How Zomato earnings show growth has stalled

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Editor's note: It has been a big week for Zomato. On Monday, the food delivery company reported earnings for the quarter and year ended 31 March 2022. It was Zomato’s first full fiscal year results announcement as a publicly listed company and the scorecard reads something like this:  Revenue from operations: Rs 4,192 crore, up 2.1x from 2020-21 (peak pandemic) but only 1.6x from 2019-20 (pre-pandemic)Net loss: Rs 1,220 crore, up 1.5x from 2020-21 but down about 50% from 2019-20Advertising and sales promotion expenses: Rs 1,216 crore, up 2.3x from 2020-21 but down 10% from 2019-20  Markets cheered the growth. Yesterday, Zomato’s stock, which had taken a dive in recent months, closed at Rs 64.95, up almost 14%; its shares had earlier fallen about 65% from their November high. It helped that Zomato’s earnings release carried a lot more disclosures in the interest of operating transparently, something analysts have been complaining about all along. The metrics Zomato delved into for the March quarter were largely consistent with the last one and the company shared a lot more information to put its numbers …