AMSTERDAM: Takeaway.com, the Dutch challenger to Delivery Hero and Just Eat, will try to raise €175m via an initial public offering to help fund its fight for market share in Germany.
The online takeaway group, which operates in Benelux, Germany and six other countries, launched its intention to float in Amsterdam on Tuesday as it seeks to become Europe’s second major listed company in the sector after the UK’s Just Eat.
Takeaway.com, which mainly provides an ordering platform for restaurants that arrange their own delivery, is comfortably the market leader in the Netherlands and Belgium. This is due in part to the company’s acquisition of Just Eat’s business in the region earlier this year, for €22.5m in cash.
The company’s 90 per cent market share of the online market in the Netherlands helps it produce an operating margin of more than 60 per cent in the country, according to chief executive Jitse Groen.
Mr Groen, who founded the company in 2000, said: “We have a simple strategy of being the number one it is a winner takes most market, which has a lot to do with the network effect.”
Overall, however, the group posted a €13.8m loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation off turnover of €77m in 2015.
Competition is fierce in Germany, where Takeaway.com’s Lieferando brand is in a fight for market share with Delivery Hero, which has its headquarters in the country. The chief executive of Delivery Hero described the competition in the country as a “bloodbath” earlier this year.
In general, the big European food delivery companies have been reluctant to go head-to-head in large markets, with Takeaway.com dropping out of the UK earlier this summer. “There are not many markets where you have comparable competitors going at it, hammer and tong,” said David Reynolds, an analyst at Jefferies, who covers companies such as Just Eat and US peer GrubHub.
Just Eat has performed relatively well since floating in 2014, with its share price having more than doubled since then. But critics say that companies such as Deliveroo and UberEats, which provide both a booking platform and delivery for clients, represent an existential threat to the likes of TakeAway.com and Just Eat.
Takeaway.com does provide some delivery in the Netherlands and Mr Groen dismissed these concerns. “Logistics is a very different business,” he said. “We do take it seriously because they have money, but I do not see why they are in a better position than, say, Just Eat.”
Investors Prime Ventures, which invested in 2012, and Macquarie Capital, who came on board in 2014, will sell some of their stakes in the float. Management owns roughly half of Takeaway.com, while Mr Groen, who said he “accounts for the lion’s share” of this figure, plans to keep 95 per cent of his stake.
Takeaway.com had taken steps towards a listing earlier this year but pulled back amid uncertainty before and after the Brexit vote in the UK.
