Yemeksepeti owner Delivery Hero goes public in Frankfurt

FRANKFURT

German food delivery firm Delivery Hero, which also owns Turkey’s leading food ordering giant Yemeksepeti, successfully dipped its first toe into the Frankfurt stock market on June 30, in an initial public offering highly anticipated by investors.

Shares shot up from their 25.50 euros starting price to trade at 27 euros ($30.81) just after the market opened at 0700 GMT, before falling back to 26.17 euros by 08:30, as reported by AFP. 

The starting price would have valued Delivery Hero at around 4.4 billion euros.

Delivery Hero CEO Niklas Östberg and board members attended the gong-ringing ceremony along with Yemeksepeti CEO Nevzat Aydın, Yemeksepeti said in a statement on June 30. 

“This is a great day. We want to continue to grow very quickly. This is just the beginning,” Oestberg told journalists on the trading floor, as quoted by AFP. 

Just under 1 billion euros of stock was on offer, split between newly-issued shares and existing shares from earlier shareholders.

Created in 2011, the firm claims a presence in more than 35 countries worldwide and 6,000 employees, as well as thousands of delivery drivers.

Around 35 percent of Delivery Hero is presently owned by Berlin startup incubator Rocket Internet, itself listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange.

Delivery Hero acquired Yemeksepeti for $589 million in 2015. 

Yemeksepeti’s CEO Aydın then celebrated the success in an unusual way: by handing out bonuses totaling $27 million to his 115 employees.

Aydın then told daily Hürriyet that the company wasn’t bound by contract to share revenues from the sale, but the employees deserved the acknowledgement and reward.

“We did this because if there is a success, we have accomplished it altogether,” he said.