Hamburg The US supplier Doordash takes over the European rival Wolt. Wolt valued the deal at seven billion euros, Wolt announced on Tuesday evening. Doordash thus makes the leap onto the European market – and also to Germany.
The deal brings together two partners who entered the delivery market relatively late. Doordash from San Francisco has existed since 2013. Wolt was founded a year later in Helsinki – among others by Miki Kuusi, who will become CEO for the foreign markets of the combined company. “Doordash built its incredible business in the largest market in the world while we had to learn the art of expansion early on from a small home country,” said Kuusi. His company has around 4,000 employees in 23 countries.
Doordash CEO Tony Xu said the company would work together to build a global platform for local business. Doordash delivers goods from restaurants, shops and its own warehouses mainly by bicycle courier in cities – similar to Lieferando in Germany. Wolt has also been active in Berlin for a few months and is currently expanding to Hamburg, among other places.
Doordash also showed interest in the German market a few weeks ago. The Americans took part in a $ 600 million financing round for the Berlin express delivery service Flink.
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Pure stock deal
Doordash pays for the Wolt acquisition entirely in shares. Wolt’s investors will become shareholders in the combined group. Wolt himself has not yet been listed on the stock exchange. The provider experienced the last major financing round at the beginning of 2021.
According to “Crunchbase”, Wolt has raised a total of over $ 822.5 million in venture capital so far. Investors include well-known names such as Tiger Global, Coatue, EQT, and KKR. One of the smaller donors is the Berlin multiple founder Lukasz Gadowski, who co-founded the competitor Delivery Hero ten years ago.
Doordash, on the other hand, went public at the end of 2020 and was worth almost $ 65 billion there. The share rose significantly after the trading day on Tuesday evening.
The deal reshuffles the cards in the competition for global delivery services. The provider Doordash, which has so far been heavily focused on America, could, among other things, make stronger competition to the European rival Just Eat Takeaway, which also includes Lieferando, and the Berlin-based Dax group Delivery Hero.
Delivery Hero has only just re-entered the competition in its home market of Germany under the Foodpanda brand. The move shows that tough international competition for market leadership in individual countries and on entire continents is still raging in the delivery business.
The partners announced that the deal should be completed in the first half of 2022. Together, they would both generate an adjusted operating profit (Ebitda) between $ 0 million and $ 500 million. In the first three quarters of 2021, Doordash achieved sales of $ 3.59 billion with a pre-tax loss of $ 310 million, according to Tuesday. The US group thus grew significantly – both in terms of sales and losses.
The deal is also worthwhile for Wolt management: Part of the agreement is a half-billion euro incentive package for Wolt management.
Wolt founder Kuusi wrote in a personal blog post that the deal was initiated just over a month ago. Doordash boss Xu approached him at the time. “I didn’t think much of it,” wrote Kuusi – after all, both of them have been friends for a long time. However, one thing quickly became clear: “Together we can form one of the most important players in our industry,” wrote Kuusi.
For a long time he wanted to build Wolt as an independent world market leader – but both partners could achieve more together. Kuusi promised to stay on board in the joint venture. The Wolt brand with its blue logo will also be retained in its stores.
More: The struggle of delivery services for the big cities