Delivery service registers high loss despite growth

Delivery services group Delivery Hero could show business almost double in the first half of 2021 – and still make a loss of around one billion euros. Shock compared to last year.

Delivery Hero The first half of the year again posted dark red figures. The bottom line was that the online delivery service recorded a loss of 918.1 million euros, like the Dax group The announcement was made in Berlin on Thursday when the final business figures were presented.

A year ago, the minus was only about half that at less than 448 million euros. In terms of operations, Delivery Hero reported a loss (adjusted EBITDA) of EUR 350.8 million for the end of January-June, as against EUR 319.8 million in the same period last year.

80 percent increase in orders

CEO Niklas Ostberg continues to focus solely on growth at the expense of profitability. He reaffirmed the outlook for margins reduced two weeks ago. In the current year, an adjusted operating result with respect to gross value of goods of approximately minus 2 percent is expected, instead of minus 1.5 to minus 2 percent. In contrast, Ostberg raised its sales forecast for mid-August by 6.4 to 6.7 billion euros. Delivery Hero now expects the gross value of goods to reach 33 to 35 billion euros for the full year.

In the first half of 2021, the gross value of goods increased over three quarters to 16.2 billion euros, while total sales across segments more than doubled to 2.9 billion euros. Order volume grew more than 80 percent to 1.39 billion. The figures as well as last year’s figures include South Korean company Wuva, which has since been taken over.