Prosus to acquire Just Eat Takeaway in €4bn deal

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Just Eat Takeaway is set to be acquired by investment group Prosus in a €4.1bn deal that will lead to the European food delivery company’s delisting from public markets.

The all-cash offer of €20.30 a share is a 22 per cent premium over the group’s recent three-month high but below the €23.50 price at which Takeaway.com first started trading when it went public back in 2016.

The deal follows a tumultuous few years for Amsterdam-based Just Eat Takeaway, whose shares surged during the Covid-19 pandemic but fell sharply as lockdowns ended.

For Prosus, the deal is its most significant transaction since chief executive Fabricio Bloisi took over in May with ambitious plans to double its market value.

Bloisi, who formerly led iFood, the Prosus-owned food delivery app that dominates his native Brazil, said on Monday that the Just Eat deal was an “opportunity to create a European tech champion”.

Prosus’ offer, which has been recommended by Just Eat’s board but will require shareholder approval, comes in at less than a fifth of the takeaway group’s peak stock price in 2020.

But Jitse Groen, Just Eat Takeaway’s founder and chief executive, said the deal offered “immediate, certain and attractive value for investors” and would allow more investment in the business than would be possible as a public company.

“It’s a very large premium to the current share price, that is always most important in these discussions,” he said.

Just Eat Takeaway shares were up around 52 per cent following the announcement. Shares of competitors Deliveroo and Delivery Hero jumped 4 per cent and 7 per cent respectively.

However, Prosus shares fell more than 7 per cent in early trading.

Prosus, the investment arm of South African group Naspers, has sought Just Eat for years. In early 2020, it lost out to Netherlands-based Takeaway.com in a bidding war after offering £5.5bn for the UK food delivery pioneer.

Since then, the group has been led by Groen, the Dutch entrepreneur who founded Takeaway.com in 2000. At the height of the pandemic-fuelled delivery boom in 2021, Just Eat Takeaway acquired US-based food ordering platform Grubhub for $7.3bn before selling it last November for just $650mn.

As part of cost cutting in December, Just Eat Takeaway delisted from the London Stock Exchange to focus on its Amsterdam listing.

On Monday, it reported a €1.65bn net loss for 2024, including €1.16bn related to Grubhub. Groen said the group was now a “faster growing, more profitable and predominantly European-based business” and that the deal would “accelerate our investments and growth across food, groceries, fintech and other adjacencies”.

Groen told reporters that he and Just Eat Takeaway’s existing management team would stay on after the deal closes, despite Bloisi’s hands-on experience in operating food delivery companies.

“He runs Prosus and I run Just Eat Takeaway,” Groen said. “The role going forward will remain the same. I think we can be more aggressive as a competitor in the current environment so that’s exciting for everyone in the business.”

Prosus previously bought a one-third stake in iFood from Just Eat in 2022, taking full control of the group. It plans to apply a similar playbook to Just Eat, by focusing on using technology such as artificial intelligence to improve its products and services.

Prosus also holds minority stakes in several other food delivery groups, including Berlin-based Delivery Hero, Chinese market leader Meituan and India’s Swiggy, which recently went public.