Takeaway Quits Romania; Shares Inch up From All-Time Lows

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Just Eat Takeaway.com NV, Europe’s largest food delivery company, on Tuesday said it would discontinue operations in Romania, the third country it has exited this year under pressure to become profitable.

Its shares, which plumbed all-time lows on Monday, had recovered 3.4% to 19.23 euros by 0711 GMT.

“Competitive pressure, our relative scale and the overall market penetration for food delivery in Romania have been insufficient to sustain a healthy business,” Takeaway said in a statement.

“The closing of this market enables us to concentrate on sustainably profitable and market-leading positions.”

Takeaway, which posted a loss of more than 1 billion euros in 2021, quit the Portuguese and Norwegian markets in March.

The decision to leave Romania follows a fractious annual general meeting last week at which the shareholder Cat Rock, which holds 6.88% of shares, compared with founder Jitse Groen’s 7.13%, urged the company to shed non-core assets more aggressively.

Groen said in April he was in talks to sell US arm Grubhub, which Takeaway bought for $7.3 billion euros in June 2021.

However, at the meeting, Cat Rock founder Alex Captain argued Groen should go further and sell other non-European operations – in Canada, Australia and Israel – regardless of their profitability, to keep strategic focus on Europe.

Takeaway holds mostly top positions in Europe but faces competition from the likes of Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Doordash and Delivery Hero.

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Bradley Perrett)