Delivery Hero Shares Plummet After Losses

Delivery Hero, the German food-delivery company, experienced a significant drop in its share prices during Wednesday morning trading following the announcement of net and operating losses for the first half of the year. Additionally, the company's gross margin fell below what analysts had anticipated.

As of 0830 GMT, Delivery Hero shares were trading at EUR33.42, down 6.6%.

In a positive turn, the group's net loss decreased to 830.1 million euros ($903.3 million) compared to EUR1.50 billion in the same period last year. Similarly, its operating loss improved to EUR461.2 million from EUR1.04 billion.

However, Citi analysts had predicted an operating loss of EUR331 million, which was higher than the consensus estimate of EUR360 million. The analysts noted that this discrepancy was due to more adjustments than anticipated.

On the bright side, Delivery Hero's gross profit saw a significant increase of 55% to reach EUR1.45 billion. Despite this growth, the gross margin of 6.5% fell short of both the consensus estimate of 6.6% and Citi's forecast of 7.4%.

Looking ahead, Delivery Hero is projecting an adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization to gross merchandise value margin of over 0.5% for the year.