Further growth on the menu as Dutch firm’s boss hails merger as ‘dream combination’
Shareholders in Just Eat have given the green light to a £6.2bn merger with Dutch food delivery firm Takeaway.com, which will create one of the largest food delivery groups in the world.
Takeaway.com said Just Eat shareholders holding 80.4% of the company’s voting rights had accepted its all-share merger offer, which it upped to an offer worth 916p a share just before Christmas. As a result of a fall in Takeaway.com’s share price since then, it was worth 902p a share on Friday.
Confirmation of the deal is a blow to rival Prosus, the Amsterdam-listed offshoot of the South African tech group Naspers, which tried to forestall the merger agreement with a rival offer. Before Christmas it raised its all-cash bid by £400m to £5.5bn, or 800p a share, having previously made 740p- and 710p-per-share bids.
Jitse Groen, the chief executive of Takeaway.com, said: “Just Eat/Takeaway.com is a dream combination and I am very much looking forward to leading the company for many years to come.”
The Takeaway.com deal is expected to be declared unconditional by 31 January 2020 and finalised by the end of February.
Takeaway.com’s offer hands Just Eat shareholders a 58% stake in the merged company. It has also said it will sell Just Eat’s stake in the Brazilian delivery company iFood, which Just Eat owns in partnership with Prosus, and return half the proceeds to shareholders.
Launched by five Danish entrepreneurs in 2001, Just Eat originally linked customers to restaurants that handled their own deliveries. It has recently branched out into handling deliveries, responding to competition from Uber Eats and Deliveroo.
The merger marks the latest phase of consolidation in the takeaway delivery market, which expanded by nearly 20% in the UK, excluding Northern Ireland, last year, according to analysts Kantar. The deal comes after Just Eat bought the UK firm HungryHouse and Takeaway.com acquired Delivery Hero’s German business in 2018.