, GoTo and other major tech platforms” report. Get your copy today here. Join our briefing on Thursday, 23 February, 3PM – 4PM SGT here.  If you would like to have this sharing and other insights for your leadership team, you are welcome to contact Momentum Academy ([email protected]). 

 

RSVP here:

https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/apple-to-apple-tickets-545766681837

Thanks for reading The Low Down (TLD), the blog by the team at Momentum Works. Got a different perspective or have a burning opinion to share? Let us know at [email protected].