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(Alliance News) - Just Eat Takeaway.com NV on Wednesday reported a widened loss for 2022, due to a huge impairment of its Grubhub acquisition, but it growth in 2023.
The former FTSE 100 stock was down 6.0% at 1,701.00 pence each on Wednesday morning in London.
The food delivery app said revenue was up 4.3% to EUR5.56 billion for 2022 from EUR5.33 billion a year ago.
However, pretax loss widened to EUR5.67 billion from EUR1.04 billion, driven by impairment losses of EUR4.6 billion, relating to the Grubhub acquisition and the merger of Just Eat and Takeaway.com, which Just Eat Takeaway blamed on macroeconomic factors, including rising interest rates.
Just Eat Takeaway had bought Chicago-based Grubhub back in June 2021 for USD7.3 billion, about EUR6.9 billion.
Looking ahead, Just Eat Takeaway said it continues to "actively explore" the partial or full sale of Grubhub but said there can be no certainty of an agreement.
Revenue less order fulfilment costs increased 24% to EUR2.36 billion from EUR1.90 billion a year earlier, driven by "strengthened unit economics across both Delivery and Marketplace", it explained.
Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation amounted to EUR19 million, swung from a loss of EUR350 million in 2021. The company said all operating segments materially contributed to the operating improvement, with largest gains in UK & Ireland, Southern Europe and Australia & New Zealand, and North America.
Chief Executive Officer Jitse Groen said: "In 2022, our priority was to enhance profitability and strengthen our business...We expect a further improvement to adjusted Ebitda in 2023 and our ambition to create a highly profitable food delivery business is firmly on track."
As at December 31, cash amounted to EUR2.02 billion, up 53% from EUR1.32 billion in 2021.
Looking ahead, Just Eat reiterated guidance of achieving adjusted Ebitda of about EUR225 million, including additional investments in food and non-food adjacencies as well as wage costs inflation. It expects growth in 2023 to be skewed towards the end of the year, given the lower absolute order level of the second half in 2022 compared to the first half.
By Xindi Wei, Alliance News reporter
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