By Paolo Laudani
(Reuters) -German online takeaway food company Delivery Hero on Thursday reported stronger than expected growth for the fourth quarter, aided by strong order development and increasing basket size on its platform.
Its shares, which have fallen around 60% from their January 2021 highs as investors shunned food delivery stocks after the pandemic era frenzy, were up 6% by 1009 GMT, among top performers on Europe’s benchmark STOXX 600 index.
Quarterly gross merchandise value (GMV), which measures the total value of all goods sold, grew 8.2% to 12.81 billion euros ($13.37 billion), beating analysts’ average forecast of 12.31 billion euros.
The owner of Glovo also forecast GMV growth of 8% to 10% for 2025, compared with 8.3% last year.
“A solid set of results, in particular driven by MENA and LatAm,” J.P.Morgan analysts said in a note to clients.
Delivery Hero reported a quarterly GMV of 3.7 billion euros in the Middle East and Northern Africa, its second biggest market behind Asia. The metric was 1.1 billion euros in the Americas region where it operates under the Pedidosya brand.
LATIN AMERICA GROWTH
The company expects Pedidosya, which operates in 15 countries in Latin America, to reach the dimensions of its crown jewel Talabat in two or three years, CEO Niklas Ostberg told Reuters after the earnings publication.
“If we IPO it or not, that’s probably another question. I think not, but the business itself is incredibly strong,” Ostberg said.
Delivery Hero listed Talabat in Dubai in early December, while keeping an 80% stake in the subsidiary.
While governments and companies scramble to hedge the impact of U.S. tariffs, Ostberg said he did not see a direct hit on Delivery Hero, which he said was “fairly resilient” to inflation and other aspects that might affect it.
Delivery Hero said in a separate statement that it planned to buy back around 1 billion euros of convertible bonds, using the proceeds from Talabat’s IPO.
($1 = 0.9581 euros)
(Reporting by Paolo Laudani and by Linda Pasquini in Gdansk; Editing by Milla Nissi)
