Investment update on menu for Just Eat Takeaway

After three profit warnings in the last 18 months, investors will be hoping for a positive update on progress from food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway when it reports first-half figures this week.

Although orders rose 61 per cent in the first half of the year, taking transaction values up to £12 billion, the company is expected to report underlying losses of around £174 million as it continues to spend on ramping up its scale.

Numis' Georgios Pilakoutas said he thinks investors will also be looking to see how open Just Eat is about its investment levels, especially in delivery costs, as well as its strategy in the US.

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Just Eat Takeaway is seeing order numbers rise rapidly but it continues to be loss-making. Picture: contributed.Just Eat Takeaway is seeing order numbers rise rapidly but it continues to be loss-making. Picture: contributed.
Just Eat Takeaway is seeing order numbers rise rapidly but it continues to be loss-making. Picture: contributed.

It has been a period of change for the group. Formed in February last year when the Dutch firm Takeaway.com took over its UK peer, it later gobbled up Grubhub, a US food delivery company, for £5.75bn.

Yet at least two major investors think this might not be enough to ward off a lowball hostile takeover of the company. Last month, activist investor Cat Rock lobbied the board to either sell off part of its business, or to merge with a major rival.

A big merger would make the business more takeover-proof as rivals would struggle to raise the money to buy it off the market, the activist argued. Shares reached their all-time peak last October, trading at 9,980p each. On Friday they were trading at 6,161p.

Consolidation talk in the market has not been dampened by Just Eat's UK rival Deliveroo. Earlier this month, Germany peer Delivery Hero took a 5 per cent stake in Deliveroo, sending the company's shares soaring.

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