OPay’s parent company records $28.1 million profit in nine months, to double down on Nigeria

OPay

Opera Limited, the parent company of OPay said its net income for the first 9 months of the year rose to $28.1 million, compared to $9.7 million in the third quarter of 2018.

Gross revenue for the period rose by 109% driven but Opera said the growth will be offset by an expected significant decline in technology licensing revenue.

Total revenue for the period rose from $95 million to $105 million for the first nine months of the year.

Launching Opay, ORide, OCash and other business units, Opera said it looks to double down its efforts in Nigeria.

However, Opera is burning a lot of cash on personnel expenses which rose to 108% and marketing and distribution expenses which rose by 160% on a year on year basis.

Lin Song, Opera’s COO, said, “We are pleased with our strong third quarter results across all of our key metrics. We maintain a robust user growth trajectory while utilizing our scale to launch new products and further expand our market opportunity.

“Opera News continues to scale, with MAUs of our news app increasing 136% year-over-year to 41 million in the third quarter. We remain focused on driving user growth and increasing engagement through improved product quality and adding hyperlocal content on the platform. This includes the launch of Opera News Hub, a platform which allows content creators to publish and monetize through Opera News, which has already signed on 500 key opinion leaders. We continue to make progress monetizing our dedicated news app, with revenue up 44% versus the prior quarter.

“Opera Ads, our direct selling platform is evolving and expanding its capabilities. We are reaching an increasing number of both large businesses and small to medium sized enterprises which led to an increase in advertising revenue. Additionally, we launched OLeads, a product aimed at helping the tens of millions of small and medium enterprises in Nigeria grow and market their businesses online.

“Olist, our classified offering in Nigeria is progressing well. Listings have more than doubled to over 1 million from three months ago. We are focusing on growing listings and driving consumer awareness. We believe the potential in this area is very interesting, both in terms of advertising, but also from taking part in the underlying transactions through fee based models.

“On the browser side, our focus on product differentiation has led to continued growth with PC users up 16% year-over-year as we remain focused on privacy and security functionality, and supported by the continued success of Opera GX, our web browser tailored for gamers. Our smartphone user base also continued to grow during the quarter, as we launched offline file sharing in our Opera Mini browser that enables users to share content without using their mobile data or being limited by a slow network connection. The recent launch of our new tracker blocker is shown to speed up mobile browser speed by almost 20%.”

While Opera is poised to grow its market share in the payment business, there is already strong opposition ahead. Transsion Holdings-backed Palmpay announced yesterday that it raised 40 million to fully launch its services.

Helios Investment Partners’ Interswitch Group also sold about 20% stakes to American payment giant, Visa, a move that will further increase the competitive pressure in the fintech market.

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