Bukalapak CEO Resigns Months Following Foremost Indonesian E-Commerce Firm’s Historic IPO Shares Slide

Shares of Bukalapak fell on Thursday immediately after Rachmat Kaimuddin resigned as CEO a few months following foremost the e-commerce firm’s historic original public supplying on the Jakarta Stock Exchange.

Bukalapak explained it has appointed Willix Halim, at the moment the company’s main running officer, as interim CEO next Kaimuddin’s resignation. Its shares fell as a great deal as 4.9% in Jakarta trading now, touching an all-time low of 430 rupiah.

The corporation designed history in August soon after raising $1.5 billion from its IPO, the country’s biggest-ever maiden share sale. The shares originally rallied, jumping 25% on its very first buying and selling working day, but sentiment turned sour immediately as traders questioned how Bukalapak can compete against much larger e-commerce players these types of as homegrown GoTo, which was formed from the merger of Gojek and Tokopedia in May possibly, and Singapore-primarily based rivals these types of as Get and Sea Group’s Shopee. The shares are now down approximately 60% from its IPO value of 850 rupiah apiece.

“The CEO’s departure confirms our fears about the company’s vulnerabilities,” Nirgunan Tiruchelvam, Singapore-dependent head of buyer sector equity analysis at Tellimer, claimed by way of textual content messaging. “The firm is at ideal a marginal player with an unsettled management team.”

Tiruchelvam initiated protection of Bukalapak this month with a sell score and target price tag of 413 rupiah for every share. “Bukalapak is a peripheral player that will be eroded by market leaders Sea, Seize and GoTo,” he said in his initiation notice. “As the fourth-premier player in Indonesia’s e-commerce industry, Bukalapak has only 7% market share, and it will be restricted by its absence of scale.”

Kaimuddin is leaving Bukalapak to do the job for the governing administration two several years immediately after getting appointed CEO in 2019, in accordance to the company. The previous financier was tapped for the position simply because the company’s buyers saw him as the correct individual to staunch the flow of pink ink and put the 11-calendar year-previous firm on a route of profitability. 

Though the corporation remains in the purple, Kaimuddin is credited for bringing in bluechip buyers into the business. Bukalapak’s roster of investors includes Singapore’s sovereign prosperity fund GIC, China’s Ant Team, U.S. tech giant Microsoft, Regular Chartered bank and South Korean internet portal Naver Company, amongst many others.

“We have been pretty positively shocked with the momentum and the level of interest from both of those domestic and international traders,” Alvin Sariaatmadja, president director of Emtek, the major shareholder of Bukalapak, informed Forbes Asia just in advance of the tech unicorn stated.