By Miranda Murray and Akash Sriram
BERLIN, July 16 (Reuters) – Uber agreed on Thursday to buy Germany’s Delivery Hero at an equity value of $14.8 billion to create the largest food-delivery group outside China and stave off intensifying competition from U.S. and European rivals.
The acquisition advances the U.S. ride-hailing firm’s efforts to build a global food-delivery business that can better compete with Just Eat, owned by Dutch group Prosus, and U.S. rival DoorDash, which has been expanding aggressively.
It is likely to face a complex regulatory process as the combination would create a platform spanning 99 countries with combined pro-forma gross merchandise value (GMV) of $236 billion in 2025, according to a statement by Delivery Hero.
By comparison, China’s giant Meituan recorded a platform GMV of about 1.67 trillion yuan ($246.5 billion) last year.
“Together, we’ll nearly double the number of markets where we offer both mobility and delivery services,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in the joint statement.
‘LONG SLOW MARCH’ TO APPROVAL EXPECTED
Uber, already Delivery Hero’s top shareholder, has made the acquisition conditional on a minimum acceptance threshold of 50% plus one share.
The transaction, supported by Delivery Hero’s management and supervisory board, is expected to be completed in the second half of next year.
The €41.50 per-share offer represents a roughly 34% premium to Delivery Hero’s three-month volume-weighted average share price, it said. It was 9% above Wednesday’s close, but nearer 40% above the “undisturbed” price before any deal talk started.
Shares in Delivery Hero were up about 1.2% at 1141 GMT, while Uber gained 1% in U.S. pre-market trading.
The deal would expand Uber Eats across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America but is expected to face antitrust scrutiny because of overlapping operations.
To ease those concerns, Delivery Hero will sell operations in 14 markets to U.S. investment firm SSW Partners for about €1.4 billion. Major shareholder Prosus has also agreed to sell its nearly 17% stake, leaving little room for a rival bid.
Jefferies analysts, however, said the expected timing of the deal’s completion signalled a “long slow march” ahead.
“The use of a financial investor to get ahead of the antitrust questions could prove successful, though the long timeline to completion (2H27) suggests it won’t be a straightforward review,” its analysts wrote.
YEARS OF CONSOLIDATION
Food delivery outside China has evolved from a fragmented, pandemic-era battleground of regional players into a highly concentrated market dominated by a handful of global operators.
Behind the consolidation is a slowdown in orders from the pandemic peaks as well as pressure to improve margins amid growing regulatory scrutiny over the treatment of gig workers.
That has in recent years spurred Uber to buy Postmates; DoorDash to snap up Wolt and Deliveroo; Just Eat to merge with Takeaway.com and buy Grubhub; and Delivery Hero to expand through deals including Glovo and foodpanda.
The latest deal leaves Uber and DoorDash as the dominant players.
Excluding the overlapping markets, the move expands Uber’s food-delivery network to 99 markets from 50. It also hands it a business with about $42 billion in gross bookings last year.
Delivery Hero, which also owns Talabat and PedidosYa, had rejected an earlier Uber approach disclosed in late May that valued it at about €10 billion, or €33 a share.
Anticipation of an improved bid sent its shares to near €36 in the following weeks. Overall, the stock is up 62% this year.
JOINING FORCES IS ‘THE RIGHT MOVE’
“Joining forces with a strong partner now is the right move for Delivery Hero to best secure its future competitiveness,” Delivery Hero’s Supervisory Board Chair Kristin Skogen Lund said, pointing to the importance of scale in a “competitive” sector.
Founded in Berlin in 2011, rapid acquisitions made Delivery Hero one of the world’s largest food-delivery companies, though it has retreated from some markets to focus on profits.
Uber on Thursday committed to invest €2 billion in Germany through 2031 and agreed to retain Delivery Hero’s Berlin headquarters and workforce until at least 2029.
Uber gains access to roughly 60 million monthly active users, primarily in markets where it has had a limited presence, said Adam Ballantyne, analyst at Cambiar Investors, which owns shares in the ride-hailing firm.
“These new countries create years of additional organic growth for Uber as they penetrate rides and eats bundling and extend Uber One subscription growth.”
($1 = 0.8722 euros)
(Reporting by Hakan Ersan and Miranda Murray and Akash Sriram in BengaluruEditing by Mark Potter, Adam Jourdan, Tomasz Janowski, Sriraj Kalluvila and Susan Fenton)
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