Uber leaves door open to Delivery Hero takeover by increasing stake
US group becomes largest shareholder in German company amid consolidation across food delivery sector
Uber has become Delivery Hero’s largest shareholder and left the door open to a full takeover of the company against a backdrop of consolidation in the food delivery industry.
The San Francisco-based group said on Monday that it had increased its stake in Delivery Hero and now held 19.5 per cent of the shares, in addition to 5.6 per cent in options. In a regulatory filing, Uber added that it had no current plans to seek control of Delivery Hero.
The move signals potential further consolidation in the global food delivery sector following DoorDash’s £2.9bn takeover of Deliveroo and the €4.1bn acquisition of Just Eat Takeaway by Prosus last year.
Uber’s position will give it a blocking minority in the German food delivery group — whose brands include Glovo, Foodpanda and Talabat — meaning it will have influence over capital increases, acquisitions and changes to the company’s constitutional documents.
Uber had previously held a roughly 7 per cent stake, after it acquired €270mn worth of shares in April from Prosus, which was previously Delivery Hero’s largest shareholder but has been reducing its holding to comply with EU antitrust requirements linked to its takeover of Just Eat.
Uber described the deal as “opportunistic” at the time, while Prosus’s chief executive Fabricio Bloisi previously told the FT that Europe was at risk of becoming “irrelevant in terms of technology” due to the bloc’s antitrust rules.
Uber said in disclosures that it had “no intent to acquire 30 per cent or more of the [Delivery Hero’s] voting rights”, which would trigger an obligation to make a takeover offer. But it left open the possibility of increasing or reducing its stake over time.
Uber is already expanding its food delivery reach in Europe after announcing it would enter seven new markets this year. The company’s Uber Eats app will go head to head with DoorDash-owned Wolt for dominance in markets including Finland and Norway.
The increase in Uber’s stake comes just a week after Delivery Hero’s founder and chief executive Niklas Östberg said he would leave the company by March next year.
Östberg’s planned exit comes after years of shareholder pressure for change at the group, which has seen its share price drop about 70 per cent over the past five years as a pandemic-era surge in the stock unwound. Shares in Delivery Hero rose 5.6 per cent on Monday, taking their gains to more than 50 per cent this month. Uber’s share price was flat on Monday afternoon in New York.
In March, activist investor Aspex Management, which holds a 14.55 per cent stake in Delivery Hero, called on the company’s supervisory board to exit several markets and replace Östberg, arguing that the group should streamline operations and accelerate asset sales.