Thuisbezorgd aims to become 'European tech champion' under new owner

Did someone say “tech champion”? Ding, ding, dong, yes, and not Katy Perry this time. Two years ago, Just Eat Takeaway.com (JET) ran a campaign in which the American pop star sang praises of the delivery service, operating under names such as Thuisbezorgd.nl, Menulog.com.au, Lieferando.de and Just-Eat.co.uk, in over twenty languages . On Monday, it was Fabricio Bloisi, CEO of tech investor Prosus, who wants to acquire JET for 4.1 billion euros in order to create a “European tech champion”.

With the acquisition, which still has to be approved by regulators, one of the few Dutch tech successes will end up in foreign hands. What kind of party is Prosus and what does it plan to do with the meal ordering platform?

1 What is Prosus?

Prosus is the investment arm of the South African Naspers, a company that originated as a newspaper publisher in the early 20th century. Prosus is listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange and is actually known for one thing: a very smart investment in the Chinese internet company Tencent. In 2001, the South Africans invested 32 million dollars in what was then a small start-up. Tencent subsequently grew enormously: it is the maker of the indispensable all-in-one app WeChat in China and the company behind a number of wildly popular games. Prosus still owns almost a quarter of Tencent, a stake that has now become worth around 146 billion dollars.

The stake in Tencent forms the bulk of Prosus’ assets, but the company has made several tech investments. It owns a number of second-hand marketplaces, has stakes in payment service providers and has invested in online learning platforms. Meal delivery is also a familiar sector for Prosus. For example, it owns iFood, a Brazilian equivalent of Thuisbezorgd. Prosus also has stakes in Delivery Hero (active in 70 countries) and the Indian Swiggy. It also invested in the instant message service Flink.

Last year, Prosus appointed a new CEO, Fabricio Bloisi. He was given the task of expanding the investment company beyond its stake in Tencent. It is not surprising that he is now doing this with an acquisition of a delivery service: he previously worked at iFood. When he took office, Bloisi already said that his experience in the delivery sector could be useful for further growth plans.

2 What will happen to JET now?

The delivery service will continue to have an office in Amsterdam and will not change its name. Founder and CEO Jitse Groen will also remain at the helm for the time being, although he will sell his shares - he is estimated to have earned 311 million euros from the deal.

Under the new owner, JET must continue to grow in the European countries where it is already profitable. "Prosus will be more aggressive than we can be ourselves," Groen said Monday morning. The meal delivery industry is a winner-takes-all market where platforms can only increase their margins if they are the largest. To do so, they are mainly concerned with recruiting customers by throwing around discounts.

In a press release, JET mentions the “highly effective growth strategy at iFood”, which offers a “blueprint” for the European order sites. Last year, 30 percent more orders were placed at iFood than a year earlier, at JET this decreased by 5 percent.

JET has around 10,500 full-time jobs. At the same time as the takeover news, the company presented its annual results. Last year, turnover amounted to almost 5.1 billion euros, almost 1 percent less than a year earlier.

3 Is 4.1 billion euros a lot?

Prosus CEO Bloisi seems to have mixed feelings about it. "We pay a good premium on the price," he told financial news agency Bloomberg on Monday. "But the valuation of European companies in general is a problem. Many European tech companies should be valued higher." He draws a comparison with the United States and China, where the largest meal delivery companies are worth more than 100 billion dollars.

The amount that Prosus wants to pay amounts to just over 20 euros per share. That is more than 60 percent above the valuation that JET had on the Amsterdam stock exchange before the announcement. But the ordering platform was worth considerably more in 2020: at that time the share reached a peak valuation of 100 euros per share.

Prosus can speak for itself about undervaluation. The investor is valued by investors at around 100 billion euros – less than its stake in Tencent alone is worth. Investors do not seem to attribute any value to any of Prosus' other assets. Prosus investors are not very enthusiastic about this deal either: the share price fell by more than 7 percent after the announcement.

4 Why has JET become so much less valuable?

The Dutch delivery service was particularly popular at the start of the corona pandemic, when restaurants all over the world had to switch to a delivery model in a hurry. But when it became clear after the lockdowns that consumers were craving a night out again, investors found the stock a lot less attractive.

The company's growth strategy also plays a role. The ordering platform was founded in 2000 by entrepreneur Jitse Groen as Thuisbezorgd.nl. In the years that followed, it expanded with ordering sites in other European countries, such as Germany, Belgium and Austria. Groen wanted to grow further and merged his company with its British counterpart Just Eat in early 2020, thereby beating a takeover bid from Prosus.

Just a few months later, the then newly formed Just Eat Takeaway took its next step: it swallowed up the American delivery service Grubhub for over 7 billion dollars. But that's where things went wrong: Grubhub turned out to be unable to compete with DoorDash and Uber Eats, which have a much larger market share in the United States.

"Groen has overfilled his plate," a critical investor told NRC in 2022. Three quarters of the stock market value had already evaporated by then. Under pressure from shareholders, JET put the American branch up for sale. It then took more than two years before Grubhub was sold. At the end of 2024, Grubhub was sold for a paltry 650 million euros. That also put pressure on the company's results, causing JET to lose 1.6 billion euros last year.

Groen says about the deal with Prosus that "as far as I know" it is not done under pressure from shareholders. If the takeover goes through, the price drops will be over in any case: JET will disappear from the stock exchange.