In the world of techie businesses fuelled by hope and sky-high multiples of revenues, it’s not only Netflix that has stalled. Look at Just Eat Takeaway, which used to present itself as a deal-a-minute company taking a short-cut to global leadership and profits.
Takeaway.com, out of the Netherlands, bought Just Eat of the UK in early 2020 via a reverse takeover (briefly assuming a place in the FTSE 100 index before decamping back to Amsterdam). Only a few months later it announced plans to merge with US operator Grubhub via a $7.3bn all-paper deal at a fat premium. To sceptics who said two mega-transactions in rapid succession would be too much to swallow comfortably, chief executive, Jitse Groen, argued, in effect, that you have to seize the moment in the fast-moving delivery game.
