Deliveroo H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 7, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Deliveroo delivered 9% year-on-year GTV growth and a 46% increase in adjusted EBITDA to £96 million, while generating positive free cash flow for the third consecutive half.
  • Positive Sentiment: Growth momentum accelerated in Q2 with 10% GTV growth, supported by improved customer retention and order frequency driven by enhancements to the consumer value proposition.
  • Positive Sentiment: Core restaurant vertical growth rebounded strongly, grocery accounted for 18% of group GTV with double-digit expansion, retail selection scaled up, and the advertising business progress lifted contribution to 150 bps of GTV.
  • Negative Sentiment: Revenue take-rate contracted by 20 bps year-on-year due to mix shifts into lower-margin categories and the new UK digital services tax, weighing on gross margin.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Shareholders approved the DoorDash transaction and Deliveroo expects completion in Q4 pending regulatory clearance, in line with the original timeline.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Deliveroo H1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Speaker 3

Good morning and welcome to our half-year 2025 results. I'm Will Shu, Founder and CEO of Deliveroo, and I'm joined by Scilla, our CFO. It is going to be a short presentation today. I'm going to start with a quick overview of our performance and take you through some of the progress we've made across our growth initiatives. Scilla is going to get into the financials, and we're going to give you a status update on the DoorDash transaction. I'm going to wrap up at the end. Let's get started. It's been a great first half in 2025 for Deliveroo. We posted year-on-year GTV growth of 9% and adjusted EBITDA of £96 million. That's up 46% year-on-year. We've generated another half of positive free cash flow, which is great. We also exit the half with really good momentum. Year-on-year GTV growth accelerated to 10% in Q2.

Speaker 3

The fundamentals of the business feel good. Retention and frequency across all cohorts continue to improve. That's a trend that we've seen over the last six quarters or so. We think this is the result of great work by the teams to relentlessly improve the CVP. On the back of this strong first half performance, we're going to update our fiscal year 2025 guidance. Scilla is going to take you through that shortly. Now let's get into the business update. I want to start by reminding people of our strategic framework. You've seen this, I think, many times on these presentations, but this really starts from our mission. Our mission is to transform the way you shop and eat, bringing the neighborhood to your door by connecting consumers, restaurants, shops, and riders. We have three pillars that support the delivery of that mission.

Speaker 3

We want to drive the best CVP on a hyper-local neighborhood basis. We want to do that across key verticals like restaurant, grocery, retail. We want to do that very efficiently in all these areas that we operate. Let's get into the CVP part, probably my favorite part. We've continued to build on market-leading selection. We've added a further 4,000 sites globally across restaurant, grocery, and retail. We've also continued to selectively extend our delivery radii. We've increased the selection that consumers see in the app, giving people greater choice. On the price value, you know I've talked about our commercial architecture and value program a lot. I'm really happy to say that I think these initiatives continue to yield good results. What we've seen is further markup reductions in France. In the UK, what we've seen, of course, is national insurance and minimum wage has increased.

Speaker 3

That's increased in April, and that's put merchant partners under pressure. We have seen some menu price inflation, but it has been lower than we have anticipated. The price increases have been quite consistent across both dining and on delivery, so markups in the UK have remained stable. We have also continued to be relentlessly focused on reducing defects. I've talked a lot about the work the team's done over the years on this. In the first half, we took actions such as launching auto acceptance of orders. That's led to further reductions in order rejections and cancellations. We've extended receipt scanning to the customer handover side, so when the rider comes to you, sometimes the rider will ask to scan something as opposed to just doing it at merchants. We've also implemented tighter rider behavioral policies to more accurately address rider-driven OMDNRs.

Speaker 3

OMDNRs, of course, is when you actually don't get your food, which is the worst defect possible. We've reduced this critical defect to a new all-time low. This is on top of the 70% decrease in 2023 and further improvements in 2024. It's an enormous, enormous reduction in this terrible defect. On the CVP, we also have loyalty. 2024 was a big year of innovation for Plus, and 2025 has been about refining that proposition. We've implemented a number of actions to reduce subscriber churn. We've launched a discounted annual plan to provide subs with access to savings and to boost annual retention. We've rolled out new partnerships to help expand the program. Finally, we've offered more partner-funded benefits to offer value to subs.

Speaker 3

What all of that means is the output, what we've seen is a strong year-on-year increase in Plus orders, GTV, Max, and paying Plus Gold subscribers have reached a new all-time high in Q2. We've executed well across our CVP. Now let's talk about each vertical. Let's start with restaurants. At the full year in March, I said that restaurants are the heart of our business, but the category has lagged in growth over the last few years compared to verticals like grocery and retail. I am, however, pleased to say that growth in our restaurant vertical has accelerated strongly in the first half. It's been a key driver to our overall growth acceleration in the second quarter, which I think makes us feel good because it is our core business at the end of the day.

Speaker 3

Obviously, all of these verticals help support each other, but it's still the majority of our business today. In March, I talked about other exciting opportunities to accelerate that restaurant growth. We talked about growing share by pushing harder in certain areas where we think we have a big CVP differentiation or we think we can develop one. We also talked at length about unlocking new occasions, growing the market. We remain very excited about these opportunities. We've made good progress laying these foundations in the first half. Our grocery business continues to perform well. It's 18% of group GTV in the first half, strong double-digit growth. Retail continues to scale. We've added more selection. We've continued to raise awareness on that. Our advertising business reached 150 basis points of GTV, making further progress to 2% plus by 2026.

Speaker 3

We've grown strongly across our key verticals, and we've got exciting growth opportunities ahead. The output of all these actions in regards to our growth initiatives is a continued improvement in consumer engagement, i.e., the cohort. This slide is something we show, I believe, every results. I think it's worth showing again because they are absolutely moving in the right direction. If you look at the frequency by cohort, these are annual cohorts presented on a quarterly basis. You can see the inflection that has started about a year ago or a little before that. You can see that those lines are getting steeper and steeper, which is good. If you look at the year-on-year average frequency growth for the more settled cohorts, you're looking at something around 5% year-on-year growth.

Speaker 3

That is below the historical average of 10% year-on-year growth per annum, but that is absolutely moving in the right direction. You can kind of see the progress that has been made over the last few years on that. Retention, I think, is quite a similar story. That lapse rate is continuing to improve and has been for, it looks like, about 10 quarters or so. I think the outputs of what we're doing are driving that really, really important consumer engagement improvement, which is fantastic. I'm now going to hand over to Scilla. She's going to go into the financials.

Operator

Thanks, Will, and good morning, everyone. Before I get started, just a reminder that the numbers in this presentation are on a continuing operations basis, i.e., they exclude Hong Kong. As Will said, performance in the first half has been really positive as we've continued to make progress on a number of our growth and profitability levers. GTV grew 9% in constant currency, underpinned by strong growth in orders, which continued to improve in the period. Revenue growth was also 9% in constant currency, with that 20 basis points contraction in revenue take rate, mainly due to mix effects and the impact of UK digital services tax, which I flagged with pre-dims. We continued to work hard on network efficiencies, and gross profit grew strongly, up 7%.

Operator

Adjusted EBITDA of £96 million was up 46% year-on-year, with EBITDA margin expanding 60 basis points to 2.5% as we continue to drive both marketing efficiencies and broader operating leverage. Whilst at a headline, we had a statutory loss of £19.2 million. This was driven by various charges we took in relation to the costs of the DoorDash acquisition. Excluding deal-related costs, we made another statutory profit of £31.8 million, up from £1.3 million in H1 last year. Finally, we delivered a free cash flow of £46 million, the third consecutive half of positive free cash flow, further reinforcing our sustainable cash generation. We closed the half with net cash of £624 million, a £44 million reduction during the half, driven by £90 million of share buybacks.

Operator

A strong performance, good GTV growth, really pleasing order growth, a near 50% increase in adjusted EBITDA, cash generation, and an underlying statutory profit. Now turning to a more detailed look at our top line. First half, GTV grew 9% in constant currency, accelerating to 10% in Q2. This momentum has been supported by good execution as we continued to see the benefits of our investments into the CVP. Growth was also broad-based across our key verticals, with a marked improvement in restaurant growth, as well as strong double-digit growth in grocery and further progress in retail. Order growth is now the biggest driver of GTV growth, accelerating strongly, up 8% in H1 compared to 3% and 5% in H1 and H2 of 2024. This is evident in the improvements in consumer engagement that Will's just talked about, with both group average order frequency and Max out 4% year-on-year.

Operator

GTV per order growth moderated to 2% in constant currency, with ongoing food inflation partly offset by a growing proportion of lower value QSRs in the overall mix. In the UK, we've continued to perform very well, with GTV up 10% year-on-year and an acceleration into Q2. Within that, order growth has continued to improve through the period, up from 5% in Q4 last year to 7% in Q1 and 9% in Q2 as we executed well on our initiatives. International growth remains consistent, having been 9% in each of the last three halves. The UAE and Italy remain strong contributors to growth, while France continues to be impacted by softer market conditions and the competitive environment. Moving on to revenue and gross profit, as I've said many times before, we continue to optimize for absolute quantum rather than rate.

Operator

Increasing the actual users, orders, revenue, gross profit, and EBITDA that we make is exactly what we've continued to do during the first half. We've driven more orders from Plus, Retail, and Grocery, as well as mixing more into QSRs. All of these, as you know, are slightly dilutive to unit economics, but they scale our orders and GTV and drive higher revenue and gross profit. As we look at revenue, this increased by 9% year-on-year in constant currency. However, take rate dropped by 20 basis points year-on-year. That was due to the mix effects I've just mentioned. Due to our progress on profitability, we're now also fully in scope for UK digital services tax, and that's treated as an offset to revenue, amounting to a drag of about 15 basis points in H1.

Operator

These dilutive effects were partially offset by higher advertising revenue, as well as lower discounts and refunds, as we improved both our promotional efficiency and we continued to reduce order defects. Looking now at gross profit, the flow-through of that take rate dilution was only partly offset by delivery efficiencies, meaning gross margin also dropped 20 basis points to 10.4%. Delivery efficiencies included further progress on stacking, where improvements to our assignment algorithm enabled us to stack 16% more orders year-on-year. We also further reduced rider wait time at both the merchant and the consumer. All in all, gross profit boosted 7% year-on-year and was a strong driver of our EBITDA growth. We've also continued to make good progress on driving operating leverage, with marketing and overheads as a percentage of GTV improving by 80 basis points year-on-year and 50 basis points half and half.

Operator

Overheads were up 3%, within which total people costs were up 6% due to both higher average headcount and wage inflation in the period. On non-people costs, we've worked hard to continue to optimize our cost base. Marketing was down 14% year-on-year as we continued to optimize our spend as we discussed at the prelims. The net effect of this was overall marketing and overheads costs decreasing by 2% year-on-year, despite increasing order volume and general cost inflation. All in all, a testament to our improving efficiency. I'm really pleased that we've also continued to make great progress on cash generation, delivering another half of positive free cash flow. Looking at some of the component parts outside of EBITDA, spend on capital items increased slightly year-on-year as we continue to invest in key growth initiatives, such as the foundational development work on our new restaurant missions.

Operator

The £12.9 million working capital outflow was largely due to the timing of the period end within the week. Putting all of it together, we generated £46 million of free cash flow during the half. You'll remember that outside of our definition of free cash flow is cash interest income, which was £13 million in the half, broadly in line with the prior year. We bought back shares amounting to £90 million. Within that, we had about £61 million to complete the £150 million buyback program announced in August last year, and about £29 million related to the £100 million buyback program we announced with our prelims in March. As a reminder, that program was suspended towards the end of April when we confirmed the DoorDash approach.

Operator

Finally, you'll see a cash outflow of £12 million for discontinued operations, which relates to cash flows in Hong Kong up to the date of exit, as well as any cash in that market that fell into the liquidation process. As a significant creditor in the liquidation, we would expect to recoup some of this when the liquidation completes in the second half. Overall, good progress on free cash flow generation. I'll now move on to our guidance. After that strong H1, you'll have seen we've updated our full-year guidance. We now expect GTV growth around the top end of our previously guided range of high single digits % growth in constant currency. We're also narrowing our adjusted EBITDA range to the upper half of the previously guided range of £170 to £190 million.

Operator

As a reminder, some of the investments we flagged we're making this year, such as into our restaurant growth initiative, are second half weighted. The adjusted EBITDA shape half and half will look a little different to previous years. Finally, a quick update on where we are with the DoorDash transaction. As you know, shareholders approved the transaction on the 16th of June, but the regulatory process is still ongoing. We do still expect to complete in Q4 of this year, in line with the timeline that we set out in the scheme document. All progressing in line with expectations. I'll now hand you back to Will to wrap up.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Scilla. H1 was a great half, and the business clearly has great momentum. I'm so proud of where we are today, what we've achieved to date. We have this mission, and we have this vision to transform the way people shop and eat and to bring the neighborhood to your door. We're delivering against that vision. You know I've been at it 13 years. We have pioneered this, I would say, ever-evolving, ever-changing category. We built the sector. We redefined it multiple times, whether that's the introduction of things like additions, Plus, starting verticals like grocery and retail. Like I said, this category is ever-evolving, and it is always surprising to me how big it is and how quickly it changes. Here, we think about everything through the eyes of the consumer. Today, as we always have, we obsess about the consumer value proposition across selection, service, price.

Speaker 3

As a result of that, you see the growth. The growth is accelerating. The cohorts are continuing to improve. Profitability is both sustainable and increasing as well. We're delivering positive free cash flow. I take a step back, and we're really proud of what we've accomplished. I just want to remind everyone a bit about Deliveroo and who we are as a company. I'd say that, and I talked a little bit about this at the Capital Markets Day back in November 2022, but we are consumer-obsessed. We are operators, but in the details. We are innovators and builders, and we are relentless. That is who we are. These are the reasons why we've succeeded as a company. As you know, these are likely to be our last set of financial results as a listed business.

Speaker 3

I am so proud of what we've done, the challenges we have overcome, the achievements we have delivered. It's never been easy. It's never been predictable. I'm really, really proud of everything we've done. Now, pending completion of the takeover, we enter an exciting new chapter. The partnership with DoorDash will further accelerate our full potential. I'm sure that DoorDash will be a great partner to Deliveroo. I want to give a huge thank you to everyone who has helped deliver the success today and over the years, our employees, our merchant partners, our riders, and most of all, our consumers. I'm sure the best is yet to come. Thank you very much. With that, I'm going to hand back to the operator for any Q&A. Thanks.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please also ensure the mute function is not activated in order to let you signal with your equipment. That's star one for questions. Our very first question is coming from Giles Thorne, calling from Jefferies. Please go ahead and your line is open.

Speaker 2

Morning. Thank you. Given this is probably the last public markets call, my questions rather reflect this feeling of being a bit DMARC happy. Will, for you. It's been, I think, almost exactly 12 years to the month since you got on your bike, or I think it was a scooter, to launch Deliveroo in Chelsea. I'm assuming the business has been every moment of your waking life since then. Now the business is about to change ownership. The offer document from DoorDash was quite light on details as to what's next for Will Shu. I guess that's my first question. What is next for Will Shu? My second question.

Speaker 3

Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2

My second question is, sorry, Will, why don't you go ahead on that one, and then I'll come to my second question?

Speaker 3

It has actually been 13 years since Greg and I started the business. August 12 is when we incorporated the company, so we've been at it for quite a long time. Today's not about me, right? Today's really just about our results, and we're just focused on executing on the business. Once the completion happens, we can talk a lot more about that when the time's right. Oh, sorry. What was your second question, Giles? I interrupted you.

Speaker 2

No problem. The second question is a different tag. We hear pretty regularly about the failings of London as a place for technology companies to list. Indeed, today's results suggest that you are a much higher quality company than the London markets were giving you credit for. The question for you, Will, is were you to get the tap on the shoulder from someone within the NSD or the Treasury or the FCA, whoever it is, as to how our institution served you or failed you, what would your answer be? What advice would you give to the next technology company thinking about London as a listing bench?

Speaker 3

Thank you for the question. I wasn't anticipating such high-level philosophical questions, but very happy to engage. Appreciate it.

Speaker 2

Today, we're deep into August here, Will.

Speaker 3

I was kind of hoping he'd ask about the CVP, but that's fine. I think the UK is a phenomenal place to do business. We have been, I think, beneficiaries of a great business environment here. To me, I'm always sort of less focused on listing venue because in my mind, is London a great place to do business, full stop? Yes. You've got amazing talent here. You've got a predictable rule of law. You've got things. If you work hard here and you have a good product, I think you can do really, really well here. I would say for me, what I think really will motivate more and more people to build businesses and to join startups is the ecosystem itself. When I started this business 13 years ago, there were a few sort of successful startups and scale-ups, but there really weren't that many back then.

Speaker 3

I look at the last decade with people like Revolut or Monzo or TransferWise and a whole host of others. I think the optimism that you have as a young person to start a business today is really different. Obviously, you've got VC money in from almost every major fund here in the UK. I think it's a fantastic place to do business. As more and more companies succeed, as more and more companies grow and go public, I think that'll be a really positive sense of optimism for people to attempt to do this really, really hard thing. It is really hard, and it is all-consuming. If you've seen other people succeed, I think that gives you a bunch of hope that you can do the same.

Speaker 2

Very good. Thanks, Will. All the best.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Giles.

Speaker 5

Thank you. That's your question? Sorry, sir. That's your question, Mr. Thorne. We'll now move to Annick Maas of Bernstein. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 1

Good morning. My first question is these results are really very, very good. One could even argue that the takeover offer here is way too low. I want your view on that point. My second one is on the competitive dynamics you're seeing in the UK. I would like to understand how sustainable basically the order growth is that you've been seeing in the UK and if you can comment on what you've been seeing from your peers. The last one is on how you are thinking about group take rate for the rest of the year. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you. I think we've got a number of different questions here. Scilla, maybe you want to start at the bottom one with take rate, and then I can answer, I guess, the first few.

Speaker 1

Sure. As you heard in the prepared remarks, the take rate, the sort of 20 bps of year-on-year degradation, was really a mix of factors, as ever. I was continuing to shift into lower margin, but still accretive in terms of quantum orders. By that, I mean moving into grocery, moving into Plus as we've planned for, and then actually, particularly in this half, we've seen more shift into QSR. That was partially offset by our continuing progress on ads and also our continuing progress on refunds and reducing defects. I expect those things to continue to play out and broadly offset one another. What we have seen in the half, as I flagged in the prelims, is as a result of that profitability improvement, we're now fully in scope for UK DSG. We did get a drag of 15 bps on take rate as a result of that.

Speaker 1

That's a one-off shift in this year, again, as I flagged. It will continue into the second half, but it isn't repeatable on the 26th.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Just on your question, first of all, thank you for the kind words on the second quarter and first half. We're really proud of that. Again, a big thank you for the Deliveroo team on this. This is the result of work we've done over the last few years. We came out, I think it was November 2023, Capital Markets Day, and we talked about what we were going to do over the next few years. The outputs of that are the improvement in the cohorts on the growth rate and the profitability. We're really proud of that. All of this, I think, I don't want to say everything's predictable, but we had a plan and we executed on it, is the short of it. Right? To your question, nothing has fundamentally changed since the board and the independent committee recommended the transaction.

Speaker 3

We laid out, I think, very clearly why we think this is a good deal for shareholders and Deliveroo. All these results do, I think, is no different than our view from a couple of months ago. Right? Obviously, these results today are not a surprise to us. I think, to that point, what I would encourage you to do is take a look in the deal documents. The rationale is clearly stated. We are, I think, really excited about the future with DoorDash. What was the second, sorry, what was your second question again? Was it on the growth rates?

Speaker 1

The competitive dynamics. Competitive dynamics you're seeing in the UK, just to see how sustainable the order growth is that you've seen there.

Speaker 3

I would say this. Like I said, the initiatives that we plan are over a multi-year period. You can see the cohorts improving over the last 8 to 10 quarters or so, with acceleration over the last four. These things usually, to me, are a pretty good leading indicator that our growth rates are sustainable. Obviously, we don't stop there. We're always thinking about the next few years as well. It is an ongoing process of execution and vision. I feel really great about what we've accomplished, and I feel really great about the future, and I feel great about the future with Dash as well.

Speaker 1

OK, thank you very much.

Speaker 5

Thank you, ma'am. We'll now move to Monique Pollard of Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hello. Morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one was just to come back on this point on the UK competitive dynamics. I guess, you know, when we look at your results today, which are very good, there's a meaningful difference versus a major competitor, let's say, in terms of the order growth dynamics particularly. Given that Just Eat Takeaway had talked about, you know, material investment that they were planning to make this year, just wondering if on the round you're seeing that show up in any way. The second question I had was just on AOV growth. It's brilliant to see that the growth in the GTV is very much volume-driven because I imagine, you know, for you guys, that seems much more sustainable.

Speaker 4

I just wondered, you know, the AOV growth that you're showing is actually far lower in the UK than Just Eat Takeaway. Just wondering if that's a deliberate strategy. I understand there'll be some mix effects. Scilla talked about, you know, higher QSR growth in the quarter, but there's also been, you know, strong growth in grocery, etc. It feels to me like that's part of a deliberate strategy to keep pricing lower than perhaps you could achieve. The final question was just on the UAE. Obviously, that's called out as one of the strong areas of growth, countries of growth in the international. Just wondered how you're preparing for DoorDash's potential entry before the end of the year and what you've learned from Hong Kong that will allow you to compete more effectively second time around. Thanks very much.

Speaker 3

Sure. I think there's probably some here for, hey, Monique. I think there's some here for Scilla, some here for me. Let me just start on the first one, which I think are UK competitive dynamics. Like I said, we're really focused on our own business. We focus on our CVP, and we do that over years. I think the outputs are obviously pretty good growth at this point. I definitely think we are taking share, which is positive. I really can't comment on other people's results. We're really just thinking about what we're doing here. I would say, though, yes, we are taking share. We are proud of the momentum our business has, and we think it's very sustainable. The second question was, Scilla, is that one for you?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I can pick that up because I think it was about sort of shape of our AOV growth and a bit of contrast to what you've seen reported by our UK peer a few days ago. Monique, as I described really in terms of some of the component parts for us, though, we are continuing to see larger baskets in grocery, but we're getting some, and we're continuing to see some inflation, but clearly not the levels that we saw in the previous few years. Offsetting that a bit is some mix. Things like us moving into QSR, as I flagged, given we report GTV, as we move more into Plus orders, clearly the fee structure is a little bit different for those as well. That can change the shape in terms of GTV per order growth. That's probably all I would say in relation to our business.

Speaker 1

If you contrast a bit with Just Eat Takeaway, and this is, look, us outside in, clearly we don't know the exact structure, but clearly people will take different views in relation to their pricing mechanics, and they have more or less loyalty members within the mix. The other bit probably to flag is just in terms of grocery, where they were a little bit later than us in terms of some of the adoption. I would expect that they're continuing to see some more penetration or the year-on-year growth in terms of the mix being a bit different to us.

Speaker 3

I mean, I think philosophically, though, from our perspective, you want to obviously attract users to your platform. You want to increase their engagement, i.e., frequency and retention. Right? I think there's a balance between unit economics and all of that. At the end of the day, we want to solve for gross profit dollars and user satisfaction and user growth and user engagement. Right? I think that stuff feels like it's moving in the right direction. On the UAE point, I think we're really happy with our business there. Right? We think we have a uniquely positioned value prop there, and the UAE market is really different than Hong Kong. Like I said, why did we decide to leave Hong Kong? I think one of the key reasons was, I think Hong Kong is a city that changed a lot over 10 years.

Speaker 3

I think the user base that we had sort of pre-COVID was just quite a different user base. Five years later, a lot of people moved out. For us, I think the situation in the UAE is very, very different, and I think that we are really well positioned. Obviously, we definitely learned from our Hong Kong experience as well.

Speaker 1

OK, thank you very much. Thanks.

Speaker 5

Thank you very much, Annick Maas. We have one more question left in the queue. That question will be coming from Silvia Cuno, calling from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Silvia, your line is open. Could you just please check that your line is unmuted?

Speaker 6

Hello. Can you hear me now?

Speaker 5

Yes, I can.

Speaker 6

OK.

Speaker 5

Thanks.

Speaker 6

Thanks. Congratulations on the results. I have a couple of questions. The first one is on grocery and retail categories with this business now representing a significant 18% of group GTV. Could you elaborate on which specific categories within retail are currently demonstrating the strongest performance in driving this growth? Are there any particular trends or consumer preferences you are observing within these categories that are informing your expansion strategy you would like to talk about? Secondly, on your algorithm with the meaningful improvement in the stacked orders, I wanted to ask if you could provide some insights about the technological advancements underpinning this stacking performance and to what extent AI is contributing to this efficiency. Do you see these as a sustainable competitive advantage for Deliveroo? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Sure. OK. The first question on retail, I guess, mostly was where your focus was. I'd say retail is really early, right? It's something that we have a lot of confidence that consumers want. What we've been doing over the last 18 months is building that merchant base and driving—excuse me, I need to sneeze. OK, I didn't have to sneeze. Sorry. We've been really building that merchant base, right, and driving awareness at the right moments. We have a lot of confidence that the retail business will scale up. That's the stage we're at, right? I don't think there's that much more to say on retail. Scilla, anything you want to add on that?

Speaker 1

No, nothing on retail. I think it's the categories that we've talked about before where we're continuing to pursue the rollout of those. The 18% that you're quoting, Silvia, is actually just grocery. That's the number that we've consistently quoted. I guess the learning there is just now how broad the basket can be within grocery. That's part of, you know, you remember, that's part of what gave us the confidence that retail was also a compelling opportunity as we looked forward.

Speaker 3

Yeah. I think in terms of your question on riders and stacking and all of that, this for us is something we've been working on for the better part of 10 years through machine learning. I think we're just seeing our models improve over time. As we sort of add the ability to do certain things in our rider network, whether that's grocery, whether that's retail, and obviously, grocery and retail have different types of urgency versus restaurant food just in terms of the temperature and all of that. That opens up a lot of different possibilities for us. Yeah, I mean, look, AI is obviously changing a lot of what we're doing. I'll give you a few examples of how AI has helped with, let's say, data enrichment. In the past, you probably would need to label each type of grocery product individually.

Speaker 3

For example, if you labeled each pizza, whether it's ambient temperature, whether it's heated or chilled, the level of spice on it, or the cuisine of each restaurant, I think GenAI is really great at making a pretty good guess based on the information it has, obviously, on the internet. I think when it comes to riders, that's a really structured data problem that we're trying to solve. That's really much more reliant on our own machine learning models as opposed to AI. I think over time, you may see some of these things converge. Hopefully, that helps. Do we have any other questions, guys, or is that it?

Speaker 1

I think that's it.

Speaker 3

OK.

Speaker 5

No other questions in the queue, sir.

Speaker 3

OK, great. I would say thank you to the Deliveroo team for a great first half, and thank you for everyone's questions on this call. Have a great day.

Speaker 5

Thank you so much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you so much for your attendance. We now disconnect. Have a good day and good luck.

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