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Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for holding, and welcome to the Just Eat Takeaway.com Q3 2021 Trading Update. [Operator Instructions] I would like to hand over the conference to Mr. Jitse Groen. Go ahead, please, sir.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this analyst and investor conference call to discuss the third quarter of 2021 trading update for Just Eat Takeaway.com. On our corporate website, you can download our press release and the slides for this analyst and investor conference call. Given we will host our Capital Markets Day next week, today's presentation will be kept very brief. So after our marathon session at the half year results, I am hopeful that we will be able to limit today's session to 60 minutes at the maximum. And in this presentation, I will be taking you through our highlights for the third quarter and the first 9 months of 2021. And I will end the presentation with an executive summary with the key items of our press release, after which we will open the call for your questions. My fellow Board members, Brent Wissink and Jorg Gerbig are also here to answer your questions. In the third quarter of 2021, Just Eat Takeaway.com processed 266 million orders, representing a 25% increase compared with the same period of 2020. GTV amounted to EUR 6.8 billion in the third quarter of 2021, up 23% compared to the same period of 2020. Our total delivery orders grew by 58% year-on-year to 120 million, reflecting our efforts to expand our delivery network and our significantly expanded investment offering. For the first 9 months of 2021, our order growth was 41% compared to the same period last year and totals 813 million orders. Our year-to-date gross transaction value reached nearly EUR 21 billion. On Slide 3, you'll find a split of our orders and GTV for each of our segments for the third quarter. With most of the world returning to prepandemic life, including restaurant reopenings across market and traditional summer seasonality, our growth in the third quarter of 2021 remains strong. Just Eat Takeaway.com is well positioned for autumn and winter, our traditional growth season. On Slide 4, we'd like to reiterate our guidance in terms of order growth, GTV and adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of GTV for 2021. We guide for an order growth for the full year of 2021 of at least 45%, excluding Grubhub. And for the full year of 2021, GTV for the combination is expected to be in a range of EUR 28 billion to EUR 30 billion, which clearly establishes us as one of the largest online food delivery companies in the world.2021 is an investment year to restore and expand our market leadership, in particular, in the legacy Just Eat markets. However, we believe that adjusted EBITDA [ was a split ] in the first half and we expect our adjusted EBITDA to improve going forward and driven by a few factors. Firstly, the partial removal of significant fee caps and voluntary partner support in the U.S. and Canada. Now you may be aware that certain fee caps in the U.S. have been recently extended, which we will actively oppose in court. However, even including these extensions, we expect our adjusted EBITDA to improve going forward. Secondly, improved unit economics in our delivery network; and thirdly, increasing benefits from the investment program in the legacy Just Eat markets. As a result, for the full year 2021, we expect Just Eat Takeaway.com, including Grubhub to generate an adjusted EBITDA margin in a range of minus 1% to minus 1.5% of GTV. As stated previously, we will continue to invest in growth and prioritize market share over adjusted EBITDA. I will now continue with the conclusion of this presentation on Slide 5. With most of the world returning to prepandemic life, our growth in the third quarter of 2021 remains strong despite reopenings across markets and traditional summer seasonality. Our investment program in the U.K. continued to drive sustainable network effects. Just Eat in the U.K. reached more than 200 million orders in the first 9 months of 2021, up 51% in the third quarter of 2021 compared to the same period last year. Just Eat surpassed the 1 billion orders milestone in the U.K. since its foundation, demonstrating our enormous scale and longevity in that market. Germany was our second fastest-growing segment, adding 10 million incremental orders in the quarter compared with the prior year, representing 35% order growth and demonstrating the strength of the Lieferando brand.In the U.S., our orders in the third quarter of 2021 increased 3% compared to the same period last year. We have now started to implement our improvement program in that country, refocusing on the stronghold, and we will share more details regarding our U.S. strategy at the Capital Markets Day. We also completed the acquisition of Bistro.sk in Slovakia on the 1st of October. We reiterate our guidance for the full year 2021. And last but not least, we look forward to updating the markets on the exciting opportunities for long-term growth across our business during our Capital Markets Day on the 21st of October. And with that, operator, I would like to open the call for questions.
[Operator Instructions] So the first question is from William Woods from Bernstein.
Just 2 for me. I think just to confirm, in maintaining your FY '21 guidance, can you confirm that Q2 -- you still see Q2 as peak losses in terms of the investment program? And then secondly, I suppose the U.S. showed relatively weak growth year-on-year. And in particular, the marketplace, I think, showed a relatively strong decline. What was the main driver of that in the quarter?
Thanks for the question. So yes, we confirm that Q2 was the peak of our losses. So that's a simple answer for you. Regarding the U.S., we are analyzing that country very thoroughly. We'll talk about it also at the Capital Markets Day. I think we should not elaborate on it too much today because we have a section on this next week. I think what's important around what we see in the U.S. is that actually, a lot of the things that we have done in the U.K. will also be applicable for the U.S.Now the major difference between the U.K. and the U.S. is that logistics is actually quite profitable in the United States. We've said that we are agnostic in whether we have marketplace orders or delivery orders that's in particularly, of course, in countries like Canada and the U.S., where actually the gross profit on both of these models is quite significant.
The next question is from Adrien de Saint Hilaire from BofA.
[indiscernible] frankly. I think you're implying something like about 32% order growth in the fourth quarter, which is about in line with what you did in the third quarter. I'm excluding Grubhub here, as you do in your guidance. The comp base is a bit higher. So can you give us some evidence or perhaps some indication that would support the view that indeed order growth can be similar in Q4 versus Q3 despite the higher comp base?And secondly, a very quick one. I think previously, you mentioned that you would run the U.S. business at only a breakeven for '21 and '22. Since then, we've seen the introduction of permanent fee caps, as you mentioned. Can you confirm that this guidance still holds? Or is that something that you might revisit at some point?
Yes. Thanks. So your first question, I think what's important to note, and I guess that this is true for the whole e-commerce sector and for the food delivery sector, is that we went from lockdowns into a very long summer holiday for a lot of people. And what we're seeing now is a typical seasonal pattern that we were used to before the pandemic. Also if I look at other things happening around us, traffic jams and offices being -- again going to 100% occupancy, at least in a lot of our countries, you see that we are basically returning to the situation before the pandemic. Now I'm not a doctor, I cannot predict what else will happen, of course, in the end of the year. We assume that there's not going to be any more lockdowns, in which case, of course, we would grow faster than what we currently have in our budget. We always grow faster in Q4 than in Q3, that's just the seasonal pattern, the day is becoming shorter and it's the weather turning. And that's what we already see now. And we usually would have seen that earlier. I think that's also important to note, but actually, September was quite warm in most of our countries. And therefore, we're seeing that now happen in October. But it looks like a typical seasonal pattern that we were used to, let's say, until 2019 because the pandemic removed the seasonal pattern last year because everybody was locked up in their houses. And there were no holidays.
And the guidance in the U.S.?
Yes. So the second question around the fee caps. Well, we said that we would run close to breakeven, not exactly breakeven. Of course, the fee caps in the U.S. are a major setback for us. We're not going to sugarcoat that. If somebody takes that amount of money from your results on an otherwise quite profitable food delivery business, such as Grubhub, then that has an impact for us. We were planning to invest that money into [ lots of ] cities across the U.S. We've limited that program to a couple of cities, and we call that refocusing our efforts, of course, in the U.S. But yes, that is steadily confirmed.
The next question is from Andrew Gwynn, Exane BNPP.
Two questions if I can. So firstly, just on the EBITDA range. Obviously, most of the way through the year, but the range is still pretty big given what it implies for Q4. Consensus, I think, is sitting around about 1.2% negative EBITDA. So I'm just wondering, is that sort of reasonable or should we expect something a little bit different? And then the second question, obviously, during or really sort of back in July, August, you hiked fees in the U.K. I don't think there's much evidence of an impact on trading for the U.K. business, but just wondering if you could pull anything out there.
Thank you. We've said previously already that H2 is not going to be materially better than H1 in terms of EBITDA. It will be better, though. So I'm not sure what that gets you to in percentage, but I think you were quite close. In terms of the U.K., we are doing a lot of things in the U.K. We're improving the profitability of our logistical orders. Now that is a bigger program. It's efficiency gains of the network. It is replacing some models that we are using. You will remember that we have 3 models still in the U.K. It's actually one of the few countries in which we operate in which we have multiple models, but that's a historical fact in the U.K. We are raising the AOVs. We can get into how we are doing that next week if you want, but that's something that we're working on. We're raising also prices but still well below the competition. So there's quite a lot of things that we're doing. And yes, the impact that we are seeing actually on those orders is on the lower ticket orders, which is good because, obviously, we work on a commission basis. Other than that, we don't think it has a material influence on the market share in the U.K. We think actually we're in a quite good spot. We have said that this an investment year, in particular, in these legacy Just Eat markets. And therefore, after those investments, the U.K. business is now twice the size. We've heard of our competitors last year that they would overtake us this year. That, of course, has been proven to be nonsense. And therefore, we have accomplished that goal and now we're on our way back to getting that business to the high profitability that it was running at before, before we made the investment.
Okay. Great. Look forward to next week.
The next question is from Mr. [indiscernible] ABN AMRO.
Yes. [indiscernible] ABN AMRO and ODDO. A few questions. First is, let's say, in the marketplace in the U.S., it was down 13% or 14% year-over-year. So can you give us a bit more insight in what's happening here? Is it basically, let's say, the number of restaurant partners that is coming down? Or is it actually consumers shifting from marketplace orders to own delivery orders, i.e., internal cannibalization? And what are kind of the things that you can do to address that migration, if you will? The second question would be on, let's say, Canada. Obviously, the growth is slowing down. I don't have, let's say, the market development top of mind, but can you give us a bit of a feeling on where your growth in Canada is, vis-a-vis the market, i.e., are you losing market share or is the market slowing down? A bit of a bookkeeping one. But can you give us some sort of an indication where the acquisition of Bistro.sk is in terms of orders and GTV and possibly the split between own delivery and marketplace and then annual numbers are perfectly fine for me.And lastly, the delivery fees in the U.K. In the first half presentation, you basically alluded to the fact that you raised the delivery fees in August that added about EUR 31 million in profitability on a like-for-like basis. Then you raised the fees another time in September. Can you give us a bit of a feeling on what the implications are for profitability on the back of that second increase in the delivery fees in the U.K.?
Thank you. Let me start with the last one. Just to be clear, our fees go up and down, right? So they don't per se always go up. And they also don't per se go up for all the inventory that we have on our website. I think what's important to note here is that we used the lower delivery fees to address the churn in Just Eat. If you will remember -- and we'll make this very insightful also next week. You will remember the thing -- the foremost thing that we said about fixing the Just Eat story in the U.K. was around addressing the churn. And the churn was people going to other websites because Just Eat didn't have certain inventory. So our low delivery fees were meant to get the customers back to Just Eat because Just Eat does have the superior network in the U.K. It has the most restaurants. It has the biggest choice. It is the most affordable option. That's why we introduced lower delivery fees. We have always intended those to go up when we saw the opportunity to do so without impacting the growth of that business. So that's what we're doing in the delivery fee. We don't -- as we said, we don't see a material impact on the order growth in the U.K. because we are actually increasing the profitability of these orders. So I don't think you should stay so blankly at the delivery because we're improving a lot of things. We're improving the efficiency of the network. We are increasing the AOV in the U.K. So we're doing a lot of things. And the example for us in these places are places like Canada and places like Germany and Holland, where we have that high efficiency of the logistical network. We don't have it all across the U.K. yet. London is a particular example because we don't have the density yet that we would have, for instance, in Berlin, Vienna, Brussels, Amsterdam or Winnipeg. So we're not at the level that we need to be. Now that logistical business is still growing 300-plus percent in the U.K. So you can imagine that we are on our way to the density that we require for that network to be more profitable. Then your first question around marketplace versus delivery in the U.S. It's very important to understand that logistics in the U.S. is highly profitable. This is also why our Canadian business is so profitable, while it's also a logistical business. So it doesn't really matter to us whether it's delivery or marketplace. It has actually quite a nice profit on both of these systems. So we're actually agnostic to what it is. Now what you see in the U.S. is likely a mix effect. We see that also to a certain extent in the rest of our network because of the summer slowdown that we have seen, looking into what is exactly causing it where because I think it is important to understand that we might shed some light on this next week as well. As you noticed, it doesn't matter. It would matter, of course, in Europe. It doesn't matter in the U.S. Then if you look at Canada, the whole market is slowing down in Canada. I don't believe that we're losing market share. I think we're pretty stable there.
I can actually give some more comment on that. If you look at basically all the metrics, it seems like we are very much doing well on the market share side. SimilarWeb sees us stable around the 50%, Google Trends above 50% and also like daily average users on the app site sees us very stable. So it's a very general market trend there. So...
Yes. Then the Bistro.sk question, I don't think we've disclosed any numbers there. Slovakia is a small country. You should not expect a large difference in our story because of Slovakia. The reason that we acquired it is because it's actually quite profitable. It's a nice business. The market structure is that it's not very QSR heavy, so the logistics is limited. So it looks a lot like a country like Germany, where you don't have a lot of these QSRs because obviously, a lot of the volume in logistics is QSRs. So the market structure is pleasant for us, and we'll try to improve that business just like we always try to improve businesses that we acquired. So I think that covers your questions.
The next question is from Sreedhar Mahamkali from UBS.
Three questions, please. Firstly, on the U.K. How do you see growth of delivery versus marketplace businesses going into Q4 and perhaps into next year with all the reopening? And your thoughts previously about marketplace being more resilient into this slowdown potentially. Secondly, can you share some data points on the improved unit economics point that you made on the slides. Any data you can share, that will be very helpful. And last one, Germany, it will be great if you can share some insights into how you're improving the logistics offer. And clearly, that's where you're seeing potential new competition. Anything you are doing there to really defend the position and grow the logistics side? That would be helpful.
Yes. Thanks. Regarding that question, Germany, that always makes us laugh a little bit. Guys, we have all these restaurants already [indiscernible] We have nothing to improve there. We have the restaurants. The logistical network in Germany actually operates at a higher utilization than our Canadian business. It is a fantastic logistical business. It is just not very QSR heavy in Germany. And therefore, the amount of logistical orders is limited because there's just not so much inventory as what we would have in other countries. And just to point out what the strength in Germany is, we added about 3 million orders on a monthly basis in last year, and we estimate the total competition at 100 -- maybe 200,000 orders in Germany on the whole. So we're growing 30 -- 15x faster than the whole size of the competition in Germany. I realize that's the current situation. Maybe it will change, I don't know, but we should not exaggerate how big the competition is in Germany because it's tiny at this point.
Then your expansion of logistics in Germany, where are we? Is there any upgrade there? How you're seeing expansion into other cities?
Yes, we're expanding to have close to 80 cities in which we have logistics in Germany. I think our competitors are at 5 or something like that. We are at 80, 8-0. It's a big operation. You need to be conscious that most of the logistical business will be in Berlin in Germany. The rest of Germany is far less. That was the case also for Deliveroo when they left the country. It was the case for Foodora when we bought it. It's very much scooted to Berlin and not to the rest of the country. And Germany is a very peculiar country in that sense is that Berlin is 3 million out of the 85 million inhabitants of that country, not the same thing as London in the U.K. It's actually quite small compared to the rest of the country. It's a big country, Germany, right? So I think it's important to point that out. Regarding your question around the U.K., growth delivery versus marketplace. We're adding tremendous amounts of restaurants and a lot of those restaurants obviously are logistical restaurants, because that's what Just Eat forgot to do before we came in. And that also means that by definition, the growth of logistics is going to be higher than the growth of marketplace. We're just adding more of these restaurants. And these restaurants don't have any orders from us, so they go from 0 to a lot. If we add marketplace restaurants, we also cannibalize a little bit of their phone orders, right? So they will not grow as fast as logistics. There will be a time at which they will grow exactly at the same speed, but we're far removed from that because we're doing this big catch-up in the U.K. And the way you need to look at marketplace, it will still grow in the U.K. it is super profitable. Nobody else has it, right? We have 95% of the marketplace business in the U.K. It's super valuable to us because it provides us with a lot of EBITDA that we can then use to expand our logistical network and invest in the logistical network. Our task is to have the logistical network run operationally the same way it runs in Holland, the same way it runs in Germany, and the same way it runs in Canada. That's what we're after. That's what we're doing in the U.K. Then the unit economics. We're going to add improvements to that -- to the logistics in the UK. As a follow-up to that question that you have, we'll talk about next week.
The next question is from Mr. Marc Hesselink from the ING.
Yes. Maybe what can you say about the impact of the opening up? So how do you see metrics like client additions, order frequency, average order value? How do you see that being impacted in the short term and also maybe going into in the fourth quarter? And then also a little bit discuss the U.K., but more in general the difference that you see and what you expected in marketplace versus delivery? And then a second question is on the U.S. If I'm correct, you have a relatively large B2B or to the office market in the U.S. How do you see that with the opening up?
Let's first -- sorry, sorry, I will refer the first question to Jorg around the order frequency and those changes. Let me comment on the U.S. The U.S. is not back to a normal situation such as most other countries. Offices are mostly still quite empty. We also see that, of course, in our conversations with investors. That's very different from situation here, right? So you see that especially the place in which Grubhub is strong or actually the places that lack quite some people and especially because Grubhub is -- has this big B2B component to it. That is not helping Grubhub forward in the U.S. We assume, of course, that this will change and that also in the U.S., there will be a return to the offices at some point in time.
Yes. Regarding the KPI. So actually, we saw, especially at the beginning of the lockdown easing, the AOVs coming down. And then after that, stabilizing at a little bit of lower level, albeit a higher than pre-COVID. That was something we anticipated right when the lockdowns came into play because, yes, with the lockdowns, actually, we showed up quite significantly, albeit we have to say that even on a quarter-over-quarter, especially the U.K., for example, we remain strong on the AOV level because, as Jitse was indicating earlier, we're having put some measures into place to actually have higher AOVs or driving higher AOVs because that actually also drives efficiency to some extent. In terms of new customers, obviously, going back into seasonalities, like it was also indicating it also means you had a bit more seasonality also on the new customer side with usually some of being a bit of a slower period and coming into winter new customer addition. And usually it goes up, and that's also what they're at the moment. At least seeing likewise on the reorder values, which were also a bit slower in the summer period, but we're also expecting them to go up with the seasonality kicking in again.
Okay. And the difference there in marketplace delivery, you said about the U.K., but in other regions, is it still the case that you expect that the marketplace will be less impacted by the -- going back to normal?
I think you need to separate 2 things there. Yes, because obviously, if the restaurants are open, people will go to the restaurants. No in the case of the U.K. because we're expanding the logistical network. So if you look very -- there's a lot of things happening underlying in the U.K., right? So we're expanding the logistical network. And yes, there's going to be less interest in logistics in the U.K. overall. But if you don't have logistics, you add it, and of course, you're going to grow that quite significantly. This is also why the growth for us is actually still quite high in logistics. But I don't think that the market per se, after reopenings is good for logistical operators because, yes, you can also go through these go to these restaurants. We would expect that in other countries in which we have a lot of these marketplace orders that marketplace by itself and actually, the growth difference between the 2 will be less than versus U.K. I hope that makes sense.
The next question is for Mr. Georgios Pilakoutas from Numis.
Two for me, please. First one, I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more around reopening seasonality across the different regions, kind of with Europe in a kind of harsher lockdown in 2Q and seasonality, the bigger impact there, hence Germany, Netherlands, Rest of the World perhaps faced a bit of a bigger headwind in the third quarter. And how that reopening, we're seeing that play out across logistics and marketplace? If there's any trends you're seeing as we start to reopen across different markets? And then the second question was just on restaurant sign-ups in the U.K. You mentioned you're adding still a lot of logistics orders. I guess I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more around how those negotiations are going, how kind of the rollout of your logistics network is perhaps making it easier to sign up more restaurants, how kind of perhaps exclusivities you need to roll off, if there's anything to kind of think of on kind of tracking that progress?
Yes. Thanks. Let me first address the second question. We'll talk a lot about this next week. We actually have a significant increase of restaurant sign-ups in the U.K. It's quite extraordinary. We'll talk about that next week. So I can't go into that too much because then we have to scratch the Capital Markets Day and I don't think so we are going to make anybody happy with that. Regarding reopening, I think this is the order of how you need to think about markets being almost fully open and still relatively close. So I think Israel is furthest along, and we've seen that in the B2B segment. Then Europe, then U.K., then U.S., then Australia. I think that's the right way of looking at how the data for that is in the world. Yes, I think that's the best sort of sequence of opening.
I guess, generally, you see the market slowing down overall when the economy has more reopenings.
Look, the way you need to look at this is that I think the peak of corona for food and living websites must have been in May. It must have been in May in Europe. Then from that, we saw a lot of people taking more holidays than usually because they saved up all the holidays because they didn't go anywhere. So we saw it for a long summer holiday. And we saw seasonality in the sense that September was very warm in most of our countries. And now we're seeing the regular seasonal pattern that we have seen before corona and have not been in presence during corona because people were locked out. I think that's the best answer I can give.
The next question is from Monique Pollard from Citi.
Just a couple of quick ones from me. The first one was on Australia. I just wanted to know, is that still your fastest growing geography? And are you continuing to take share that in competition? The second was just whether you can give us any update at all on the time lines of the New York court case around the fee caps and the permanency of the caps in the U.S. And then finally, it was just whether we would get an update at the Capital Markets Day of gross profit per region and how that's been evolving, particularly in markets like the U.K. where you've been obviously investing.
With regards to Australia, I mean, actually, the comps are now also much stronger because we're actually there in the quarter, which has year-over-year tougher comp. And therefore, obviously, also like the growth rates are coming down a bit. It's still growing way well, but we also have to bear in mind that Australia is still in lockdown. So we have, for example, actually even seen in New Zealand, very strict measures on the lockdown. But there is some countries on a much smaller scale albeit that are actually, in a relative scale, growing faster, but Australia is amongst still the fastest growing in our portfolio, but it is not the fastest one. And it was also like historically not necessarily the fastest growing because we have some small countries, which might even be growing a little faster, but it is still growing at a very decent pace.
I think there was a question around fee caps and...
Yes, the update on the court case, yes.
Yes. So we are of the opinion that these fee caps are illegal. Now that doesn't help us much at this point in time because, obviously, we've lost quite some EBITDA because of these fee caps. We are moving that through the courts. I'm pretty sure that we'll see some intermediary verdict and that sort of thing. That will become public, and that will show you roughly where things are going, I assume. But these fee caps, we're quite confident that actually they will go away, but it might take us some time, right? So that's the way we look at these. And they are annoying. We've also said before that if they don't go away, we'll have to raise commissions -- sorry, fees for consumers, just like all the other players would have to do and some players already have done in the U.S. because let's face it. There's other people also in the U.S. that have the same sort of issue with the fee caps. And then your last question because I think we...
The last question was just...
Gross profits.
Yes, whether we would get some granularity on gross profit per region potentially next week at the Capital Markets Day.
I don't think we're going to do that even next week. I'm looking at you then.
No, no, no. We're not going to provide more financials. Maybe a little bit of this type of insight, but not real -- these type of details to financials, we will provide that 2x a year, this half year and full year.
Okay. Understood. And then sorry, just a follow-up on the Australia question. Are you still taking share in Australia?
So at the moment, we see a relatively stable market share. If I look at SimilarWeb data that shows us around 50% mark. Google Trends more -- slightly above the 40% mark. So that has been relatively stable now over the last 2 or 3 months.
The next question is from Mr. Rob Joyce from Goldman Sachs.
2Just 2 quick ones. Firstly, it seems like in Netherlands and Germany, the percentage of own delivery orders have slowed a bit. Do you think that -- it's actually slower than the -- or are the percentages smaller than the previous quarter? Is that a trend you expect to see continuing? Is that driven by any of your own actions or competitor actions? I know you've touched on this earlier, but some more elaboration, that would be great. And then in terms of the logistics riders you're employing, are you seeing material wage cost inflation in the rider network? Are you seeing difficulties hiding riders -- hiring riders, not hiding them. And have you seen any drops of -- have you had any issues with consistency of service on the back of that?
Thanks. Let me first address that question about Holland and Germany. Maybe not a lot of people know this, but we've had competition in Holland from all these logistical guys already for the last 5 years. It's not a new thing. And they are small. So they're unlikely to change our dynamics in any sort of way. I think if you will see a decrease of delivery percentage in Holland or in Germany, it's more related to the reopenings than anything else. As we said, we believe that in these sort of countries, in restaurants we open and people can also go to the restaurant, they don't have to per se, of course, order that in. And then the marketplace actually is a little bit more resilient because these orders are usually different orders. These are usually convenience orders. So that's why probably necessary. But it could also again move up next month, right? I don't think you should then conclude that it's going to decrease. Also, we don't really care about it because we happen to have quite an efficient logistical network in both countries. We're in all the cities of any sort of size. And we are the largest in all of these cities, and we are actually quite efficient. And by the way, we're very cheap, right? We charge the lowest of all our competitors in all of our markets. So it's also not that we are expensive. We're actually quite cheap. And therefore, if competition comes in with the same sort of offering or actually inferior offering because they don't have the network effect, they don't have the rest of the network, they don't have all of these at a higher price, then obviously, that's not going to influence us too much. So I don't think we have a lot of outside influence there, and it's more of a general mix effect of what happens in society rather than anything else. And then the second question, yes, there is some pressure on the carrier network. It's not something that we cannot handle because we have huge networks, right? We also -- in most cases, we're not looking at the same sort of rider pool because we have employees in most cases and not freelancers. So it's a little bit different for us, I guess, than if you are after freelancers. But yes, there is some pressure on it, but that's not something that we haven't seen before. We've seen that in the past, especially in Germany, in a city like Munich, and it has always been quite difficult to get couriers. And you actually have to pay up quite a bit to get them. And don't forget that in countries like Germany, you can't forget about the freelance model. So you would always have to employ and even our competitors have to employ the couriers if they want to remain operational.
We saw specific pressure when actually the lockdown ended because then that was also the time when restaurants were hiring people. So that was kind of when there was most pressure. But luckily actually for the European business that came across the summertime when it's usually a bit more quiet. So actually, that phase is already over. And now we're going back more to normal circumstances. So like it was saying, there's always a bit of a pressure because we need to hire a lot of people actually to cope with the growth, but we're well placed given we're also the largest, have the highest top of mind brand awareness. We are amongst the most effective employers. So that helps a lot as well.
[Operator Instructions] The next question is from Miriam Adisa from Morgan Stanley.
Just 2 from me. Firstly, if you could just give an update on your market share in London. Do you think that you're taking share given what you said about the significant number of restaurant sign-ups in the U.K.? And then secondly, if you just -- if you could give an update on your grocery rollout in Germany and then also the sort of early learnings from the dark store trials in Canada. What are you seeing in terms of unit economics and then also the customer behavior of people ordering on grocery versus the food delivery business?
Thank you. First, regarding market share in London. We increased it quite a bit. It's now rather stable, but you also need to understand that we're optimizing the network quite a bit, and we -- the things that we're throwing out now are these low ticket orders because we don't think it's very much contributing to our growth. So we are doing some household maintenance work, especially given that we still operate 3 different logistical networks in London. But we're quite confident that we'll increase our share in London quite soon again. So we have a big program in London itself, but it's also a very fast-growing part of our business. So we also need to sometimes look into the quality of that network. Then regarding the grocery in Germany -- but also let me make a general remark about it. We're quite enthusiastic that we can add -- and I'm going to go ahead and call it meaningful grocery to our network. And the reason that I say that is because you see globally a lot of companies vouchering their way to deliver nuts and beer to people that are sitting on the couch. That's not something that we would be interested in because you can ask yourself whether that's actual demand, if people would have to actually pay for that. But we do think it's interesting to deliver cartons of milk, if people miss a carton of milk because that's, I think, actually a good use case and that's what we are looking into. We're talking to a lot of grocery chains across the globe. Now these are not exactly fast movers. I don't hope I offend anybody in the grocery sector, if I say that. But we're getting quite close to announcing a couple of things. So we'll do that when we are ready with that. Regarding hubs, we're very enthusiastic about Canada. We'll talk about that also next week. We're looking also at other places in which we could potentially do that. But we are very careful with it. We've always been -- sometimes people would say, "Oh, but you're moving in this slowly." No, we move into things carefully. It was far more important last year for us to restore the dominance that Just Eat has in the U.K. I think that was very important. So we were very much after food delivery and not stopping our business with all sorts of adjacencies. And we are going to be very careful about rolling out our grocery network. We will do it, and we will do it hopefully better and more efficiently than anybody else. But you should really look at the focus that we have as a business. And we won't go all out. You see a lot of these fast grocery delivery businesses now being sold. That's not exactly the sort of sustainable business we're after. We're after sustainable, good service across our markets, and that's also what you will see us do in the adjacency of grocery and again, it's an adjacency to our business. It's not the core business. We'll talk about it next week. Perfect. And...
These were the questions, sir.
Oh, go.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Just Eat Takeaway.com Q3 2021 trading update event call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you, and have a nice day.