By Simon Jessop

LONDON (Reuters) – British food delivery firm Deliveroo announced plans for its London listing on Monday, disclosing it had narrowed its underlying loss in 2020 to 223.7 million pounds ($308.93 million).

The Deliveroo IPO is one of the most eagerly watched-for initial public offerings (IPOs) in the first half of 2021, and is expected to value the company at more than $7 billion.

In a trading update alongside its IPO circular, the company said it had grown the total number of transactions processed on its online platform, the so-called Gross Transaction Value, by 64.3% last year to 4.1 billion pounds from 2.5 billion in 2019.

Over the same period, underlying gross profit rose 89.5% to 357.5 million pounds from 188.7 million, pushing underlying gross profit as a percentage of GTV to 8.8% from 7.6%.

The total underlying loss for the year came in at 223.7 million pounds, down from 317.3 million pounds in 2019, it added.

As flagged last week, the company said it planned to use a dual-class share structure that will give co-founder Will Shu more control over the company.

($1 = 0.7239 pounds)

(Reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by Rachel Armstrong)