(Alliance News) - Just Eat Takeaway.com NV on Wednesday reported a sharply narrowed loss in the first half of 2023, despite slightly lower revenue, while it said its finance chief plans to depart early next year.

The Amsterdam-based food delivery ordering platform also said its key Northern Europe and UK & Ireland segments both returned to business growth in the second quarter. Just Eat Takeaway is the product of the merger in 2020 of Just Eat in the UK and Takeaway.com in the Netherlands.

Pretax loss in the six months that ended June 30 narrowed to EUR317 million from EUR3.54 billion a year before, despite revenue slipping by 6.9% to EUR2.59 billion from EUR2.78 billion, as Just Eat Takeaway cut costs across the board.

The company swung to positive adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of EUR143 million from a loss of EUR134 million on that basis a year before. For all of 2023, Just Eat Takeaway expects positive Ebitda of about EUR275 million. This would be up from just EUR19 million in 2022.

Gross transaction value in the first half was EUR13.22 billion, down 6.8% from EUR14.19 billion a year before. Average transaction value rose by 5.4% to EUR29.35 from EUR27.85, but total orders declined by 12% to 450 million from 509 million.

Similarly, while GTV grew by 2% in Northern Europe and by 1% at constant currency in the UK & Ireland in the first half, it declined by 12% in North America and by 15% at constant currency in South Europe & Australia New Zealand. Just Eat Takeaway also noted that both orders and GTV grew sequentially from the first quarter to the second in UK & Ireland.

In the full year, GTV growth is guided between negative 4% and positive 2%.

Just Eat Takeaway said it continues to explore the partial or full sale of Grubhub, a US business it had bought in 2020 soon after its own merger had completed. "There can be no certainty that any such strategic actions will be agreed or what the timing of such agreements will be," it said Wednesday.

Additionally, Chief Financial Officer Brent Wissink has resigned and will depart upon the annual general meeting in May 2024 "to pursue other opportunities", having joined the company in 2011. Just Eat said it will start the search for a successor.

"There are always many fathers of success in stories such as ours, but there are only few that actually deserve that title," commented Chief Executive Officer Jitse Groen.

"Brent is a clear father of the success of JET, and I am confident that we would have not made it this far without him."

By Tom Waite, Alliance News editor

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