It isn’t hard to see why Uber wants to be “one app for everything.” Piling everything from hotels and cars to shopping and finance on to a single “super app” is tantamount to a giant cross-selling opportunity, and a rich seam of customer behavioural data. But buying Delivery Hero, the food delivery business that Uber has been circling, would be a complicated and expensive way to get closer to boss Dara Khosrowshahi’s dream.
One problem is that the German group, which biked almost €50bn worth of meals last year in around 65 countries under brands such as Glovo and Foodora, has already markedly risen in price. As one of the last sizeable assets left in a sector that has been consolidating — with Deliveroo acquired by DoorDash and Just Eat Takeaway by Prosus — bid talk has swirled and its shares have roughly doubled over the past month, to give it an enterprise value of €14.2bn.
