Eleven and a half billion euros, and Delivery Hero still said no. Now Uber is reportedly going back to the drawing board, and possibly back to the negotiating table with a sweeter number.
According to people familiar with the matter, Uber made an informal approach to the Berlin-based food delivery giant earlier this year, only to have it knocked back. The offer, worth roughly €11.5bn, was deemed too low by Delivery Hero’s board, which clearly reckons the company is worth considerably more than what the ride-hailing giant was dangling.
Delivery Hero operates in over 70 countries and owns the Talabat brand across the Middle East, as well as Foodpanda in parts of Asia. It’s a sprawling operation, and one that has had a rough few years on the stock market; its shares have lost well over half their value since 2021’s peak. That context makes the rebuffal all the more striking.
For Uber, the logic of a deal is obvious. The company has been aggressively expanding its Uber Eats arm, and snapping up Delivery Hero’s network would hand it a significant foothold in markets where it currently has little to no presence. Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi has made no secret of his appetite for consolidation in the delivery space.
“Scale matters enormously in this business,” one industry analyst noted this week. “Whoever controls the logistics infrastructure in enough cities basically controls the category.”
Delivery Hero, for its part, has been trying to steady the ship after years of heavy losses. It recently IPO’d Talabat in Dubai, raising fresh capital and giving the market a cleaner look at the crown jewel in its portfolio. That listing valued Talabat alone at around $10bn, which goes some way to explaining why €11.5bn for the whole group felt like a low-ball.
Whether Uber comes back with a revised offer, or quietly walks away, remains to be seen. But with consolidation pressure mounting across the food delivery sector, and several major players still bleeding cash, this almost certainly won’t be the last bid we hear about.
The real question is whether Delivery Hero holds its nerve long enough to get the price it believes it deserves.
