(Bloomberg) -- Prosus NV agreed to buy Just Eat Takeaway.com NV for €4.1 billion ($4.3 billion), as the technology investor seeks to expand its footprint in Europe.
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The all-cash deal at €20.30 a share is a 49% premium to the three-month volume-weighted average price, the company said in a statement Monday. The stock closed at €12.43 on Friday.
The purchase marks an effort by Prosus Chief Executive Officer Fabricio Bloisi to find new sources of growth after an early investment in Chinese video game company Tencent Holdings Ltd. ended up dominating the company’s books and skewing its market value. Just Eat will add to Prosus’s food delivery portfolio, where it owns stakes in companies with operations in South America, India and Southeast Asia. After a growth surge during the pandemic, food delivery apps have been hit by cutthroat price wars, which has driven industry consolidation.
Bloisi said his company has $18 billion in cash and could use as much as $11 billion on acquisitions, although it plans for now to focus on closing this deal and growth. “My plan after this transaction is to grow all our businesses faster — and we believe we can grow faster with Just Eat Takeaway,” he said in an interview on Monday.
Amsterdam-based Just Eat operates in 17 markets including the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. The company has been been streamlining operations after a post-pandemic slump in consumer demand. It recently sold its US operation Grubhub for about $650 million, a steep discount from the acquisition price of $7.3 billion in 2021.
The acquisition by Prosus positions Just Eat to “compete more effectively against Uber Eats and Deliveroo, leveraging Prosus’ stake in Brazilian food delivery company iFood as a model to improve operations,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Tatiana Lisitsina.
Just Eat shares rose as much as 56% in Amsterdam on Monday after the announcement, the most on record. Shares in Prosus fell as much as 8.6%.
“Many of the technology companies in Europe, they should be valuing more and they should be investing more,” Bloisi said on Bloomberg TV. “So I think this is the right price for the Just Eat shareholders because we’re paying a good premium.”
Before Bloisi became head of Prosus and its South African parent Naspers Ltd. last year, he ran the company’s Brazilian food delivery business, iFood. Under his leadership it became the biggest online food-delivery company in the country, using artificial intelligence for personalized recommendations and to automate onboarding of drivers and restaurants. Prosus plans to apply a similar approach to Just Eat, enhancing the customer experience with AI, Bloisi said.
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Prosus has a number of investments in food delivery platforms around the world, including full ownership of iFood, a 28% stake in Berlin-based Delivery Hero SE and a quarter of India’s Swiggy, which held an initial public offering in November.
Just Eat previously held a stake in iFood, which it sold to Prosus in 2022.
Brazil-born Bloisi, who was appointed to run both Prosus and its South African parent Naspers Ltd. last year, said in January that the company has close to $20 billion to spend and is ready to grow in Europe. He called President Donald Trump’s moves to make the US a superpower in artificial intelligence a “wake up call” for Europe.
Prosus is known for a blockbuster 2001 investment in Tencent. Prosus, through Naspers, paid $34 million for a stake in Tencent that is now worth more than $140 billion. Prosus will continue with one of the biggest buybacks in the world, where it sells down some of Tencent and buys back its own shares, said Bloisi in an interview on Monday.
--With assistance from Yazhou Sun.
(Corrects Bloisi quote in eighth paragraph to say Prosus is offering a premium.)
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