Uber to acquire Delivery Hero in $14.8bn deal, 26% above prior bid
▼ Summary
– Uber agreed to buy Delivery Hero for €41.50 per share in cash, a 26% increase from its May offer, valuing the company at $14.8 billion.
– Delivery Hero’s management and largest shareholder Prosus have backed the deal, with Prosus committing its shares, bringing Uber’s total economic interest to about 53%.
– Delivery Hero will sell its businesses in 14 overlapping markets to SSW Partners for about $1.6 billion, a preemptive divestiture financed by Uber to address regulatory concerns.
– The deal’s success hinges on whether European and Asian regulators accept the carve-out and vendor financing, with key details like timetable and acceptance threshold still unsettled.
– Uber’s strategic move secures the largest non-US food-delivery footprint, while it also commits roughly $10 billion to robotaxi development, making the $14.8 billion acquisition part of a broader expensive expansion.
Uber has agreed to acquire Delivery Hero at €41.50 per share in cash, marking a 26% increase from the offer it made in May and aligning closely with the price that Delivery Hero’s largest investors had been demanding. The deal, formalized through a business combination agreement signed on Thursday, values the German food-delivery giant at $14.8 billion on a fully diluted basis, or approximately $13.7 billion after adjusting for the stake Uber had already accumulated. The combined entity would span 99 markets, with pro-forma gross bookings of $236 billion projected for 2025.
Delivery Hero’s management and supervisory boards have unanimously endorsed the offer and plan to recommend that shareholders tender their shares. Prosus, the company’s largest shareholder, has already committed its stake irrevocably, pushing Uber’s total economic interest to around 53%.
This marks a sharp reversal from just eight weeks ago. When Uber first approached Delivery Hero in May with a €33 per share bid, the offer represented a 1.76% discount to the stock’s previous close. Several major shareholders publicly pushed for a price closer to €40, and DoorDash was reportedly weighing its own full takeover bid. The board had room to negotiate for more, and it did exactly that, securing an additional €1.50 above the figure the holdouts had named.
The more intriguing aspect of the deal lies in its regulatory strategy. Delivery Hero has separately agreed to sell its operations in 14 markets,where Uber Eats and Delivery Hero already overlap,to SSW Partners for roughly $1.6 billion. That transaction is contingent on Uber’s offer closing. Uber will not take control of any of those divested businesses; instead, SSW will run its own process to find strategic buyers for them. Notably, Uber is lending SSW most of the purchase price, with repayment structured over time, including from any future sale proceeds.
This structure follows a familiar pattern: a preemptive divestiture arranged before regulators have weighed in, financed by the acquirer, and sold to a firm that will eventually flip the assets. Whether European and Asian regulators will accept this carve-out as sufficient, and whether they are comfortable with the vendor financing, remains the central open question in the deal. Those answers will not come quickly.
The 14 markets have been described only as those where the two businesses currently overlap. The offer timetable, the minimum acceptance threshold, and the regulatory filings still to be made are all critical details that will determine whether this deal closes cleanly next year or drags into uncertainty. None of those were settled on Thursday.
For Uber, the strategic rationale has not changed since May. Delivery Hero operates in more than 60 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, through brands including Foodpanda, Glovo, Talabat, and South Korea’s Baedal Minjok. It represents the largest non-U. S. food-delivery footprint in the world and, with DoorDash having absorbed Deliveroo and Just Eat Takeaway sold to Prosus, the last independent platform of scale still available.
Uber had been preparing the ground for this acquisition for some time. It placed five of seven planned 2026 European launches on hold while pursuing the target, and it closed its Getir acquisition in Türkiye earlier this year.
What makes the price tag notable is where else Uber is spending its capital. The company has committed roughly $10 billion to robotaxis, including $1.25 billion to Rivian for a fleet of up to 50,000 autonomous vehicles, alongside deals with Wayve, Nissan, Lucid, Nuro, and MOIA. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has spent several earnings calls describing this as building “everyday utility.” Paying $14.8 billion for the delivery leg while funding an autonomy programme is an expensive interpretation of that phrase.
Delivery Hero’s co-founder and chief executive Niklas Östberg, who launched the company in 2011, announced in May that he would step down once a successor is in place, with the handover targeted for the end of 2026 and no later than 31 March 2027. He will hand over a company that no longer needs one.
(Source: The Next Web)
