5th February 2017
Just Eat, the global marketplace for online food delivery, has increased revenues by 52% to £375.7m to 31 December 2016. Orders rose 42% to 136.4mllion), up 36% on a like-for like basis. Lik-for-like revenues increased 46%. Pre tax rose 164% to £91.3 million (2015: £34.6 million). The compnay processed restaurant orders worth over £2.5b (2015: £1.7 billion). Active users increased 31% to 17.6 million (2015: 13.4 million). Orders placed via mobile devices grew to 73% of group orders (2015: 66%). More than 50% of UK orders were processed through an Orderpad, its tablet-based order management platform, Just Eat says the UK marketplace expanded to £6.1 billion. The proposed acquisition of Hungryhouse in the UK was also announced in December, and remains subject to approval by the Competition and Markets Authority.
Chief executive David Buttress said: “We continue to see strong growth in the UK, adding materially more revenues in absolute terms than the year before. Our markets remain relatively under-penetrated, meaning there is considerable runway to generate sustainably profitable growth across the business. In 2016, we increased the number of restaurants on our network by a net 7,000 to 68,500 (31 December 2015: 61,500) and gained 4.2 million new active users, highlighting the positive network effects of market leadership. The average number of orders we processed per restaurant increased by 19%.”
The company took orders for more than 88 takeaways in 2016, the year in which the UK market passed the £6bn mark for the first time. It said technology developments had “made food discovery more exciting”. Last year, the company delivered the world’s first takeaway by self-driving robot and became the first five-star-rated iOS food delivery app. The company said it would “continue to push boundaries in 2017”, a year that kicked-off with a record-breaking New Year’s Day, with “40 orders a second at peak times”. Just Eat grew the number of restaurants on its UK platform in 2016 to 27,600. The company said desserts and breakfast dishes were its fastest-growing categories in the UK. Italian food remained the nation’s favourite choice for Just Eat deliveries, with Chinese food second and Indian cuisine third. Just Eat processed an average of 3,000 orders per restaurant, and kicked off 2017 with 40 orders a second at peak times on New Year’s Day.