Uber Agrees to $14.8 Billion Takeover of Delivery Hero After Getting Rejected in May

Uber Technologies confirmed Thursday it has a deal to buy Delivery Hero for $14.8 billion, capping months of stake-building that started after the German company rejected a lower offer back in May, according to Morningstar.

Uber had already quietly built a direct stake of 24.99% in Delivery Hero, with exposure to another 11.84% through derivatives, Morningstar reported. Delivery Hero confirmed Tuesday it was in advanced talks with Uber, and by Thursday both companies' boards were on board.

The Numbers

Uber is offering €41.50 per share, or $47.58, according to Reuters reporting carried by WMBD radio. That's a 34% premium over Delivery Hero's three-month volume-weighted average share price before the announcement.

Delivery Hero turned down €33 a share in May, according to Morningstar. The company got roughly 26% more per share four months later.

Delivery Hero closed Wednesday at €38.18. Shares popped 5.7% in premarket Frankfurt trading Thursday on the news, according to the New York Post, but Reuters noted the stock actually dipped about 1% shortly after the open, trading around €37.79, below the offer price. That gap suggests the market isn't fully convinced this closes at the headline number, or isn't convinced it closes on schedule.

Why Uber Wants This

Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber's CEO, said in the companies' joint statement that the deal lets Uber "double the number of markets" where it offers both mobility and delivery, according to Benzinga. Combined, the companies would operate across 99 countries with $236 billion in pro-forma gross merchandise value for 2025, per the joint statement cited by WMBD.

This is also a competitive response. DoorDash bought British delivery firm Deliveroo last year. Prosus, which owns iFood, bought Amsterdam-based Just Eat Takeaway.com. The food-delivery industry is consolidating fast, and Uber isn't going to sit out that fight, according to Morningstar.

Niklas Östberg, Delivery Hero's co-founder and longtime CEO, is stepping down, the company said earlier this year per Morningstar. Kristin Skogen Lund, chair of Delivery Hero's supervisory board, said "the food delivery business is highly competitive and scale dependent," and called joining forces with Uber "the right move" to secure the company's future competitiveness, according to Reuters.

The Antitrust Problem

Uber Eats and Delivery Hero overlap in multiple markets, including Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, according to a Financial Times report cited by Benzinga. Uber had actually paused plans to launch in five European markets specifically to avoid antitrust scrutiny.

To get ahead of regulators, Delivery Hero is selling off businesses in 14 markets, including its Turkish platform Yemeksepeti and foodora operations in Austria and elsewhere, to SSW Partners, a New York investment firm, for about €1.4 billion (roughly $1.6 billion), according to Benzinga and Morningstar. Uber says it won't control what SSW does with those businesses, and S