By Najat Kantouar and Adria Calatayud

Technology investor Prosus agreed to buy Just Eat Takeaway.com for $4.29 billion, using the war chest it built by selling part of its Tencent stake to bulk up its food-delivery arm.

The deal is set to create the fourth-largest player in food delivery globally by gross transaction value--a closely watched industry metric--after China's Meituan and U.S. companies DoorDash and Uber Technologies' UberEats, Amsterdam-listed Prosus said Monday.

Food-delivery companies benefited from a surge in demand during the Covid-19 pandemic and shortly after, but profitability remains a challenge for the industry amid intense competition, regulatory scrutiny and a pullback in consumer spending.

Prosus reached a conditional agreement to acquire Just Eat Takeaway.com for 4.1 billion euros ($4.29 billion), or 20.30 euros a share, in cash, the companies said. This represents a 63% premium to the food-delivery group's closing price on Friday and a 49% premium to its average price over the past three months.

Shares in Just Eat Takeaway.com jumped 53% in early trade in Europe, while Prosus fell more than 7%. News of the deal lifted shares in European peers Delivery Hero and Deliveroo.

The deal will cap Just Eat Takeaway.com's trajectory as an independent company, during which the Amsterdam-based group sought to expand to new markets through acquisitions such as the U.K.'s Just Eat and U.S.-based Grubhub until it began to retreat to its core operations more recently. In November, the company struck a deal to sell Grubhub to Wonder Group--a startup led by former Walmart executive Marc Lore--for $650 million.

For Prosus, the deal complements its existing food-delivery operations outside of Europe. The company owns Latin American platform iFood and holds stakes of 4% in Meituan, 28% in Germany's Delivery Hero and 25% in India's Swiggy.

Prosus, the biggest shareholder in Chinese tech giant Tencent, said it sees an opportunity to accelerate growth at Just Eat Takeaway.com through the deal. The investor had cash on hand of $18.3 billion at the end of September, a position it built partly by offloading portions of its Tencent stake.

The deal responds to the need to create bigger players in Europe, Prosus Chief Executive Fabricio Bloisi said.

"Just Eat Takeaway.com is now a faster growing, more profitable and predominantly European-based business," the company's chief executive, Jitse Groen, said. "Prosus fully supports our strategic plans, and its extensive resources will help to further accelerate our investments and growth across food, groceries, fintech and other adjacencies."

The Prosus offer has the unanimous support and recommendation of Just Eat Takeaway.com's management and supervisory boards, the companies said. The deal is subject to regulatory approvals, with the offer expected to be settled by year-end.

Write to Najat Kantouar at najat.kantouar@wsj.com and Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@wsj.com.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 24, 2025 04:00 ET (09:00 GMT)

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