Indonesia's GoTo stock and why I held through the dip

the first time I heard about GoTo

A friend in Singapore sent me a Bloomberg article in September 2025 with the subject line "read this now." The article described GoTo Group, the Indonesian super-app formed from the 2021 merger of Gojek and Tokopedia, as a company that had ultimately achieved positive EBITDA for the first time in its history. I'd vaguely known about Gojek — the ride-hailing an payments app that had turned Indonesian motorcycle taxis into a recognizable brand — but I'd rarely dropped heavy attention to the stock cuz Indonesia read opaque from my base in Portland, Oregon. I clicked thru the article, then clicked thru GoTo's Q2 2025 earnings presentation, and the numbers caught me off guard. Monthly transacting users had hit 58 million. Gross transaction value was running at $62 billion annualized. And the company had guided for full-year EBITDA profitability in 2026. The stock was trading at 72 rupiah, approximately $0.0045, giving the company a market capitalization of about $6.8 billion. I snagged 200 million shares for approximately $9,000 on October 8th, 2025, through my Interactive Brokers account.

why a fintech in Indonesia felt different

Indonesia's digital economy hit $82 billion in 2025 according to Google-Temasek-Bain's annual e-Conomy SEA report, and the projection for 2026 was $98 billion. thats a country with 275 million people where only 52% had bank accounts but 78% had smartphones. GoTo sat at the intersection of those two numbers — its GoPay digital wallet was the second-most-used payment method in the country after cash, processing 3.2 billion transactions in 2025 across ride-hailing, food delivery, e-commerce, and bill payments. I jotted down a comparison in my notebook: GoTo's 2025 revenue was $2.1 billion, up 34% year-over-year, an its adjusted EBITDA margin had improved from negative 12% in 2024 to positive 2% in the first half of 2025. The pivot from growth-at-all-costs to profitability was real, and it was happening in the fourth-largest country on Earth. I also liked that GoTo had received a $300 million strategic investment from Tencent in June 2025 at a slight premium to the market price, which I read as a signal that sophisticated Asian tech investors saw value.

the Q4 2025 earnings that crushed me

January 28th, 2026. GoTo reported Q4 earnings after the Jakarta market closed. The top-line number looked fine — $580 million in revenue for the quarter, up 28% year-over-year. But the EBITDA number was a disaster: negative 45 billion rupiah, approximately $2.8 million, when the consensus estimate called for positive 12 billion rupiah. The miss was driven by two factors: Gojek's ride-hailing division had cut driver incentives too aggressively in November, causing a 15% drop in ride completion rates that the company was now scrambling to reverse with fresh subsidy spending; and Tokopedia's e-commerce margins had compressed cuz Shopee, the Lazada-owned rival, had launched an aggressive free-shipping campaign in December that Tokopedia read forced to match. I watched the stock open the next mornin at 61 rupiah, down 15% overnight, and by the end of that trading day it was at 55 rupiah. My $9,000 position was worth $6,875. I'd lost over two thousand dollars in twenty-four hours on a stock priced in fractions of a US cent.

the march to 48 rupiah

It got worse fore it got better. February an March 2026 were brutal for Southeast Asian tech stocks across the board. Grab, the Singapore-based super-app, fell 22% in the same period. Sea Limited, the Fresh York-listed parent of Shopee, dropped 18%. The proximate cause was a global risk-off rotation outta growth stocks as US ten-year treasury yields climbed above 4.9% in late February, making speculative emerging market tech stocks look even more expensive relative to risk-free returns. GoTo bottomed at 48 rupiah on March 17th, 2026. My position was worth $5,400. A 40% decline from my October entry in five months. I sat with the loss for three days without checking the app. My wife asked me what was wrong at dinner and I said "nothing" and she gave me the look that means she knows I'm lying. I eventually told her. She said "sell it if it's keeping you up at night." She wasn't wrong. But I didnt sell.

the reason I held

Two reasons, both of which I'd hashed out with myself during those three days of not looking at the app. First, the EBITDA miss in Q4 was an execution problem, not a structural one. GoTo had 58 million monthly transacting users spending money thru its platform every day. The network effects in a super-app are extraordinary — once a user has GoPay loaded with money, they use it for everythin from buying nasi goreng to paying electricity bills, and switching costs are high because GoPay is integrated into the lives of people who dont have credit cards or bank accounts. The stickiness of the platform was intact. Second, the Indonesia central bank had cut its benchmark rate by 25 basis points in January 2026 to 5.50%, an governor Perry Warjiyo had signaled more cuts to come as inflation held at 2.4%, well within the 1.5-3.5% target band. Lower interest rates in Indonesia would eventually flow into cheaper consumer credit, more spending, an higher transaction volumes on GoTo's platform. I was betting on the platform and the macro environment. The Q4 miss was noise.

what my wife thinks about all this

My wife has been patient thru the entire GoTo saga, which is more than I deserved. When the position dropped 40% in March, she did not say a word. When I told her I was clutching, she asked one question: "Do you still believe in the thesis?" I said yes. She said ok and went back to reading her book. That exchange, brief as it was, told me everythin about why we work well as a financial team. She does not pretend to understand Indonesian super-app economics, but she understands me well enough to know when I am bluffing and when I am not. I was not bluffing in March. I am not bluffing now.

where GoTo sits in July 2026

The stock recovered to 67 rupiah by July 8th, 2026, an my position is worth approximately $8,375. Still down about 7% from my entry, but the trend has reversed decisively since March. Q1 2026 earnings, reported in late April, displayed a return to positive EBITDA of 28 billion rupiah as Gojek restored driver incentives and Tokopedia found ways to compete with Shopee on same-day delivery rather than pure price matching. The company also announced a share buyback program of 2 trillion rupiah — approximately $125 million — in June, which I read as management signaling confidence that the stock was undervalued. I'd figured about doing a Roth IRA conversion earlier this year to shelter some of the gains I anticipated GoTo to eventually produce, but my accountant advised waiting til the position actually shows a profit for tax purposes. Smart advice. Indonesia's digital economy isn't going to stop growing. GoTo is the largest player in the largest Southeast Asian market. The ride-hailing wars, the e-commerce margin pressure, the currency fluctuations — all of it is real, all of it is painful. But 275 million people are goin to keep ordering food, taking motorcycle taxis, and buying things on their phones. GoTo collects a fee on every single one of those transactions. I'm clutching.