Talabat IPO: Parent of food delivery company to sell 15% stake in Dubai listing

Germany-based Delivery Hero expects its UAE unit to start trading on the Dubai bourse by mid-December

Post-listing, Talabat plans to pay a minimum dividend of about $100 million in April 2025 for the fourth quarter of 2024. Photo: Joint Committee for Traffic Safety

Delivery Hero, the Germany-based food delivery platform, plans to list 15 per cent of its UAE subsidiary Talabat on the Dubai bourse in the fourth quarter, as it looks to capitalise on the listing boom in the Emirates.

A total of 3,493,236,093 shares, each with a nominal value of Dh0.04, will be made available in the offering, on-demand food and quick-commerce company Talabat said in its prospectus on Monday.

The subscription period will open on November 19 and end on November 27 for UAE retail investors, including eligible employees of Talabat, and on November 28 for institutional investors. The retail tranche will be 5 per cent of the total shares on offer, with the remaining allocation reserved for qualified institutional investors.

The offer price will be determined through a book building process during the subscription period, the company said. The company expects to start trading on the Dubai Financial Market on or around December 10.

Talabat, which offers delivery of food, groceries and convenience retail, has operations in the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, Oman, Jordan, and Iraq. For the month of September, its platform had more than six million active customers, more than 65,000 active restaurants, other groceries and retail vendors, as well as about 119,000 active riders.

The IPO was announced in August and the public float remains subject to market conditions.

Frankfurt-listed Delivery Hero is selling its existing shares in Talabat and has received the board’s approval to pursue the initial public offering, it said in a statement on its website on Sunday. “Delivery Hero may amend the size of the offering subject to required approvals of the Securities and Commodities Authority of the UAE,” it added.

The Berlin-based parent will retain majority interest in Talabat and, “subject to a lock-up of 180 days following listing, be represented with half of the directors on the board of Talabat”, the company added.

The proceeds of the IPO, depending on the number and price of Talabat shares eventually sold in the public float, will be used by Delivery Hero for “general corporate purposes and to further optimise its capital structure”.

Post-listing, Talabat plans to pay a minimum dividend of about $100 million in April 2025 for the fourth quarter of 2024. It will pay $400 million in two instalments in October 2025 and April 2026 for the financial results of 2025, the company said.

“Talabat intends to pay dividends twice each calendar year, in each case with a target net income payout of 90 per cent,” it added.

Since its launch in 2004 in Kuwait, Talabat has transformed into a home-grown technology-driven food, groceries and retail delivery business.

"Everybody loves the fact that this company has been growing very fast and at the same time also being profitable and after 20 years ... we're growing 21 per cent on a year-over-year basis," chief executive Tomaso Rodriguez told The National on Monday.

The company expects to grow by as much as 23 per cent this year and its growth outlook for next year is about 18 per cent. Over the medium term, Talabat aims to maintain growth of 14 per cent to 15 per cent.

"We are very underpenetrated in the markets we're in, so we have today six million active customers and the addressable population in the markets we operate in is around 71 million customers," Mr Rodriguez said. "If you look at [customer] acquisitions, over the last five years, we've been growing at 19 per cent."

Talabat joins a growing list of companies seeking to list share on equity markets in the UAE amid continued economic momentum in the Arab world’s second-largest economy.

Its intention to list follows UAE retail major Lulu Group's successful IPO to raise Dh6.32 billion ($1.72 billion), the country's largest listing so far this year. The hypermarket chain operator priced its shares at the top of the indicated range amid strong investor demand for listings in the region this month.

The retailer sold 30 per cent of its total share capital in its Abu Dhabi listing in a deal oversubscribed by more than 25 times across all tranches and received aggregate demand of more than Dh135 billion from domestic, regional and international investors.

A string of other deals this year in the UAE includes ADNH Catering, a unit of Abu Dhabi National Hotels, raising Dh864 million through the sale of a 40 per cent stake. NMDC Energy, a unit of Abu Dhabi contractor National Marine Dredging Company, also began trading on the ADX in September after raising $877 million, while Alef Education raised $515 million from its IPO in Abu Dhabi in June.

IPO activity in the Middle East remained strong in the third quarter of this year, with five IPOs raising $930 million, according to EY. The proceeds are 76.8 per cent higher on a year-on-year basis.

An additional 11 private companies across various sectors, as well as five funds, intend to list on the regional exchanges by the end of this year, according to EY's Mena IPO Eye Q3 2024 report.

The DFM, over the past few years, has also featured substantial listing activity.

Retailer Spinney's was the last to list shares on the DFM, in April. Parking operator Parkin's IPO in March was the first in the UAE capital markets this year, which raised Dh1.57 billion from investors. Demand for the deal hit a record Dh259 billion.

Companies in Dubai raised Dh34.5 billion through selling shares in the past three years, with aggregate investor demand for those listings reaching more than Dh1 trillion, the Dubai Securities and Exchange Higher Committee said in March.