Just Eat ups guidance despite shrinking orders
This guidance also includes additional investments in food and non-food adjacencies, wage costs inflation and ‘reflects an uncertain macroeconomic environment’
Just Eat has said it now expects to deliver a positive adjusted EBITDA of approximately €275m (£242.2m) for FY23, up from its previous guidance of €225m (£198.2m), despite an overall fall in orders.
The raised outlook comes despite the food delivery platform seeing its gross transaction value narrow throughout the first quarter, with March declining 5% year-on-year and the whole quarter declining by 8% overall.
This guidance also includes additional investments in food and non-food adjacencies, wage costs inflation and “reflects an uncertain macroeconomic environment”.
In addition, management expects free cash flow to turn positive in mid-2024.
While the group states that Northern Europe along with the UK and Ireland are leading its gross transaction value recovery, Just Eat believes that a return to growth is skewed towards the end of the year.
Jitse Groen, CEO of Just Eat, said: “Just Eat continues to recover from last year’s deceleration, with the Northern Europe and the UK and Ireland segments leading the trend. While the year-on-year gross transaction value (GTV) decline in Q1 2023 is significant, the comparison is with the quarter with the second highest GTV of the pandemic.
“Our efforts to improve profitability are running ahead of plan, however, Q1 2023 continued to be affected by a difficult pandemic comparison. The company continues to make good progress on delivery-led operational improvements and is now ahead of plan.”
