(Bloomberg) -- Delivery Hero SE is merging three of its businesses across Europe and Asia to cut costs and simplify its operations as the German food delivery business looks for ways to revive growth.
The company will combine two of its European business teams — Foodora and Yemeksepeti — with its Asian business, Foodpanda, Delivery Hero said in a statement on Wednesday. The company said it will cut fewer than 200 employees as part of the merger. The company said it had about 48,000 employees across all of its businesses in 2023, including almost 20,000 in delivery and food processing.
Delivery Hero is grappling with a 17% drop in shares this year as the industry struggles with heavy competition and narrow profit margins. The startup had attempted to sell off parts of the Foodpanda business to pull back from Asia this year with mixed success. While talks fell apart for some of its Southeast Asian businesses, it successfully struck a deal to sell its Taiwan operations to Uber Technologies Inc. for $950 million.
The new group will be the second largest organization in Delivery Hero and will be led by Tareq Barto, the current chief operating officer of the company’s Middle Eastern brand. Foodora currently operates in central and northern Europe while Yemeksepeti is Delivery Hero’s Turkish brand. Foodpanda is the largest food delivery platform in Asia outside of China, and operates in 11 markets.
Delivery Hero is facing a formal antitrust probe from the European Commission to determine if it illegally colluded with Spanish subsidiary Glovo. Earlier in the month, the company had warned a potential antitrust fine could exceed €400 million ($433 million).
The shares rose 2.7% to €20.73 at 12:52 p.m. in Frankfurt trading after earlier gaining as much as 5.4%.
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