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Simply Eat Takeaway is about to be acquired by funding group Prosus in a €4.1bn deal that may result in the European meals supply firm’s delisting from public markets.
The all-cash provide of €20.30 a share is a 22 per cent premium over the group’s latest three-month excessive however under the €23.50 worth 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 important transaction since chief govt 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, stated on Monday that the Simply Eat deal was an “alternative to create a European tech champion”.
Prosus’ provide, which has been beneficial 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 worth in 2020.
However Jitse Groen, Simply Eat Takeaway’s founder and chief govt, stated the deal provided “speedy, sure and enticing worth for buyers” and would enable extra funding within the enterprise than could be potential as a public firm.
“It’s a really giant premium to the present share worth, that’s all the time most necessary in these discussions,” he stated.
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.
Nonetheless, 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 conflict 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 top of the pandemic-fuelled supply growth 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 reducing in December, Simply Eat Takeaway delisted from the London Inventory Trade to give attention to its Amsterdam itemizing.
On Monday, it reported a €1.65bn web loss for 2024, together with €1.16bn associated to Grubhub. Groen stated 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 advised reporters that he and Simply Eat Takeaway’s present administration workforce would keep on after the deal closes, regardless of Bloisi’s hands-on expertise in working meals supply corporations.
“He runs Prosus and I run Simply Eat Takeaway,” Groen stated. “The position going ahead will stay the identical. I believe we might be extra aggressive as a competitor within the present surroundings 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 identical playbook to Simply Eat, by specializing in utilizing expertise corresponding to synthetic intelligence to enhance its services and products.
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 lately went public.
