Indonesian e-commerce giant PT Global Digital Niaga Tbk, the IDX-listed company behind Blibli.com and its lifestyle arm BlibliTiket, has unveiled its third-quarter (Q3) 2025 results.
Net revenues climbed 32 per cent year-on-year to Rp4,279 billion (US$269.5 million), driven by smartphone sales and physical store expansions. Yet, beneath the glossy metrics and CEO platitudes, the numbers reveal a company scrambling to stem bleeding margins, leaning on aggressive cost controls that could erode long-term competitiveness in Southeast Asia’s cutthroat digital retail arena.
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The press release trumpets “resilience and agility” amid economic headwinds, but a closer dissection exposes the fragility. While gross profit before discounts swelled a robust 32 per cent to Rp4,279 billion (US$269.5 million), the take rate – a critical measure of revenue efficiency per unit of gross merchandise value (GMV) – barely budged from 6.7 per cent in Q3 2024 to 7 per cent in Q3 2025.
This stagnation signals Blibli’s struggle to extract value from its sprawling ecosystem, even as GMV reached Rp61,634 billion (US$3.88 billion), a 26 per cent year-over-year increase. For the nine months, the take rate inched up to 3.6 per cent from 3 per cent, but that’s cold comfort in a market where rivals like Shopee and Tokopedia are reportedly squeezing merchants with deeper discounts to lock in loyalty.
Worse, consolidated EBITDA plunged 12 per cent year-on-year to Rp886 billion (US$55.8 million) in Q3, with the margin contracting to 18.6 per cent of total payment volume (TPV) from a healthier 21 per cent last year. Over the first nine months, EBITDA margins eroded further to 17.9 per cent from 20.3 per cent – a slippage attributed to “strategic investments” but which smells more like the fallout from promotional overdrive.
Operating expenses as a percentage of TPV dipped slightly to 7.2 per cent from 7.5 per cent, thanks to lower consolidated selling costs, but this “efficiency” comes at the expense of genuine innovation. Blibli’s playbook here? Slash ad spends and administrative overheads while flooding the market with iPhone 17 launch hype – a short-term sales jolt that analysts say risks commoditising the platform.
“Blibli’s performance reflects continued resilience and agility,” said Kuswanto Martanto, co-founder and CEO. Yet his words ring hollow against a backdrop of decelerating growth: total segment revenues for the IP Retail arm, Blibli’s online commerce core, expanded just 16 per cent year-on-year to Rp3,034 billion (US$191.1 million) in Q3, down from the blistering paces of prior quarters.
Physical stores, including the 70.6 per cent-owned PT Supra Boga Lestari Tbk (Ranch Market), fared better with 30 per cent GMV growth to Rp4,608 billion (US$290.1 million), buoyed by new Apple and Huawei mono-brand outlets. But even here, the shine fades: overall TPV growth slowed to 2 per cent year-on-year, hinting at saturation in urban consumer electronics.
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The institutional business, serving corporate clients, posted a meagre 30 per cent GMV uptick to Rp1,921 billion (US$121 million), but net revenues grew only 20 per cent to Rp349 billion (US$22 million). With over 10,700 institutional trust clients by September’s end–up from 9,600– Blibli boasts scale, yet average transacting users stagnated at 2.3 million, flat year-on-year.
This plateau underscores a deeper malaise: in a post-pandemic Indonesia where e-commerce penetration hovers at 20 per cent of retail, Blibli’s omnichannel bet (spanning 13 warehouses, 38 home-and-living experience centres, and 58 supermarket outlets) is starting to look like overextension rather than synergy.
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