The arithmetic of the Delivery Hero takeover has settled into an unusually static pattern. Uber’s tender offer values each share at €41.50 in cash, yet the stock has spent weeks trading in the mid-€36 range — a persistent discount that tells the story of a market refusing to fully price in a deal that still needs regulatory sign-off and a separate divestment to close.
That gap narrowed only marginally on Thursday, when the Berlin-based delivery group’s shares closed at €36.66, nearly flat on the day. The stock’s trajectory since the board’s formal endorsement of the bid on Wednesday has been muted, leaving the equity roughly 9.5 percent below its 52-week high of €40.49, a level touched back in July.
Boards Give Their Blessing, Shareholders Get Their Deadline
Delivery Hero’s management and supervisory boards have now formally thrown their weight behind the offer, describing the €41.50-per-share cash consideration as fair and appropriate following an independent review. The recommendation arrived alongside the publication of the official offer document, which Germany’s financial regulator BaFin cleared just over a week earlier.
Shareholders now have a defined window to make up their minds: acceptance runs from August 27 until November 5, 2026. Uber has put a total price tag of roughly $14.8 billion on the transaction, a figure Reuters has also framed as an enterprise value of up to €13 billion.
The deal, however, is not a simple cash-and-shares handover. Completion remains contingent on merger control and other regulatory clearances, as well as the separate sale of selected Delivery Hero businesses to SSW Partners — conditions that explain why the market has yet to close the valuation gap.
A Business in Motion Beneath the Deal Drama
The board’s endorsement lands at a moment when the underlying operations are showing genuine momentum. Just over a week ago, Delivery Hero lifted its full-year guidance, raising its GMV growth forecast to 9 to 11 percent from a prior range of 8 to 10 percent. The like-for-like revenue growth expectation was revised up more aggressively, to 17 to 19 percent from 14 to 16 percent.
The first-half numbers give those projections some ballast. GMV reached €25.7 billion, up 10.1 percent on a comparable basis, while revenue climbed 17.8 percent to €7.8 billion. Free cash flow swung from minus €8 million in the prior-year period to a positive €348 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the year is now expected to land between €960 million and €1.0 billion, with free cash flow projected above €250 million.
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Management credits the group’s everyday-app strategy for much of the acceleration. Second-quarter orders hit 981 million, an 11 percent increase, while the stake in quick-commerce business Dmart saw order growth speed up to 39 percent. Reuters has also noted Delivery Hero’s growing emphasis on subscription models as a defensive play against intense competition in the delivery sector.
The Analyst Consensus Has a Familiar Ring
The board’s fairness opinion is echoed across the sell-side. Several research houses reaffirmed their ratings around the recent quarterly results, each with price targets set at exactly €41.50 — precisely matching Uber’s offer. That unusual uniformity underscores a broader point: the bid is widely viewed as a full and reasonable valuation of the business, rather than a lowball approach.
Yet the share price tells a more cautious story. The stock has slipped 2.1 percent since the guidance upgrade, suggesting that takeover dynamics have begun to overshadow operational news flow. Over the past 30 days, the shares have lost 1.9 percent, and they gave up another 0.4 percent in Thursday’s session. For the year, however, the picture remains strongly positive, with a 61 percent gain since January and a 51 percent advance over twelve months.
What the Discount Actually Means
The persistent gap between the offer price and the market price — roughly €4.97 as of Thursday’s close — is best read not as skepticism about the bid’s merits but as a measure of execution risk. Regulatory approvals remain outstanding, the SSW Partners divestment adds a layer of complexity, and the ultimate acceptance rate among shareholders is unknown.
For investors, the calculus has shifted from valuing Delivery Hero as a standalone operating business to assessing the probability of a successful deal closure. Until the November 5 deadline passes and the outstanding conditions are resolved, that gap is likely to persist as the market’s quiet verdict on the odds of completion.
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