Just Eat Takeaway.com (JET) recorded roaring trading activity over its first half. Revenues jumped by 44 per cent to €1bn (£928m), as the food delivery titan processed 257m customer orders, representing an increase of almost a third. Yet its pre-tax losses widened to €121m from €7m last year, on a like-for-like basis.
The latter metric will come as no surprise to those who have tracked the recent consolidation activity in the food delivery industry. The costs of tying up Just Eat and Takeaway.com earlier this year, along with the proposed £6bn merger with US giant Grubhub, are responsible for the group’s mounting losses.
The group's cost of sales ramped up as it built out its operations during the pandemic. Still, while delivery represented nearly 80 per cent of those expenses, the cost per order actually fell as the group became more efficient.
Just Eat Takeaway.com isn’t slowing down once the Grubhub deal is done. Short-term shareholder returns may be muted by “an aggressive investment programme” in a range of geographical markets. Management noted that the Just Eat brands had seen a lack of investment in recent years.
