Losses within Just Eat’s UK business have ‘clearly peaked’ with the business pleased with the turnaround it has executed over the past 18 months and looking to extend its leadership position, according to Andrew Kenny, UK MD, Just Eat.
Speaking during a Capital Markets Day presentation yesterday (21 October), for JustEatTakeaway.com, Kenny said investments in the UK arm of the business inevitably hit profitability but it was confident EBITDA was on an upward trajectory.
Kenny said the delivery aggregator had seen very strong growth in the UK, since the merger between Just Eat and Takeaway.com in April last year, which had driven the top line of the business. Investments had been focused on three main areas: scaling its logistics infrastructure, price leadership and sales and marketing.
He said Just Eat had made “significant headway” in London, recapturing close to 10 points in market share that had been lost over a number of years. Part of the work on price leadership included offering free delivery in London and select cities, as well as low delivery fees for key brands nationwide, but Kenny explained that it was beginning to optimise consumer fee pricing and was no longer running free delivery campaigns on a city-wide or national level, having instead introduced variable pricing.
“We have plenty more to do in this city but are very encouraged by the progress that we have made to date,” he said.
Just Eat UK has grown the total number of restaurants on its platform by 65% since January 2020, with its overall estate growing by another fifth this year to date, with 61,000 restaurants now on the platform.
Its restaurant partners deliver to 95% of all UK postcodes, and while a large part of the growth of its estate has been weighted towards brands and independents that require its delivery logistics, Kenny added that Just Eat has also seen significant growth in new restaurants joining the platform and opting to do the delivery themselves on market place – up almost 30% since the beginning of 2020. “This year to date we have seen low double-digit order growth in marketplace restaurants.”
Looking ahead, Kenny said the UK business was focused on executing across three key areas: optimising consumer pricing while maintaining its successful price leadership strategy, driving down delivery costs by improving efficiency in its network, and continuing to ensure it has the best choice of restaurants in the market.
