A Just Eat driver on Tower Bridge
(Picture: Just Eat)The boss of Just Eat Takeaway.com has vowed to plough more cash into the “competitive” UKmarket to take on 10-minute grocery delivery services despite mounting losses.
CEO Jitse Groen said the business was “almost break even” in the UK in December but was not targeting profits for now.
“We’re still in a competitive situation in the UK so we’ll invest quite some capital in the expansion of the UK position,” he said. “We do that out of choice.”
Just Eat competes with the likes of Deliveroo, UberEats and new 10-minute grocery start-ups like Gorillas and Getir in London. Groen said Just Eat planned to invest more in its “grocery offer” here to take on the new challengers.
“We have quite some investments coming,” he said. “We will do quite a lot of things to improve our business. We’re a growth business and the UK is obviously a very important market.”
The investment pledge came as Just Eat Takeaway.com reported soaring losses. The company lost €1 billion (£830 million) last year, compared with €151 million in 2021. On an adjusted basis, the business swung from a €363 million profit to a €350 million loss.
The business put the slump down to investment in “historically underinvested legacy Just Eat markets”.
Takeaway.com merged with Just Eat in 2020 and the business bought US rival GrubHub for $7.3 billion last year. Groen said integration costs weighed on performance.
The Dutch billionaire insisted that the business was in a better state than prior to the pandemic despite the mounting losses.
He said: “Our users just order more frequently and we are far more used than before the pandemic so, for the business at least, the pandemic has been quite good.”
Revenue rose 33% to €5.3 billion in 2021 with total orders up 33% to one billion. Active customers rose 9% to 99 million.
Just Eat said 2021 would be the year of “peak losses” and Groen said the overall business was “now rapidly progressing towards profitability.”
Shares rose 47p to 2935p.
