Unlock the Editor’s Digest totally free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly e-newsletter.
Simply Eat Takeaway is ready to be acquired by funding group Prosus in a €4.1bn deal that can result in the European meals supply firm’s delisting from public markets.
The all-cash supply of €20.30 a share is a 22 per cent premium over the group’s latest three-month excessive however under the €23.50 value at which Takeaway.com first began buying and selling when it went public again in 2016.
The deal follows a tumultuous few years for Amsterdam-based Simply Eat Takeaway, whose shares surged in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic however fell sharply as lockdowns ended.
For Prosus, the deal is its most vital transaction since chief government Fabricio Bloisi took over in Might with formidable plans to double its market worth.
Bloisi, who previously led iFood, the Prosus-owned meals supply app that dominates his native Brazil, mentioned on Monday that the Simply Eat deal was an “alternative to create a European tech champion”.
Prosus’ supply, which has been advisable by Simply Eat’s board however would require shareholder approval, is available in at lower than a fifth of the takeaway group’s peak inventory value in 2020.
However Jitse Groen, Simply Eat Takeaway’s founder and chief government, mentioned the deal supplied “quick, sure and enticing worth for traders” and would permit extra funding within the enterprise than can be potential as a public firm.
“It’s a really massive premium to the present share value, that’s all the time most essential in these discussions,” he mentioned.
Simply Eat Takeaway shares had been up round 52 per cent following the announcement. Shares of rivals Deliveroo and Supply Hero jumped 4 per cent and seven per cent respectively.
Nevertheless, Prosus shares fell greater than 7 per cent in early buying and selling.
Prosus, the funding arm of South African group Naspers, has sought Simply Eat for years. In early 2020, it misplaced out to Netherlands-based Takeaway.com in a bidding warfare after providing £5.5bn for the UK meals supply pioneer.
Since then, the group has been led by Groen, the Dutch entrepreneur who based Takeaway.com in 2000. On the peak of the pandemic-fuelled supply increase in 2021, Simply Eat Takeaway acquired US-based meals ordering platform Grubhub for $7.3bn earlier than promoting it final November for simply $650mn.
As a part of value slicing in December, Simply Eat Takeaway delisted from the London Inventory Trade to deal with its Amsterdam itemizing.
On Monday, it reported a €1.65bn web loss for 2024, together with €1.16bn associated to Grubhub. Groen mentioned the group was now a “sooner rising, extra worthwhile and predominantly European-based enterprise” and that the deal would “speed up our investments and development throughout meals, groceries, fintech and different adjacencies”.
Groen informed reporters that he and Simply Eat Takeaway’s present administration crew would keep on after the deal closes, regardless of Bloisi’s hands-on expertise in working meals supply firms.
“He runs Prosus and I run Simply Eat Takeaway,” Groen mentioned. “The position going ahead will stay the identical. I believe we might be extra aggressive as a competitor within the present atmosphere in order that’s thrilling for everybody within the enterprise.”
Prosus beforehand purchased a one-third stake in iFood from Simply Eat in 2022, taking full management of the group. It plans to use an analogous playbook to Simply Eat, by specializing in utilizing know-how resembling synthetic intelligence to enhance its services.
Prosus additionally holds minority stakes in a number of different meals supply teams, together with Berlin-based Supply Hero, Chinese language market chief Meituan and India’s Swiggy, which not too long ago went public.
