Uber has struck a deal to absorb one of Europe’s biggest food delivery companies, and the target’s board is on board. Delivery Hero’s Management and Supervisory Boards have unanimously recommended that shareholders accept Uber’s public takeover offer of €41.50 per share, a bid that values the German company at roughly €13 billion.
How Uber got here
This deal did not arrive cleanly. Uber made an initial approach in May 2026 at €33 per share, which shareholders rejected outright, pushing for a valuation above €40. Uber came back with €41.50, a 34% premium over the three-month volume-weighted average share price prior to the announcement.
The revised number landed. Delivery Hero’s board formally backed the new offer, and critically, major shareholder Prosus committed to tendering its approximately 17% stake. That single commitment pushes Uber’s total economic interest to roughly 53%, effectively locking in majority control before the broader shareholder vote has even concluded.
Delivery Hero’s shares continue to trade at a discount to the €41.50 offer price, a gap that reflects the market’s standard uncertainty discount during long regulatory approval processes. The deal is not expected to close until the second half of 2027.
The regulatory problem, and how Delivery Hero solved it
A combined Uber and Delivery Hero entity would overlap in 22 markets. To get ahead of that problem, Delivery Hero has agreed to sell its operations in 14 markets to SSW Partners for approximately €1.4 billion.
The remaining combined platform would span 99 markets. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has pointed to synergies and expanded reach as the core strategic rationale, while Delivery Hero’s Supervisory Board Chair highlighted competitive benefits from greater scale. The combined entity’s pro-forma gross bookings for fiscal year 2025 are projected at $236 billion, a figure that would nearly double Uber’s existing market reach.
What this means for the food delivery landscape
Adding weight to the deal’s timing, Delivery Hero has revised its 2026 growth expectations upward even as the acquisition proceeds. That kind of forward guidance revision is unusual for a company in the middle of a takeover process, where management typically goes quiet on standalone projections.
The deal’s closing timeline, contingent on regulatory approvals across multiple jurisdictions and a minimum shareholder acceptance threshold, means the competitive picture does not change overnight.
Uber’s willingness to raise its offer by nearly 26% from the initial bid to the accepted one also signals something about how the company values global delivery density at this particular moment in its growth trajectory. The company did not walk away when shareholders said the first number was too low. It recalibrated and returned with a number that cleared the bar.