The Berlin delivery service Delivery Hero looks primarily to the world market. Acquisitions and investments ensure rapid growth with high losses. Germany remains at most a test laboratory.
With the takeover of its Spanish competitor Glovo announced in January, the Berlin delivery service platform Delivery Hero has once again made its ambitions on the world market clear.
“What we are doing is the only way to have a chance internationally against the US and Asian competition,” said CEO Niklas Östberg on Thursday when presenting the figures for the fourth business quarter. “We are therefore one of the leading international companies in the industry.”
But the claim to global leadership and the associated growth has its price: in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, the group made an adjusted operating loss of almost 781 million euros before taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda). That was almost a third more than in the same period last year.
775 million orders in the fourth quarter
Demand remained high: Delivery Hero recorded 775 million orders in the last business quarter – also almost a third more than in the same period of 2020. Sales excluding voucher effects rose by 89 percent across the Group in 2021 as a whole to EUR 6.6 billion.
With Glovo, Delivery Hero is taking over a competitor who is also active around the world but is hardly known in Germany. For a long time now, the Berliners have no longer only concentrated on restaurant deliveries, but also bring supermarket products home to order. In most regions, the group is now also active in the pharmacy market and supplies over-the-counter medicines, emphasized Östberg.
Asia remains the Group’s most important market, accounting for almost half of sales in the fourth quarter. Delivery Hero also remains active in Europe, but mainly in Eastern European countries.
Delivery Hero separated from its German business in 2019. For a few months last year, the group tried again to gain a foothold with its Foodpanda brand. Östberg ended the experiment in the fall. “We saw better investment opportunities elsewhere and quickly changed our minds,” he said on Thursday. However, Delivery Hero still holds a stake in the delivery service Gorillas.
Germany is primarily a test laboratory for the company. “We try things out on a small scale in Berlin, which we then export internationally,” said Östberg. Here the company is investigating questions such as how the delivery time can be reduced from ten to nine minutes or how warehouses can be reduced and still accommodate more products.
The current figures and targets on Thursday caused disillusionment on the stock exchange. The share, which has been under pressure for some time, continued to fall sharply.
Source: Stern
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
