German Delivery Hero, which owns meal delivery service Foodora and several other companies, will head to the stock exchange, which should attract 450 million euro. This should help it compete with several other companies, including Dutch Takeaway, better.
Competition
Takeaway and Delivery Hero have been locked in a fiercely competitive battle, especially in Germany, which is an important market for meal delivery services. Takeaway processed 47 % more orders in the first quarter, but Delivery Hero’s turnover grew 68 % in Germany.
However, despite that strong growth for Delivery Hero, it could not really present profitable results, except in Scandinavia and Turkey. It faced immense marketing costs in the past quarter, in an attempt to compete, which had an enormous impact on its profitability. Takeaway faces the same issues, with an onerous quarter, expect for the Netherlands.
Acquisitions
Rocket Internet is a sizeable shareholder in Delivery Hero, thanks to its 35 % share. South African technology investor Naspers also controls 10 % of the company founded in 2011.
The German company is not only trying to achieve autonomous growth, but is also looking for acquisitions. It recently bought Foodpanda, another Rocket Internet-owned company, for instance. Its turnover shot up 71 % in 2016, to 347 million euro, and its number of orders also grew 52 %, to nearly 200 million.
