(qlmbusinessnews.com via telegraph.co.uk – – Tue, 6 Mar 2018) London, Uk – –
Shares in fast-growing online takeaway firm Just Eat dropped as much as 15pc this morning after the company fell to a loss on the back of a £180m impairment of its Australia and New Zealand business.
The company, which was promoted to the FTSE 100 last year, served up a 45pc surge in revenues to £546m in 2017 as it continued its rapid global expansion, including the acquisition of Canadian rival SkipTheDishes.
But the impairment meant it reported a £76m loss, compared with last year’s £91m in pre-tax profits and analyst profit forecasts of £118m.
Just Eat said it faced a particularly competitive market competition in Australia, where its customers are concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne, and that a cut in forecasted cash flow had forced it to reassess the business’s future prospects.
The company plans to launch its own delivery service in Australia in the near future, instead of relying on restaurants’ own drivers, but said accounting rules forbade it from including the potential benefits of that in its results.
It has been trialling a similar model with branded chains such as KFC and Burger King in the UK, where it plans to seize a greater slice of the delivery market from upmarket rival Deliveroo.
UK revenues were up 28pc in the year to £303.8m and the company said it handled a record 500,000 daily orders on the day of the X Factor final in December.
Excluding the impairment and other one-offs, pre-tax profits were up at £104m.
Shares in Just Eat were down 12.8pc at 742p in morning trade.
By Jack Torrance
