India's largest e-scooter maker Ola Electric recorded an operating loss of $136 million on a revenue of $335 million in the last financial year which concluded in March, three sources told Reuters, missing its publicly disclosed revenue goal.
The 2022-23 loss number of SoftBank-backed Ola Electric,
which is preparing for an up to $700 million IPO, has not previously been
reported or filed with Indian authorities, which allows time until September to
file previous year's earnings.
The e-scooter maker last year in June issued a statement
saying it was "on track to surpass $1 billion run rate by end of this year" and
"the future forecast looks even stronger."
The run rate is a financial indicator calculated by taking
one month of Ola's revenues and multiplying by 12.
But that revenue projection for 2022-23 was missed. Two
sources with direct knowledge of its financials said Ola's first full year of
operations saw it record a revenue of $335 million in year with over 150,000
unit sales, and an operating loss of $136 million.
Ola sold about 21,400 electric scooters in March - the last
month of the fiscal year 2022/23.
Since it began sales in late 2021, Ola has become India's
e-scooter market leader with a 32 percent share, competing with Ather Energy as
well as companies like TVS Motor and Hero Electric. It was valued at $5 billion
last year and has raised nearly $800 million from investors since 2019.
Ola Electric earlier this year laid out aggressive
projections internally, estimating its revenue will quadruple to $1.5 billion 2023-24,
a year when it also plans to clock its first profit, Reuters reported last
week.
But this was before India slashed government incentives in
May on e-scooters, which analysts say will force Ola and others to redraw
growth plans.
Despite the incentives cut, the company remains confident it
can this year become operationally profitable - a key metric watched by
potential IPO investors, according to one of the sources.
"Ola is a market leader in a short while ... That's
what their existing investors are bullish on," the person added.
Ola says it builds its e-scooters in the southern state of
Tamil Nadu from "the world's largest 2 wheeler factory" which has
capacity to produce 10 million units a year. The company has been spending
hundreds of millions of dollars in expand its factory and service centres. © Reuters
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