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Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for holding, and welcome to the Just Eat Takeaway.com. [Operator Instructions]I would now like to hand over the conference to Mr. Groen. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this analyst and investor conference call to discuss the fourth 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 call. Given we will publish our full year results, including the detailed financials on the 2nd of March, today's presentation regarding the fourth quarter trading update will be kept very brief, after which we will open the call for your questions. My fellow Board members, Brent Wissink and Jörg Gerbig, are also here to answer your questions. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Just Eat Takeaway.com processed 274 million orders, representing a 14% increase compared to the same period of 2020. GTV amounted to EUR 7.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, up 17% compared with the same period of 2020. Our total delivery orders grew by 32% year-on-year to 119 million, reflecting our efforts to expand our delivery network and our significantly expanded restaurant offering. For the full year 2021, our order growth for the company, including Grubhub on a combined basis, was 33% compared to the same period last year and totals 1.1 billion orders. Our year-to-date gross transaction value reached more than EUR 28 billion. On Slide 3, you find the split of our orders for each of our segments for the fourth quarter. With most of the world returning to pre-pandemic life, our order growth in 2021 remained strong at 33% year-on-year growth. As you can see, U.K. & Ireland was the fastest-growing segment for both the quarter and the year. On Slide 4, we provide the same split for each of our segments, but now we show the gross transaction value. Our adjusted EBITDA margin improved substantially in the fourth quarter of 2021. And as a result, the adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year of 2021 is expected to be at the midpoint of the guided range of minus 1% and minus 1.5% of GTV. Now if you follow me to the next slide, please. In 2021, we achieved both the GTV and adjusted EBITDA margin targets for our total company, including Grubhub. And as mentioned, our GTV was EUR 28.2 billion, within the expected range of EUR 28 billion to EUR 30 billion. The adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year 2021 is expected to be at the midpoint of the guided range. And the full year order growth, excluding Grubhub, was more than 40% year-on-year versus the targeted 45% despite the dampening effect of restaurant reopenings. Now moving to Slide 6. As mentioned at our Capital Markets Day, grocery is a huge market opportunity for us as the global convenience grocery market represents several hundreds of billions of euros per year. It is an adjacent market, which enhances the proposition to our convenience-focused active consumer base and, hence, is expanding our share of their food wallet. By offering the increased supply of choice, it is also a major opportunity for us to capture new consumer segments and increase order frequency. This will ultimately drive further network effects and with that significantly improve restaurant and consumer density. In parallel, the new offering will broaden our peak times throughout the day, but specifically at night, thereby complementing our current restaurant offerings. Combined with the higher density, this will also improve our entire fleet utilization. That, in turn, will positively impact the profitability of our entire delivery arm and, therefore, group EBITDA in the long run. Important to note is that the convenience grocery expansion has been included in our 2021 -- '22 adjusted EBITDA guidance. Turning to Slide 7. We have already made good progress with our convenience grocery strategy to date. We announced several on-demand grocery delivery partnerships, building on our extensive delivery network, amongst others with Asda and One Stop in the U.K. In Canada, a dark store model through Skip Express Lane is being rolled out nationally, reaching 70% of Skip's consumer base by year-end. You can see the existing and new partners on the map, and we now offer access to over 13,000 stores globally. As announced at the Capital Markets Day on the 21st of October 2021, we changed our reporting structure to better reflect the existing organizational and management structure and provide investors with greater clarity on our underlying business performance across our regions. As mentioned earlier, the U.K. & Ireland was the fastest-growing segment for both the quarter and the year while significantly improving adjusted EBITDA. We will continue to invest heavily, especially in our London network, while we expect to further improve profitability in 2022. In North America, Grubhub continued to make good progress increasing restaurant selection for diners, most notably in New York, and Grubhub+ users increased meaningfully. A recently launched partnership with Instacart and a Grubhub-branded convenience pilot called Grubhub Goods with 7-Eleven further extends up our position to drive growth. We remain in discussion with several potential strategic partners to strengthen our U.S. position. In Northern Europe, Lieferando added 6.9 million incremental orders in Germany in the fourth quarter of 2021 and 47.5 million incremental orders in the full year of 2021 or a GTV of EUR 1.3 billion in the same year compared with the same period, of course, in the last year. This increased scale led to ongoing profitability improvements in Germany. Moving to the next slide. A critical factor when deploying our delivery model in the different markets is our adherence to local employment laws. We believe we lead the food delivery industry in this area, and we will continue to do so. There are various differences across the market, and we apply the most suitable delivery model. As you can see from the map on the right-hand side of the page, our businesses are already aligned with these legal frameworks and associated costs are baked into our guidance and long-term planning. This implies that we have rolled out the employee career model across most continental Europe. We therefore welcome the EU Commission's proposals to improve conditions for workers and help them access social protections, and we believe the company will benefit from this legislation as it creates a level playing field. Countries like Spain and Italy are actively enforcing labor laws with fines of tens of millions of euros already, and we even saw a competitor leave the country for the same reason. Moving to the last slide of the presentation on Slide 11. Our strategy is and has always been to prioritize long-term growth over short-term profits. 2021 was an investment year to restore and expand our market leadership, in particular, in the legacy Just Eat markets. Our adjusted EBITDA losses peaked in the first half of 2021 and markedly improved throughout the second half of 2021 and predominantly in the last quarter. In 2022, we will start to see tangible benefits of these investments with adjusted EBITDA improving to a range of minus 0.6% to minus 0.8% of GTV while delivering GTV growth in the mid-teens. We reiterate the long-term goals of the group. Firstly, we expect to grow our annual GTV in 5 years by EUR 30 billion, which is effectively more than doubling our current GTV. Secondly, we will achieve an adjusted EBITDA in excess of 5% of GTV in the long term. We are confident that we will reach this objective by executing the strategy as outlined at the Capital Markets Day, focused on growing sustainable profit pools. We are one of the very few online food delivery companies already achieving this in some of our markets and have a clear plan on how to get there for JET as a whole. And with that, operator, I would like to open the call for questions.
[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Ms. Miriam Adisa, Morgan Stanley.
Three questions from me. Firstly, just on the order growth, so you came in slightly below your guidance. Can you just give a bit more color on how much of this you think is just from restaurants reopening versus some of the measures you put in place in the second half, like increasing delivery fees and the minimum order value affecting consumer demand? Could you just give a bit more color on what you're seeing now in terms of that demand elasticity?And then linked to that, how should we think about the outlook for order growth? I guess your guidance implies sort of a low-teens percentage, but what gives you confidence that order growth will not slow further in 2022 as that COVID tailwind, I think, is -- will be fully removed. And then finally, if you could just comment on the U.K. marketplace performance. So I guess you've seen really slow growth now for the last couple of quarters and negative growth in Q4. So what has changed versus your expectations at the start of the year? Can you talk about what you're seeing in terms of the NPS score and the order frequency in that business?
Thanks, Miriam. Let me first go to the first question you asked around the slower growth in Q4. I want to be quite specific about it because I'll bring you back also to the beginning of last year when we initially thought, well, corona will probably go away in April. It, of course, didn't. We actually saw quite a good order growth as a result of that. And I want to point out that it is difficult to model, call it, the end of corona. And of course, we are still under the pandemic. But the end of corona for food delivery basically means restaurants reopening, but also offices reopening. And we are currently in a situation, apart from Holland, where the restaurants are open and in which most of the offices are closed. Now offices, of course, is quite a big segment of our business, not only in markets like Manhattan or Israel, but also in markets in which we are perceived to be a consumer brand. And so, of course, we have a lot of office orders. That makes it difficult for us to model what happens after a pandemic subsides or basically after restaurants reopen. We've done our best for the fourth quarter. We assumed that we would have seen a regular order pattern from, let's say, October onwards. We did see that in December. We did not see that in October and November, and we assume that, that is because of the reopenings. But again, this is the difficulty about modeling that. Now to your question about this year, what is not difficult to model is just basically the cohort model. If you know how many customers you have, if you know what the order frequency is, you can actually quite well model in a regular situation, absent of COVID, what the business is going to do. And we are quite confident on the target for this year. Now we've also received comments from analysts before that it is a low target, but we are also quite confident that we can actually achieve that. I should also note that I would expect that the whole sector slows down in Q4. And also, of course, because the comp in Q4, now if I look at our sales, I think our growth last year, ex Grubhub, was 57% for the quarter. So obviously, also there, you see that the comp for last year was challenging. But still also at the beginning of October, we thought we would actually make it. And you remember, we changed it upwards. It was lower, and we changed it upwards because we were actually on that trajectory. Then the last question that you asked was around marketplace. You will probably have seen that the growth of delivery versus marketplace, especially in the U.K., at least the growth gap is getting smaller, which is logical because obviously, we've added a lot of restaurants that weren't on the Just Eat network. We've also, of course, come out of the pandemic, more or less. And we would suspect that at some point in the future, the growth is going to be the same. Now it will take some time before that starts to happen. But we do believe that that's going to be the case. We also still believe that marketplace will grow. And there's many reasons why there are differences under a pandemic or differences between the quarters, but we still believe that marketplace will grow. So I think that covers your question.
The next question is from Mr. Andrew Ross, Barclays.
I've got 2 on the U.K. First one is on profitability. It sounds like it's improved quite a bit in Q4, and you're pointing to that improving in '22. Can you just give us a sense of what that means in absolute numbers and kind of how close we are to breakeven in the U.K. on a run rate basis? And then the second question is on London. You're pointing to incremental investment here in '22. Can you just give us some color as to what that investment is and, in particular, the strategy for signing up the independent delivery restaurants in London?
Thanks for the question. Well, actually, I don't think I surprise anybody if I say that we are actually quite close to breakeven in the U.K. I should also be careful in pointing out that we don't believe that we are done with basically creating a bigger gap with the competition in the U.K. We believe we have a good opportunity to increase that gap further. And therefore, we -- you should not assume that we're going to have a high profitability in the U.K. in this year. We are going to invest whatever is necessary to make sure that we are going to be by far the market leader in London. That is our top priority. That's also where the profits that we could have because, obviously, the trajectory is towards profitability in the U.K. But that -- we use that profit in a wise way. And we think that actually, that is going to be incremental to our EBITDA in the years to come. So we are again investing that benefit into the market, and it's going to be significant investments. So don't think of the U.K. as a profitable market this year. And of course, if you are tracking us, you will see that we're close now, but don't think of that. Then regarding the inventory in London, we're making progress on adding local heroes. We're making progress on QSRs just as we have made progress in last year. It is a slow process because sometimes there's exclusivity contracts that we need to break, but we are moving in the right direction. We are also growing that business a lot. And we've done significant work on the quality of the delivery network. Delivery times are better, quality of service is better, cost is lower and income is higher. And of course, also the ticket sizes went up. I'm sure that a lot of people are tracking that on this call. So the quality of the business is just much better than where we were, and we will continue to grow from there, and we'll invest a lot of money in it.
The next question is from Mr. Joseph Barnet-Lamb, Credit Suisse.
I'll stick to the 2. So firstly, you mentioned ongoing discussions with potential strategic partners in the U.S. I obviously don't expect you to reveal too much, but can you talk about what that partnership could entail and what you're looking to gain from any partnership? Any color you can give there would be great. Then secondly, there seems to be a bit of a shifting perception in the market with regards to the approach of profitability, rationalization, et cetera. And we've seen some of your competitors shift strategy on the back of that. Can you talk about if it's impacting your strategy or your thinking more broadly and give us an updated view on portfolio and rationalization?
Thank you. Regarding the strategic partners in the U.S., we are actively looking for them. What does that mean? It could mean anything, to be quite honest with you. We are open to anything that makes Grubhub stronger, that makes Just Eat Takeaway stronger. The obvious thing we're looking for is access to a large consumer base. That's the most important thing for us. But again, we are open to any sort of partnerships as long as that benefits the business. Regarding your question -- sorry, can you repeat the second question?
Portfolio management.
No, I don't think that was...
Yes. Well, the second question was sort of, firstly, we've seen some of your competitors shift strategy with regards to portfolio, et cetera. Yes, yes.
No, yes, I wrote down profitability. Good. Yes, we also, of course, see that. At the same time, we don't seem to get any credit for the fact that we own most of the profitable food delivery businesses on the planet. So yes, there is likely going to be a shift. You see some rationalization in the market. You see players leaving markets. There are still players in markets in which I believe they have a chance to position. So I would encourage them to leave those countries, but they are not leaving those countries thus far. We do expect some of that to happen in this year if the current rotation in the market continues to happen. I think that's going to be beneficial to us because we've seen that in Spain. If a competitor leaves the country, obviously, you grow a little bit in market share. So that's, I think, what I can say about that. Then if you look at portfolio management, we've always looked very carefully at whether we can achieve what we need to achieve in a market, and that's always in our case. It's never GTV growth. It is always scale and profitability, always that. And if you analyze all our businesses, they all look like that. Whether we can achieve that in a proper amount of time, of course, that differs for markets. And it might be that we feel that, that takes too long in certain markets. But in general, most of our markets have the same sort of profile as the U.K., Germany or Holland. There's a lot of discussion about iFood. iFood is very similar to our Dutch business, our German business or our U.K. business, large marketplace component with a large logistical business as well. So that's the sort of business we're looking at, and we have no need to be in 50 countries in which we can't reach that. We need to be in a limited amount of countries in which we can actually achieve that program.
Your next question is from Mr. Giles Thorne, Jefferies.
I had 3 on the page, but I will only ask you 2. iFood, so it looks like you did a roundtable with some reporters before this call, and Bloomberg headlines indicating there's some new movement around iFood. So if we could get an update there and a comment as to whether your price expectations have changed since it is now exiting the market.And then, secondly, coming back to the U.S. and partnerships, are you emphasizing here commercial partnerships? Or are you also including here more capital partnerships, if that makes sense?
Thanks. I'll take the last first. We already are -- we have a good department after commercial partnerships. So I was referring to specifically to strategic/financial partnerships. Then the first question regarding iFood, whether the expectations for the price change. Well, to me, not really because in the end, I do not understand full stop why there are small players in marketing which you have a large player. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense if you understand the network effects in food delivery. So for me, the fact that Deliveroo leaves Germany and Spain or Uber leaves Austria and Brazil and Hong Kong, that's completely logical to me. So it doesn't really change my expectations of value of a decent food delivery business. It might change the other people's perception of the value of these businesses, but I don't agree with that perception. So for me, that's a bit of a different topic. I do believe that iFood is one of these countries that is -- look, Germany is now the most profitable food delivery website on the planet. We're very proud of that. iFood is not there yet. Of course, ticket sizes are lower, but it's much bigger than our German website, and it has a slightly worse market position even after Uber leaves than our German market position. But these are the businesses that are worth a lot of money in the sector. I know that the market disagrees with me on that, but this is my belief. And therefore, if people want to own that stake, they need to pay for it. I'm also a reasonable person. And I understand, of course, that valuation in the sector went down.
Right. And is there any change in the process? It was referenced in the Bloomberg article.
We are still talking to multiple players.
Your next question is from Mr. Wim Gille, ABN AMRO.
First question would be on the U.K. When looking back at the discussion last quarter, you basically said we grew the U.K. platform quite significantly, and we are now slightly focusing more towards, let's say, improving the quality of the business in terms of profitability and what have you. And that included, amongst others, lowering or increasing the minimum order values, increasing some delivery fees, most notably on the QSRs. So why is that decision to basically take the gas off the pedal a little bit in Q4 taken at that particular point in time? Simultaneously, you also mentioned during this call that we shouldn't be too hopeful about, let's say, profitability in the U.K. in the short term as, reading in between the lines, I think you are going to increase your competitiveness again in the U.K. as you are looking forward to further increasing the gap with the competition. So how should we compare kind of what you're doing in the fourth quarter to basically what you're telling us that you're going to do in 2022 in terms of market share and in terms of, yes, market share gains there?And the second question I would have is, let's say, on the marketplace versus the own delivery with the increase in minimum order values and also the increase in delivery fees. It's basically, I would say, "hurting" your QSR business. And that should, in fact, be, to a certain extent, a tailwind for your marketplace business. And although your marketplace business was doing quite okay in the fourth quarter, it didn't grow as fast as the own delivery space. So about that convergence in terms of growth rates, how many quarters do you think you still need before marketplace and own delivery truly become a blended thing again in terms of growth rates? And then lastly, you mentioned that your profitability is going to improve in 2022. How should we look at timing thereof? Is it a gradual thing where you basically are a little bit loss-making in the first half and then already profitable in the second half? Or should we basically expect you to move towards breakeven point and then press the start on commercials as evenly possible?
Yes. So let me take that last question first. We have done a number of things that materially increase the baskets, the income and efficiency of our logistical network. And actually, a lot of the work that we've been doing puts us on a level that we are already doing quite well as opposed to the target that we've set for this year. So we have a good base to start 2022. And we'll try to improve as quickly as we can, but I think it will be roughly an incredible improvement across the year from the base, of course, that we're already up. Because our GTV margin is actually lower, of course, than the GTV margin -- sorry, the GTV margin now is lower than what it was for the full year because we're improving quite rapidly. So I hope that covers that question. Regarding Q4, you seem to be treating this as a contradiction. So let me be very clear at why the growth in Q4 was the growth that we've seen in Q4 because we anticipated the growth to be higher because we thought that we would see a normal seasonal pattern. And we did see that in December. We did not see it in October and November, which is out of the ordinary. But don't forget, we're coming out of a pandemic. And that moment of coming out of the pandemic is very difficult for us to model because it doesn't fit in any model because it's a pandemic. And therefore, we are in a little bit of a schizophrenic situation in which the restaurants are open, but the offices are closed, and that is creating somewhat out-of-the-ordinary trends in the season. And therefore, we simply did not -- we're not able to catch that increase, that the increase would only happen in December. Now if you compare that to last year, remember that we were all locked down. I mean, so restaurants were closed, offices were closed and, therefore, also the growth last year, ex Grubhub, was 57%. So that was a very difficult comp in the first place for us to make in the fourth quarter. But we actually had high hopes because our base level, and this is the more important thing about why we can be so certain about 2022, the base level is just much higher now. Our order frequencies are much higher. The user base is much greater, and we're adding more new customers than we did before corona because we are modeling based on the situation before corona. And that makes it difficult because you can model the corona situation because we've been in there for quite some time. You can model the situation before corona. This is kind of a hybrid in which we're not entirely normal. And we use those cohorts, of course, based on a situation which corona wasn't there. And we put in a higher frequency and a far larger user base of about 100 million people, right? So we are just operating from a higher base, and we'll continue to grow from that. The benefit from that is that, obviously, if restaurants are open, they can't open again. So you won't have the same sort of cliff from the corona growth into a normalized situation. And the benefit is also that offices will reopen at some point, which should be beneficial to us. And in case lockdowns happen, that's, of course, also beneficial. We're not assuming that, that will happen, but that would be beneficial, of course, to execute to delivery business. Now then back to your question around what we did in the network. Remember that we were growing 700% in the U.K. and still in the quarter, 100% in our logistical network. You hear a lot about so-called superior growth of logistical players. Bear in mind, we're growing much faster in that segment than the logistical players. So this is huge growth. And when you are under the situation of huge growth, you're not per se efficient. So what we have done, we've worked a lot on the quality of the network, the quality of the income, the quality of the orders, et cetera, while there was an overall sector slowdown. That doesn't mean that, that slowdown is caused by us improving the network because, as you can see, it's a 100% growth in the logistical network still. So it matters that what we're just doing is increasing from a very high base with a particular focus on London this year. Now if competition eases, that's going to be less costly for us. We're not assuming that competition eases, and we're just going to do everything that we can to be by far the market leader also in London because, of course, in the U.K., we are, but also in the city of London in which we now have about 1/3 of the market. Then let me try to figure out what your second question was, it was around the marketplace orders, I think?
Yes, versus delivery, whether there was an impact of the increased delivery fees during the...
Oh, yes. No, but that's, again, that's related to what happened in Q4. The overall market slowed, so it doesn't really matter whether it's marketplace or logistics. Now obviously, the gap in growth pace became less also again because of restaurant reopenings. I hope the makes senses.
How would you look at the growth? You already mentioned in the outlook that you expect GTV growth mid-teens. Is that still predominantly driven by own delivery? Or should we assume that the growth rates between marketplace and own delivery already start to converge throughout 2022?
No, I think that delivery will still grow much faster than marketplace. But the gap will be less pronounced because obviously, delivery grew at 700%. It's very difficult, of course, to grow marketplace in a business that is already around for -- or was it in Just Eat, 15 years, at the same sort of pace because obviously, you already have the orders, you already have the restaurants. But yes, it's not like we're adding another McDonald's this year. So there's a -- that, of course, is a big difference also in growth rates.
Very good. And last question from my end. You've probably noticed that there's a lively debate going on, on Twitter about how to measure market shares, and we have Google Trends data. We have web traffic. We have app downloads. We have credit card data. And we have a data, which is essentially a panel with receipts, accounting receipts. Can you educate us once more on why you think certain metrics are better than other metrics and how to basically measure your market shares across the platform in a rather objective way rather than basing some other people do just on management estimates, which I think is not helpful? So can you educate us once more on the pros and cons of each metric?
I would caution you to take too much advice from Twitter. But apart from that, look, the easiest way to compare companies is looking at GTV, revenue and EBITDA, right? So that's what I would always then use. And if you want growth pace, if you want to get data on companies, it doesn't matter whether it's food delivery or anything else, in relation to other companies, if they are not telling you because that's then essentially the case, what we have always seen is that credit card data, if you have a big-enough sample and if you take that credit card data in a country in which people actually pay with credit cards, that's the absolute closest you will get to market share. Now remember that if companies also offer white label, it will show in the same way in the credit card data. So if people have a 10% white label share, then they appear in the market share data as being 10% bigger. However, credit card data is very precise. But in most of Europe, people don't pay with credit card, and therefore, that data is either unreliable or not available because of privacy laws. And as we all know, the Europeans are a little bit difficult about privacy. So in most countries, there is no credit card data. Then if you look at similar web, similar web is actually almost always very close to market share. Then people on Twitter will tell you, oh, but that's because Just Eat Takeaway gets all the orders via their website and other people get them via the app. That's just nonsense. The ratio is almost the same for all the players. And we have seen data from logistical players actually where the web share is bigger than our web share. Why? Because those players get more orders from offices. So I would assume always that the ratio is roughly the same. But even if the ratio is not the same and slightly different, yes, it's not going to be, for one player, 50-50, and for the other one, 70-30. It's going to be 50-50 and 51-49, that sort of. So you get very close to market share from the similar web data because of that reason. And in some cases, it actually is an underestimation of us because our conversion is higher usually because we're much bigger than everybody else in most of the markets in which we operate. Of course, the bigger you get, the better your conversion. I hope I don't have to explain that. If you look at Google Trends, Google Trends, what -- it's important to understand, always if you're looking at data, what am I looking at? So if you're looking at Google Trends, you are looking at keywords that people typed into Google voluntarily. Nobody is forcing them to type in Just Eat or one of our competitors' brands. Nobody is forcing them to type in Lieferando. This is what they do by their own volition. Now why would those people do that? To find your website. So it says something about what new users do. And even if people order by apps, they will still type in these keywords in Google. It is, by far, the best way to find anything on the Internet. I hope I don't have to explain that to you because you will probably know what Google is worth. So that's the way that you can determine roughly, not exactly, roughly where new customers go in a country. And then still it is important to remember what you're looking at. You're looking at new customers. So if you have an incumbent that is -- that has 50 million orders, remember that if somebody adds 50,000 new customers in a month, I may take your calculator, it's going to take a long time for that player to overtake a 50 million order brand. It's actually impossible in most cases. Now then to the creative Twitter people that we have not, in any case, found any relation between app share and market share, not at all, never. The app share is just basically downloads of apps. Again, remember what you're looking at, downloads of apps. In the case you happen to run a taxi app, you can push people to download an app. In case you have your advertisements in Google, for instance, connected to an app, you will see that you will have a lot of app downloads. App downloads are app downloads. They're not users. They're not people using the app. It's just downloads of apps. And there was even a period in Germany in which everybody was investing in that and the conversion was super low. So app downloads say nothing about market share whatsoever. There's no connection in any of the markets in which we operate. If you don't believe me, look at that and compare it to things that you know. Just look at revenue, look at look order size in markets in which you have both the app data and the actual data. And you will see that there's no relationship between the 2. Now to the more creative monthly active users, we don't even know where the data comes from. We don't have a technical way of explaining how that data gets into those providers. And there's certainly no, 0, that's 0 relationship with market share. That doesn't mean that it can not accidentally be the same as market share. It just means that there's no relationship with market share.
Yes. And maybe even to add to that, I mean, what Jitse was indicating on the daily average users, if you take, for example, a market like Poland where we actually have published numbers, so basically, people have to publish their accounts, and then you look at the daily average users of iOS, it took us at a market share of around 10% to 15%. But we know actually in a market like Poland, we are multiple times larger than the competition. Similarly, I mean, undoubtedly, also in Belgium, we are #1. But even there, also like the iOS daily average user sees us at a similar rate of 10% to 15%. And one of our competitors would be like 3 or 4x larger, which undoubtedly doesn't make sense for Belgium either. And similarly, in Spain, while maybe even the Android daily average users look potentially more or less in line, but the iOS market share there also is only around 10%, 15% on our end, which doesn't make sense. I would say everyone agrees, we're definitely #3 player in Spain. So like these are just a few examples. So like if it was indicating, it's not 100% clear how that data is gathered and it also doesn't match the actual numbers we know in the markets where we're in and what we've experienced towards that for market share data, similar what was the most accurate and for new customers who will transfer to most sector.
And just to be clear, guys, it doesn't really matter to us. This is data which can be helpful, but I think it's very important that everybody realizes what they are looking at, right? I mean I've even seen an analyst report that says that we have 50% of the German market, and everybody knows that that's nonsense, right? So it's very important to look at that, but please let me just use the actual size of companies because we publish our numbers, so I think you can look it up.
Very, very helpful. Last question is for Joris. Can you send us the pro forma numbers based on the new disclosure so that we can update our models for 2022?
You will get that in the full year results, Wim. Thanks for your 7 questions.
The next question is from Mr. Georgios Pilakoutas, Numis.
Hopefully, 2 quick questions. The first one, in markets where you aren't #1 like France, Portugal, Romania, can you just talk about, do you necessarily need to exit that market? Or can it run slightly profitable just at the small marketplace business even if it isn't challenging to be #1? And then the second question is average order value in the Netherlands and Germany are still up mid-teens versus where they were priced at the pandemic. It appears we've seen that normalized. Now I'm just interested to hear what's driven that? Is that higher delivery fees? Is that bigger basket value? And I guess how sustainable is it?
Thanks. Well, look, if you're comparing figures, you have to look, of course, at the comp. Generally, we know now that our base is much higher. I'm not even sure which user number we started the pandemic. I'm looking at Joris. Let me know.
Yes.
But we -- yes, we have far more new users, there's far more users in total now in the network than we had before corona. And I think you need to look at absolute numbers and look at what level we are predicting growth because we have a growth target out there to understand where that's going. And yes, in most markets, we see elevated growth. But of course, also the comps, especially in Q1 and Q2, are more difficult because they are comparisons with the height of the lockdowns. And therefore, we take that into consideration as well. Your question around France, Portugal and Romania, yes, it's true, we're not #1 in those countries. Obviously, we are not -- if you believe our philosophy, and maybe you do, maybe you don't, but we believe it, you should not be #2 in a smaller market. The reason for that is not to say because that automatically then doesn't translate into good economics. But I think the way to look at this more is that you need scale in a market. And for instance, if we have scale in the Dutch market, we suck all the oxygen out of that market because there's only a limited amount of new users available, and you are all after the same new users. And obviously, if you're much bigger, you are also inclined to get most of the new users, and therefore, it's very difficult/impossible for anybody to offtake such a big brand. And this is not only food delivery. You also see it in real estate and a couple of other models. So it's actually very difficult to get past somebody. So it's more about scale than being, per se, the market leader. But in most of the markets that are, say, smaller than the U.S., this leads to there being one big player because there is no more oxygen in the market for anybody else. Now France, Portugal and Romania, obviously, we are trying to get those businesses to a #1 position. But as I said, it is important for us to get there longer term. You need to understand that I've been in the business for 21 years, and I've seen most of the competitors disappear for most of my markets. And sometimes they come back for like 6 months, but that's a different topic. So the current status quo is not always what you're going to find in these markets in, let's say, 2 years. But of course, we look at the viability of markets. So we don't want to end up in a situation in which we are, say, a #2 in one of these markets and loss-making and going nowhere, right? That's not the intent of the exercise.
Sorry, just to clarify the third question, it was about average order values, in particular in the Netherlands and Germany being still quite a bit higher than where they were pre-pandemic. So just trying to understand what has driven that.
Okay. Those orders are higher probably because we have less office orders, if I need to guess. They are not higher now because of inflation. We do believe that they're going to be higher this year because of inflation because usually, restaurants increase pricing for the 1st of January. And of course, we operate off of a commission base.
The next question is from Ms. Monique Pollard, Citi.
Again, I'll just stick to 2. I just wondered, obviously, you've launched a lot of new partnerships in the rapid grocery delivery space, also your sort of dark store concept in Canada. Are you able to give some sense of what proportion of the GTV or revenues are going to be made up of rapid grocery delivery in markets like Canada and the U.K. where you're more progressed in 2022?And then given all the discussion about how growth dynamics has been different because offices have been closed, are you able to give us a sense of what proportion of orders in markets, obviously ex a market like Israel that was all B2B, used to be from offices or, I don't know, lunchtime orders?
Okay. Let me take the second question first. We estimate that in a normal market, in one of our normal consumer brands, so not Israel where it's like 90% or 95%, but in a normal consumer market, it's around 25%, 20%-ish of the business. But don't forget, let's say we can all go to the office again, we might order less at home, right? So I don't want to get you overly excited with this 20%, 25% figure. But that is usually what we see. And now, yes, I mean now actually the offices are closed almost everywhere.
And Monique, on our newsroom, you can also find the footprint reports, which provide you a little bit more details even on a country basis. So I would encourage you to read that one.
Then your question around rapid grocery delivery, we assume that Canada will be, I'm not going to give you a percentage, but will be further along than the U.K. also because we already do quite some convenience grocery in the Canadian market because we've worked with a bunch of these supermarkets, and we have our own solution. The encouraging thing about Canada is that the first stores are doing hundreds of orders a day, so it's looking pretty good. In the U.K., we have now announced 2 deals. There will be more and it will be a slow start, I guess, for all of these brands, but we'll see quite some traction hopefully by the end of the second quarter.
Yes. And maybe to add on the Canadian business here, we're already doing hundred thousands of orders per month in the convenience space. And like also indicated in the press release, by the year-end, we will be giving access to that product to about 70% of our active customer population. So we'll cover the majority of our consumers in Canada by the year-end.
The next question is from Mr. Robert Joyce, Goldman Sachs.
I'm going to sneak in 3. So just on the London comments, increasing competition there, I guess you just give a bit more clarity. I think you put prices -- so delivery fees and minimum baskets up a bit, and you're not a big fan of vouchering. But just wondering what increased competition investment into London actually looks like next year. Second one, just on the 15% or mid-teens GTV guide, how much of that is -- what percentage points of that is going to come from grocery, quick commerce in your expectations? And then the third one, could you just give us an update on Grubhub, I guess, update on the legal challenges over there, update on the strategy and just give us an idea of whether you expect Grubhub to be close to the sort of 15% mid-teen GTV group guidance you've given for 2022? Do you expect Grubhub to get close to that?
Thanks. Regarding what that means for London, look, London is a market in which we were basically nonexistent and which we now turned that into a 3-player market. And a lot of the work we're doing on London is adding inventory and advertising that inventory. So we'll do a little bit more of that, obviously. But we have good traction in London. Again, we have thrown out these lower-ticket orders because we want to improve the quality of the network and make space for further growth because, again, 700% growth is fantastic. But if part of that growth is not beneficial to us, we need to get rid of it. So we actually have some space to further increase. So part of it is more of the same. Part of it is a little bit of additional pressure from the London market. Then...
So what does that additional pressure look like? Sorry, I'm just trying to understand. What is it?
It is more marketing, more salespeople, more vessels on the network and effort into grocery. Obviously, that's an important piece also of the puzzle in London because in a market -- the market share is now roughly 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. But don't forget that our competitors have grocery. We don't, right? So we have an opportunity there by adding -- even if it's only 10% growth, we -- by adding quite some, what you guys call market share. I have again a different opinion on it, but if you want to measure it that way, then we'll be able to increase our market share because of the grocery component as well. Then your second question was around the growth being mid-teens. But I...
Just what's the grocery contribution that you expect.
I don't think you need to look at the grocery as material in that growth number. It is something that, as Jörg said, for instance, in Canada, is quite big. It might be big for us, but we're also not taking it into consideration too much because we don't know how big it is going to be for us. And it depends also, of course, on when we are done with the contracts. It depends also on the market, right? There's a couple of very large supermarkets we're talking to. So obviously, if you get those in line, you have higher growth. We don't want to put too many things in our growth figure that we are not certain of whether we are going to be able to add that yet. Then about Grubhub, we're doing a lot of work, of course, on the legal situation. In some cities now, the fee caps have been resolved in the sense that, for instance, it's allowed to ask for additional promotional fees, which basically solves our problem with the fee caps in those cities. Now there's the bigger New York issue. The incoming mayor is pro business. Now maybe to people that are not American, that sounds weird. But in any event, that's likely a good sign for us in New York. But we still, of course, have to go through both talking to the city and, going forward, with the port case. Strategy-wise, as we said, we are building up the inventory, especially in the bigger cities. So we are improving the business, but we also don't believe that that's going to just fix everything in the U.S. We have a lot of work to do also in terms of finding strategic partners. And we said before that we are open to any sort of solution that's good for Grubhub and that's good for Just Eat Takeaway. And that's a very broad array of options for us.
And just in terms of your growth expectations for the year, how does it compare versus the overall group guidance?
The U.S. will grow slower than the rest of the company. And the reason for that is that we're focusing most on the cities. It's not so difficult for us to grow outside of the cities because there's a lot of outside of the cities in the U.S. But we don't think that, that is the right strategy for Grubhub.
The next question is from Mr. Marcus Diebel, JPM.
Two questions from my side, and it goes back to the previous question on offices. Jitse, how ready is Takeaway Pay in the different markets? What I'm just asking is to find out kind of incremental order number that should come from Takeaway Pay. Could you just comment on this, where you feel we are and what kind of like ideally incremental order number we should maybe factor in because it doesn't seem that consensus has much in that for this? The second question is again on U.K. marketplace. Can you just explain to me why -- what makes you confident that the growth is going to accelerate? I understand that the mix effect between delivery and marketplace is turning into marketplace favor. So given the QSRs will be probably less -- have less deliveries, but what makes you think that marketplace starts to see accelerating growth when in a reopening environment?
Yes. Let me first take the Takeaway Pay question. The country in which we have most traction for Takeaway Pay is actually Germany, which I guess is great. The only thing is we do not know when these offices are going to be opened. So it's also not in our assumptions. We just don't know. We know that, in particular, in Germany, though the offices here, we still have maybe 5% with people, 10%. In Germany, they're entirely empty. So we don't know, and I'm not going to put anything in our budget that we are not certain about. We do have signed up a very large number of corporates in Germany. So we are very ready for reopenings. But again, I don't want to speculate on when those might happen. Then regarding your U.K. marketplace question, so yes, there's been a significant mix effect, of course, in the period in which we are adding more logistical restaurants than marketplace restaurants. I think the best way of explaining why, because some people fear cannibalization between marketplace and delivery, and the best way for me to explain this is that there is no competition between a salad bar in the London city and a kebab store in York. And I hope that, that comparison makes sense. These models are often, not always, there might be some cannibalization somewhere, but often not in competition with each other. And the kebab store in York will get more orders from us because we are growing. We are adding more customers. We are adding more restaurants, and our network effects become better. So this is why marketplace grows. And the whole thinking that, for some reason, somebody that lives in York that also has kebab is going to order a salad in the London city. Sorry, I don't follow it.
But is this more about this first in York -- or maybe not York, but in a Tier 3 city ordering for McDonald's?
Yes. But that would assume that those people are ordering from McDonald's every day. And as you know, our order frequency is free a month. So look, I mean I'm not saying that there's never any cannibalization, but the price point, McDonald's is a bad example given price points, but the price point usually for marketplace, I'm not talking delivery fee, I'm talking food price is much lower than a logistical restaurant. And this is why they usually do not compete. And this will be the same to me as you're saying that McDonald's is competing with a logistical salad bar. That's probably also not the case, right? So there's -- choice is very important to us. And this is why we've also added all these logistical restaurants in Germany and Holland, et cetera. And this is also why we have that choice for the consumer. But in the end, it's the consumer that picks a restaurant. And in some cases, it's McDonald's; in some cases, it's a kebab store.
No, super. Just very quick, on Takeaway Pay, so it's up and running. It just really depends on people coming back. But then like a market like Germany, it will kickstart right away, yes, basically?
Yes, it will. Yes. And we are very hopeful because we don't assume that people are going to be back in the office all of the days, thinking 3 days on average, in the office on 3 days. And of course, you have to close your office canteen because, yes, you can't run an office canteen based on 3 days occupancy, right? So we do believe that actually, the closing of a lot of the catering options in offices should help us out.
Your next question is from Mr. Adrien de Saint Hilaire, Bank of America.
I've got 3 questions, but one is really quick. So hopefully, I can squeeze it in. First of all, how does Q1 '22 compare to your '22 guidance of mid-teens GMV growth? And given the December momentum, would you expect to have sequential growth in GTV in Q1 '22 versus Q4?The second question is, are you able to single out the investments in grocery? How much of a drag is it on 2022 EBITDA? And thirdly, about the expansion of, let's say -- or closing the gap or expanding, let's say, your market share in the U.K. Can you discuss the size of your rider fleet in the U.K. versus competition?
Thanks. Let me take the last question first. Our logistical business is almost the size of the #3 player, not entirely, so it will be a little bit smaller than the #3 player. And I think would be, let's say, 2/3 of the #2 player. And that's only the logistical bit of our business, but of course, still growing 100%. So we're hopeful that we can overtake those guys, not to say in amount of couriers, but in amount of orders that we do for logistics. Then you're asking about the grocery drag. It's important to understand that we deliver grocery off the back of our delivery network. And so it's the same economics. There's a little bit of a higher AOV. So actually, the economics are usually even better than food delivery of that. That having said, the Canadian rollout of the hubs, of course, that costs money. We have to install the hubs. But again, it's the logistical network that we already have that's already at maturity that we can use to deliver the grocery. So we do have to invest in the hubs, but of course, not in the logistical network. And the logistical network in Canada is very profitable. So there's no material drag there. The drag is the same as the rest of the logistical network. Then the first question regarding the mid-teens growth. Well, obviously, also in the quarter, I would have like to seen the higher growth in Q4. But also there, we would meet the target, of course, of 2022. And usually, Q1 is better than Q4.
The next question is from Mr. Marc Hesselink, ING.
First question is on the EU Commission proposal. You're saying you're happy with it with the level playing field. But could it not be also an incremental benefit for you? Because actually, your business model is already fully geared to this, while the competition has to change. And I'm not certain how easy that is to change. And in that period, is that a period that you can, yes, you can take some extra share? Second question is on inflation trends. You already talked about the average basket value, order value. What about your rider cost? And how will that compare to maybe your playing field versus the competition? And how will you push that to the end consumer? And then a third question. We've seen some consolidation in the industry. How do you look at it? And what do you think is the role that JET should play? Or is it now a good time to be on the sideline and see what happens there?
Good questions. Okay. So the EU law, look, I think it's important to understand that the scrutiny on the model, on the freelance model, is already ongoing in most of the European countries. In most of Continental Europe, it is forbidden to use freelancers. That doesn't stop our competitors to do it, right? So that's obviously happening. And you see that the response is usually in terms of fines and in terms of clawbacks of taxes and social security premiums. That all is happening behind the scenes. I don't see any of our competitors reporting this, but I know it's happening because we talk to the same authority. So that's already happening. So the EU law on top of it is just a framework turning around the burden of proof, which makes it easier, of course, for the governments, but also for employees to say, well, sorry, I'm an employee, I need to be properly paid and insured, et cetera. So look, it's not for us. We're not -- we're happy about the law because it will finally close down that loophole of being able to basically push out paying for taxes and -- because that's what it is, right? It's just a delayed tax bill essentially for our competition. I think it will not per se lead to the disappearance of competitors in countries in which they are big. But in most of our countries, they are actually small. So I do believe that a lot of these competitors, whether it's because of the market rotation or whether it's because of more scrutiny on these roles because if you look at Brazil, it's a very good example, Uber announced to leave 1 day after the Brazilians introduce a law about couriers, right? So you could say, oh, they left because it was such a competitive situation, while they might also have left because of the change of the law. Now in Europe, again, this is already illegal. It will be helpful to us. But it's not something that we need. So I mean it's great if a player leaves Spain, great because we grow because of that. But it's not something that we per se need because we are all also -- obviously, in Spain, for instance, we're very big. So it doesn't really matter to us too much that there's a player that has a couple of percentage of the market. Then regarding inflation, it is very beneficial to us because we have a model that is not only delivery, but it's also marketplace. And of course, we're very profitable in marketplace. So of course, if food prices rise, we make more money. Part of our business, of course, we employ couriers. Yes, if wages go up, we need to pay for that. But we will, of course, in the end, charge that to the consumer. So we don't think that that's going to be an issue. We think it's going to be a hurdle because that increases costs for our competition more if they have to change from a freelance model to an employed model because in the end, in some countries, the cost difference is quite significant, especially in Southern Europe. If people pay a couple of euro per drop and suddenly, they need to start paying EUR 10 per hour, that's a big difference, of course. And that changes the economics of these players considerably. So at least they will become smaller, in some cases, they will disappear. In terms of consolidation, yes, we are very picky. We're very picky about these large-scale businesses that know how to create profits. And in the end, GTV is nice. But if you have a very high GTV in 25 countries and none of those countries are ever going to be profitable, yes, sorry, that's not interesting to us. What's interesting to us are positions such as, even if they're smaller, take -- we have Germany. So Germany is a great example. Holland is a great example. The U.K. is a great example. Canada is a great example, but also Poland is going to be very profitable. It has exactly the same characteristics as Germany and Holland. It's earlier days, but it has the same characteristics. But that's not the case in all the countries. In some countries, it's very difficult to get to profitability. Other countries are too small. In some countries, there's too much competition for anybody ever to be profitable. So we are very picky. And therefore, the chance that you will see us participate in small-scale consolidation is relatively limited. Larger M&A, I think, of further market consolidation, yes, I mean, we are the most important player in this part of the world, right? So I think that's likely to happen at some point in the future.
The next question is from Ms. Silvia Cuneo, Deutsche Bank.
My first question is about the progress in building out the grocery proposition. Can you please say some insights about the trends on the partnerships that you have recently signed in terms of exclusivity and length of contracts? And can you also say any early feedback from existing food delivery users trying the groceries or your ability to supply new users altogether with the grocery, for instance?And the second question is just about the new segmentation. Can you please talk a little more about the similarities among the Southern European markets with Australia and New Zealand that are grouped together? For example, is that in terms of competitive environment, strategy or unit economics?
I literally understand very little, but I hope that Joris got it. I think your last question -- the line is bad, Silvia. I think the last question was about what exactly is in Southern Europe and...
The reasons for the segmentation like, for instance, Australia and New Zealand is with Southern Europe.
Oh, okay. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, so for the last question, most of it is accountancy rules. So we have to do it. It's not that we won't do it per se, but we have to do it. Obviously, we try to bundle the countries in the way that we also are organized in the business. And what is important is that usually, these countries share characteristics, right? So if you look at the Northern European segment, those are usually dominant positions that are either highly profitable. Take Ireland -- oh, sorry, Ireland is then in, of course, U.K. & Ireland segment. But take Holland, take Germany, take countries like Denmark, take Poland that's moving up there as well, so those countries are very similar, and that's why they're in the same basket. Because, for instance, Poland used to be in Rest of the World, which kind of hides Poland, and Poland is one of our best countries. So that doesn't make too much sense. Southern Europe and Australia, look, Southern Europe by itself is too small. These are smaller food delivery markets just altogether. There's just less food being ordered in Southern Europe. Also in our company, they are smaller. And they still require quite some investment because obviously, competition is higher sometimes in these countries, and we still have a long runway to get to, let's say, 30%, 40% of the population in those places. So you have to invest quite a lot of money. Why are Israel and Australia and New Zealand in there? These otherwise segments would just be far smaller than the rest of the business, right? I mean if you look at the Northern European segment, it's huge. North America is huge. U.K. & Ireland is huge. So we had to put it somewhere. And if we would have done it in a separate way, then, yes, you get an Israel and Australia segment, which also doesn't sound very logical to me. So that's why they are in there.
On the first question, I think it's about the grocery partnerships, whether we can share anything on the agreements, the profitability, whether we use exclusivity and if we see any network effects between grocery users and food delivery.
Yes. Especially in Canada, we have quite some good data on users. So we have more people, and maybe Jörg can talk about it after I'm done answering, but we have quite some people using both the grocery and increasing their frequency on food delivery. It's too early days in the U.K. If you talk -- look at the agreements, we want this to be profitable. Don't think of this as the same thing as the flash grocery delivery stuff. That's not we'll go after, after something that's sustainable that is, okay, I want -- take Canada, it's -- I think it's 1,500 SKUs. So actually, you have -- you are able to use it as a supermarket. It is not a limited amount of SKUs. It's actually quite extensive. And therefore, you can use it on a daily basis or on a weekly basis. And it's important, again, to us that we get this to profitability just like the rest of the logistical network. And again, it's easier in Canada than elsewhere. Second question, I didn't understand at all. Joris?
No, that was the segmentation question. That's already been answered.
Oh, sorry. And Jörg?
Yes. Maybe just to add on the convenience side, I think we have also given some background on increased order frequency in the Capital Markets Day deck. Besides that, obviously, we have an improvement of fleet utilization which are helpful from the business. And obviously, in a business like Canada where we are EBITDA positive there, it also drives incremental profitability.
The next question is from [ Michael Oru ], [ Dupruvitican ].
I have a couple of questions on delivery. Last year, you did 470 million delivery orders. And I was wondering which percentage had a delivery fee with that.
I think by now, like 80% or so.
Is that 80% today or in 2021 as a whole?
By now. I think the whole year must be something like 40%, 50% or so?
Significantly less. But not to speculate about percentage, but we should look it up...
This is a wild guess.
Yes, a wild guess.
But this kind of feels right, but something like that.
Okay. Because I checked some of your websites across the various markets, and it looks as if you have delivery fees now everywhere, even in Germany. And what's sort of the average fee across your entire footprint? Is that EUR 1.5?
No, not the whole footprint. It must be higher than that. But if you look at Continental Europe, it's probably around EUR 1.5. We don't have delivery fees everywhere yet. And in some places, for competitive reasons, we choose to keep them low.
And for example, if you take the German example, for example, one of the burger brands, for example, has free delivery in Germany, which makes up also quite some orders. So not everything is for free. And also like we will get way more differentiated, obviously, on the pricing with regards to the delivery fee. So it will also then depend on where you are, how close you are to the restaurant and so on and so on. So there's multiple factors then influencing that delivery fee.
So dynamic prices. If it rains and there's a lot of demand, I have to pay more for that same order compared to a sunny evening?
Yes, it's mainly about distance.
Okay. Now the reason I asked is because this gives me a better insight in the dynamics that the delivery fees can add for EBITDA improvement going forward. Because if it's now at 80% currently run rate versus 40% last year, then you already have a lot of improvement. And then I assume that -- well, I also looked at your U.K. website, and your fees are still well below that of one of the others. If you can bump that as well, then that's quite some interesting dynamic for your EBITDA.
Well, we're more after market share in the U.K. than after EBITDA increases from raising delivery fees there. It's helpful for us. But again, it depends very much on where you are. Delivery fees across Germany are still very low, but we also don't want to waste money. So if we can increase them, then we will.
Okay. Good. Then I also have a follow-up question on that legal situation in the U.S. You said there's some sort of a workaround in which you can ask for another additional fee.
No, no, that's in some cities. Look, the city councils, in most cases, no, it's not a legally tenable situation for them or at least they want to avoid a court case because court cases are going to be costly in the U.S. And therefore, you can sometimes negotiate an outcome. I think this was the case -- I think it was Philadelphia where we were able to make sure that we can both support the restaurant's community and help ourselves.
So there is some progress, but you're not there yet.
Well, if that [ case will progress ], we would have an additional EUR 150 million EBITDA. So you would have noticed that.
The next question is from Mr. Clement Genelot, Bryan Garnier.
I will have 2 questions. So the first one is on grocery. You seem to have or requested quite a large number of grocery store partners throughout the world. Are you now where you want to overall maybe in terms of offering or not yet? And where do you want -- where do you intend to widen the offer? And my second question is on the fee caps. Does the '22 EBITDA guidance take into account the removal of all fee cap headwinds in the U.S., at least beyond New York's [ high fee ] or not at all?
No, they are a realistic assumption of fee caps. And don't forget that most of the fee caps in the U.S. are gone, right? They are not there at this point in time. So most of it -- almost all of it is the New York fee cap that's still remaining. And therefore, that's the one to watch. Regarding your first question around the grocery offering, whether we are there, where we want it to be, we are at 5%.
The last question is from Mr. Sreedhar Mahamkali, UBS.
It's 3 quick questions, hopefully. So first one, apologies if this was asked, I joined a little late. The first one, in terms of U.S. and Grub, you've talked about partnership conversations that are ongoing. Can you perhaps share any learnings if you were able to as it relates to the strategic value of Grub? And what are you learning about? That's the first one. Secondly, in terms of the changing regulatory landscape -- old regulatory landscape, as it probably already is, what are your observations in terms of how well your competitors are learning to work with them, let's say, in Spain, for example? And last one, in the U.K., I know you've already said you'd improve profitability in 2022. But I just recall, there was a chart that you showed at the Capital Markets Day with the monthly EBITDA that showed quite a nice trajectory. I just wondered if that improvement continued into Q4? And if it did, could you see U.K. breaking even possibly in 2022?
Thank you. Let's start with that last question. If you follow that chart, you'll probably conclude that we are EBITDA breakeven in December. And actually, we are close to EBITDA breakeven in December. However, we are not done with the competition yet in the U.K., and therefore, we are going to invest a lot of money next year. Also bear in mind that in December, usually, delivery restaurants close over the Christmas period in the U.K. So you have more marketplace restaurants and all of a sudden, you are more profitable as a consequence. So we're doing very well in EBITDA in the U.K., but we also have quite a lot of investment that we want to do in the U.K. to make sure that our share, not only in the whole of the U.K., but also in London becomes much bigger. So that has our biggest priority in the U.K. If competition, we use this pressure a little bit, maybe we'll be more profitable. But we want to caution on the U.K. EBITDA. Don't get overly excited that we managed to get to breakeven. Don't forget, we are not profitable in the U.K. because of growth decisions. We want to outgrow the competition in absolute sense, not per se in relative sense, but in absolute sense. That's a more important thing. Then you asked about the legal situation in Europe and whether our competitors are able to adapt. Our competitors are always trying not to adapt, but to circumvent the law. So if you look at Spain specifically, Deliveroo left Spain. They did not want to adhere to the law. They left. I think Uber is doing subcontracting in Spain. And the other competitor, if I interpret what I know about Spain correctly, has now employed 20% of the staff. And of course, the law says that you need to employ 100% of the staff. That will, of course, create a lot of fines, but you would have to ask our competitor there how they want to deal with that. It's not legal. I know that for a fact. And I think everybody that understands Spanish would know that because these articles are all over the Spanish media. Then regarding the strategic value of Grubhub, well, there's a lot of people that are picking up the phone. Whether that's going to lead to something useful, we don't know, but we are quite helpful. And the reason for that is very simple, and the same as in Canada, logistics is profitable in the U.S., right? So if you have a logistical network, you can deliver everything. It doesn't matter whether it's food or iPhone cables or groceries or -- so the last mile network is very valuable to a large number of players. Now again, I mean I think it's always important, these discussions, they take time, especially if you have discussions with a lot of people. And it needs to also be the right moment for those players. And sometimes, that also again takes time. It's something that we are actively pursuing, but there is quite some interest there. So we're hopeful that we'll be able to get to a transaction.
Got it. Very quickly, in terms of the potential partners, can you give us what verticals, what areas of the sort of consumer industry that you're seeing interest in? Or is it very, very widespread?
It is very widespread. Now the obvious candidates are grocery chains, taxi business, other large consumer brands. There might be some super-large consumer brands that might also be interested. So there's a broad range of people we are engaging.
There's a good presentation, which you can find online, which includes a lot of partners. Maybe there's even a bit more.
There are no further questions. I would like to hand over the conference to Mr. Groen.
Thank you very much. And I would like to round up the short analyst and investor call by thanking you for participating and your questions. Should you have any additional questions or remarks, please reach out to our Investor Relations team. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the event call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for joining, and have a very nice day.