Just Eat Takeaway.com N.V.

Hello and welcome to the JerseyTakeAway.com Q3 2023 Trading Update call. My name is Laura and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, Please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Yitzhak Hun, the CEO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Thank you, operator. Very good morning and welcome to this Analyst and Investor Conference call to discuss the third quarter 2023 trading update for JusteatTakeaway.com. On our corporate website, you can download our press release and the slides for this Analyst and Investor Conference call. And given we published the trading update only, today's presentation will be kept brief, after which we will open the call for your questions. Brad Vissink, Georg Gerbig, and Andrew Kenney are also here to provide answers. Regarding the question and answer session, as a reminder, we will allow only one question from each of the analysts. On the following slides, I will provide more details, but the key messages for today's update are, Company excluding North America returned to GTV growth in the third quarter of 2023. GTV growth in Northern Europe and the UK and Ireland increased to plus 6% and plus 4% respectively. We upgraded our adjusted EBITDA guidance to approximately 310 million Euro in 2023. We revised GTV guidance to constant currency growth of approximately minus 4% in 2023. We upgrade our free cash flow guidance to approximately break even in the second half of 2023 and positive thereafter. And we are launching a new share buyback program of up to 150 million euro. Please follow me to slide three, where you can see that the Northern Europe segment representing 30% of group orders delivered a further step up in year on year GTV growth with growth increasing to plus 6% in the first quarter of 2023 compared to 4% in the second quarter. This growth is highly profitable, given we already have industry-leading margins in this segment, with significant potential for further improvement. We continue to invest in expanding our delivery network across Northern Europe, enabling us to serve more consumers with a wider choice of partners, including a wide variety of supermarkets, cosmetics from Lush, and electronics from MediaMarkt, to just name a few. This investment strengthens our mode and platform for future years. And as a result, our overall competitive position within the segment has continued to strengthen. Turning to slide four, showing the continued improvement of GTV growth and profitability in our UK and Ireland segments representing 28% of group orders. The year-on-year GTV growth improved to plus 4% or 5% in constant currency in the first quarter of 2023 compared with plus 1% in the second quarter. Encouragingly, both absolute orders and GTV grew sequentially for the second quarter in a row. As described in detail during our half-year results presentation, we have continued confidence around our margin improvement in the UK and Ireland, driven by further progress on the reduction of delivery costs per order. The UK and Ireland will be a key contributor to adjusted EBITDA growth in the second half of this year. And on the commercial side, we further expanded our market-leading restaurant and grocery offering with the total number of partners now above 85,000, representing a 16% year-on-year increase in net additions. Moving to the North America slide on slide five. As mentioned previously, in parallel to actively exploring a partial or full-sale crop-up, we have made several organizational and operational improvements to the company. Therefore, we remain confident about our progress towards a return to top-line growth and cash flow breakeven. For the avoidance of doubt, this includes any positive impact of a potential fee cap amendment in New York City. While North America will be a key contributor to adjusted EBITDA growth in the second half, in the third quarter of 2023, the segment faced a stronger currency headwind in reported GTV growth in the third quarter of 2023, as you can clearly see in the growing difference between reported and constant currency numbers. At the same time, North America had a tough comparison base versus the third quarter of 2022, given the Amazon partnership launch in July of last year. The stronger FX headwind combined with a tough year-on-year comparison led to a slower recovery in North America, representing 31% of group orders. And to conclude this slide, we are pleased with September's federal court ruling, which has increased our confidence that this long-standing New York City COVID-era fee cap will be resolved. On slide six, we conclude the segment section with Southern Europe and Australia and New Zealand, a smaller segment with only 10% of group orders. While sequentially there was significant progress in constant currency GTV growth in Southern Europe and ANC, currency headwinds have continued to impact reported GTV growth, and we expect further improvement in the segment's adjusted EBITDA margin in the second half of 2023. versus the first half of the year, driven by improved unit economics. On the left side of the page, on slide seven, you can see that JustEatTakeaway.com's GTV amounted to 6.5 billion Euro in the first quarter of 2023, down 7% compared to the same period in 2022, or down 3% in constant currency. PropUp represents the majority of the North America segment, and is for sale as you know. When we exclude the North America segment from the group's results, it becomes clear that 69% of our group orders are back to GTV growth. In hindsight, we should have provided our GTV guidance for 2023 in constant currency instead of reported figures. The volatility of the currency movements, in particular in 2022, significantly impacts the year-on-year comparisons. And to avoid further speculation on currency movements for the fourth quarter of this year, we have revised our top-line guidance to a number in constant currency. Driven by a slower top-line recovery in North America, we refined our guidance to constant currency GTV growth to be approximately minus 4% year-on-year in 2023, from previous guidance reported GTV growth to be in the range of minus 4% to plus 2% year-on-year in 2023. On slide eight now. We continue to make good progress on operational improvements, primarily stemming from progress in the UK and Ireland and the North American sectors, and we are ahead of plan on profitability. Therefore, we now expect to generate positive adjusted EBITDA of approximately €310 million in 2023, compared with previous guidance of approximately €275 million, and our original guidance of approximately €225 million at the beginning of this year. Driven primarily by the improvement in profitability, free cash flow before changes in working capital is now expected to be approximately break-even in the second half of 2023 and positive thereafter. On the next slide, we summarize the results from the share buyback program that was initiated at the publication of the first quarter trading upgrade in April. The program was completed on 20 September and we repurchased approximately 10.8 million shares at an average price of 13 euro and 91 cents, representing 4.9% of the issued shares. All repurchased shares are currently still being held in treasury and none of them were needed to compensate for the share-based comp thus far. Turning to slide 10. In the graph, we visualize the milestone of free cash flow to be approximately break-even in the second half of this year and to be positive thereafter. which is a significant acceleration from previous guidance to turn free cash flow positive in mid-2024. This progress in free cash flow generation, combined with a strong balance sheet, allows us to launch a new share buyback program of up to €150 million to improve future earnings per share. And the program commences today. On slide 11, we summarize our updated outlook. We expect constant currency GTV growth to be approximately minus 4% year-on-year in 2023 from previously reported GTV growth to be in a range of minus 4% to plus 2% year-on-year in 2023. We remain focused on profitability and now expect to deliver a positive adjusted EBITDA of approximately €310 million in 2023, which is an upgrade from approximately €275 million previously. We also expect to reach the milestone of free cash flow to be approximately break-even in the second half of this year and to be positive thereafter, which is a significant acceleration from previous guidance to turn free cash flow positive by mid-2024. I will continue with the wrap-up of this brief presentation on slide 12. The company excluded North America, returned to GTV growth in the third quarter of 2023, GDP growth in Northern Europe and UK and Ireland increased to plus 6% and plus 4% respectively. We upgrade our adjusted EBITDA guidance to approximately €310 million in 2023. We revise GDP guidance to constant currency growth of approximately minus 4% year-on-year in 2023. We upgrade our free cash flow guidance to approximately break-even in the second half of 2023 and positive thereafter. To conclude, Driven by the improved cash flow generation combined with our strong balance sheet, we are launching a new share buyback program of up to €150 million to improve future earnings per share. And with that operator, I would like to open the call for questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press dial 1 on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We'll now take our first question from Silvia Cuneo at Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and congratulations on the results. My one question is about the trends in Northern Europe and the UK and Ireland segments, which reported strong momentum on GTV in Q3. I wanted to ask if you could please remind us of the seasonality of these two segments, just to help us think about Q4 versus Q3. And can you please comment about what sort of typical quarter-on-quarter growth we can expect? Thank you.

Thanks, Silvia. Regarding the seasonality in our business, we typically grow fastest in Q4 for a simple reason, is that in most of our countries, You know, it becomes cold, it starts to become rainy, and obviously that's a big tailwind for a food delivery business. So typically you would see most of the growth in Q4. Now, naturally, of course, this happens every year, but we are further away from the COVID pandemic, so we would expect in more places to see regular seasonality than, for instance, we would have seen last year. Can't comment on current trading, but obviously we are quite happy that the sun stopped shining in most of the countries in which we operated, and that it is actually now good food delivery weather, I would say.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, and we'll now move on to our next question from Andrew Ross at Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

My question is about the buyback and more broadly about capital allocation. Can you just give us a sense of how you're thinking about funding this new 150 million buyback whether it's going to be from leveraging the balance sheet or whether you can fund it from cash you generate next year and I guess more broadly as we think about how this business could start to generate more material cash flow in the next two, three, four years. Can you just remind us what your capital allocation priorities are and what frameworks you would use when you think about how you might look at future buybacks or other uses of cash over time in the context of the debt benefits and the balance sheet? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for the question. First of all, obviously, in our case, our business owns a lot of profitable food delivery companies. It's not only It's not only the segments that are profitable, but also individual countries are quite profitable. So that puts us into a good place in terms of future profit generation, because we don't need to turn the whole business profitable. There's a couple of things that we need to change here and there in the business that will make, for instance, UK and Ireland more profitable, or that make the North American segment profitable again. But that's that at least gives us a bit of help going forward in profit generation. Then in terms of returning capital, we've obviously issued a message, I think it was Q1, in which we said that we would like to prevent dilution for shareholders, which is something that we started to do with the buyback program Now, obviously, we haven't used that buyback program yet, so we still own those shares, and we've now issued a new one. Going forward, we still would maintain that we don't like to see dilution of the shareholders in Sharebase Comp. I know, obviously, that this is a regular way of rewarding employees in a North American company. It is not in Europe. And obviously, we would focus on a free cash flow for share to be as high as possible going forward.

But to be clear, the quality is still the buyback to offset valuation for stock-based comp and not beyond that at this point?

No. Currently, I would say that we haven't used it for a compensation of the stock-based comp yet. So we did announce that. I realized that in March of this year. We haven't used that yet. And going forward, obviously, the dilution of a share-based company is much less than we anticipate we will be able to buy back in this buyback program, even if we still, of course, own 4.9% of the business as well. So I think that's not the accurate. I think it's rather the other way around.

Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll now move on to our next question from Monique at City. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hello. One question for me just on the four-year GTV guidance at constant currency. So negative 4% constant currency, I guess if we look at year-to-date, you're at negative 5% constant currency, 3Q with negative 3%, and you're saying 4Q should be better. given the seasonality. So I'm just wondering if that negative four isn't a bit cautious. And sort of combined with that, I just wondered if there's anything specific to be called out on Israel, sort of how much that is hitting GTV, given obviously the awful events going on there at the moment.

Thanks for the question. Well, 4% obviously could be minus 3.5 or minus 4.5, so I think that gives you a broad answer to your question. We do understand, of course, the trajectory of our business is indeed that we should improve in the fourth quarter. Israel, in particular, our business, we basically do two things in Israel. We have a large B2B business and a small B2C business And we have a tech team locally, and we do whatever we can to support our local staff. In terms of disruption to the business, I think that's going to be minimal. And obviously, you know, Israel is not the largest chunk of our business to start off with.

Thank you.

Thank you, and we'll now take our next question from Chris Jordan at HSBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes, thanks. Good morning. I just got one question on Grubhub and the sales process. You gave an interview in July saying that the talks are difficult, that the M&A market is difficult at times, and that some investors are asking as much as $4 billion for Grubhub, and I think That number raised a number of questions, you know, whether any sort of potential selling price may be too aggressive or, you know, even going as far as saying whether you'd want to prefer to keep the asset. So is there any comments you can give with respect to the ongoing talks, the commitment to sell? I don't expect anything on valuation, but, yeah, just some more color on the process, please. Thanks.

Yeah, just to rectify that $4 billion. I was misquoted. I was later also changed by the... by the journalist in question. So if you look up the same article, it will say something else now. And generally, you know, so I'm not always quoted correctly in interviews. So if you have any question about these numbers, you should probably contact IR. We do have ongoing conversations around drop-up, actually. So we're still in that process. And we've said before that In the current market circumstances, you can look at our own market cap for reference. They're not always reflective of the value of certain businesses. I've said before that this is not the most ideal market to be selling anything, and that includes also broadband. So I think I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

We'll now move on to our next question from Lisa Yang at Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was just wondering with inflation, food inflation sort of, you know, coming down now, although still elevated, but across the UK, Northern Europe, are you beginning to see any impact on sort of customer behaviour and how should we be thinking about AOV versus all the growth in Q4 and beyond. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, the momentum that we currently have in Northern Europe and the UK and Ireland is actually quite encouraging. We don't obviously control inflation in countries, but we see good consumer behavior, and it's, you know, the way these segments are operating reminds us of the days in which we were running a food delivery business, you know, before the pandemic, so that's quite encouraging. Any inflation on food prices is helpful, of course, in terms of our GTV growth. At the same time, especially in Northern Europe, but also in the UK and Ireland, we're investing heavily in the business. We are also, of course, increasing the profitability quite drastically in the UK and Ireland at the same time. But we keep on investing in our business also in terms of price. So, for instance, delivery fees we try to keep as low as possible so that we generate more orders because, you know, it's quite obvious in the last year, you know, we are a growth business. We can't be satisfied with shrinking 4% in a year. That's not the way we would like to operate. And therefore, we are working on a great number of initiatives. For instance, in Northern Europe, we are expanding the logistics networks, the operating hours, the amount of services that we provide to our customers in terms of adjacencies, also grocery businesses. In the UK, for instance, we have quite a lot of grocery chains now available on our network. You've seen a comment around the investment in expanding the partner network. So, We feel quite good at where we are, so we do anticipate, of course, that these segments behave just the way they behaved always before the pandemic, and even in the pandemic, by the way, these segments did very well.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. If you find that your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Mark Hesseling at INJ. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Could you talk about the trends in the unit economics for delivery? I think that really improved in the first half of the year. Now you're increasing the guidance. Is this an important driver of the further increased guidance today?

I will hand the question to Jörg.

Yeah, indeed. I mean, we've made great progress. As we've shown in the first half year results, for example, most notably in the UK, we reduced fulfillment costs by 10%, and the exit rate was even better than that. We're trying to focus around three main topics. Platform consolidation is first, second, technology improvement, and third, de-expansion, which Jilte was already alluding to. On the first one, we've made good progress in the UK to simplify the model and move to our independent contractor model, which obviously improved efficiencies and profitability. Technology improvements is around topics such as pooling, for example, which contributes obviously to the bottom line and then creates efficiencies, but we haven't yet deployed the full force of the pooling capabilities. In some countries, we're still running and rolling out multi-partner pooling, and we now also have a better understanding of the impact on the experience for a consumer, which in the end remains our top priority. We also have further efficiencies, which will be coming through on courier performance, through improved order flows and algorithm optimizations, and that's all On the go and there's more improvements to come and at the third point, which is the work alluding to is really like Investing in the expansion of our delivery network, which will create scale and scale is one of the biggest driver of efficiencies So we're making good progress here across the board and we've obviously seen that also coming through in the numbers with the upgrade of the EBITDA guidance driven by especially also the segment of the UK for example and

Great, that's very good, thanks.

Thank you, and we'll move on to our next question from Garth at Jeff Reyes. Your line is open, please go ahead.

Thank you, I wanted to stick with riders. Picking up on the platform work directive, which looks like it'll emerge before the April 2024 deadline. So it'll take a while to implement, obviously, but assuming the final draft looks similar to what came out of the EU Council in the summer, without an automatic assumption of employment. I'd be interested to know if there are conditions where you'd hypothetically do what you've done in the UK and move away from the employed model. And I'm thinking in particular about doing this in Northern Europe.

Yeah, thanks for the question. Well, look, our indications are that the text is going to be the Parliament's text, not the EU Council text. So, you know, there will be a presumption of employment of employment and not the other way around. That's the most likely outcome. I should also point out that this platform directive is actually not very important to us. I think the importance is only there, well, top of my mind, in Italy, where the government is not strict enough in enforcing the current situation, which is actually not legal to use freelancers in Italy. In all other countries in which we operate, it is actually much clearer now. For instance, if you look at Holland, the Supreme Court has said that couriers are employees. In Germany, not even our competitors are using freelancers, even though in some other countries they might try because it's illegal to use freelancers for food delivery. In Spain, it's very clear, especially now, again, that freelancing is prohibited. It's actually extremely clear in Spain because the law says that careers are, in fact, employees. So it can't be clearer than that, obviously. In some other countries, it's bigger. So the platform work directive, you know, will go in the same direction, we think. So it will be an assumption that all the careers are employed in the EU countries. At the same time, it doesn't really change much, and it might reinforce our position in Italy, but we think that in most of the other countries, it's already quite clear what's permissible and what is not. Now, that doesn't mean that our competitors always follow the law, so this is why I also understand that for investors, it's sometimes a bit of a complicated picture. But, yeah, if you just, you know, translate the local media about the topic, you will see that the result of not following the law is that you get a lot of fines, and worst-case scenario, you are forced to leave the country or close down your business. So, you know, we don't think – there's a lot of attention to this platform work directive. We don't think it will change too much for us.

Thank you.

And we'll now move on to our next question from Clement General at Brian Garnier and your line is open. Please go ahead.

Any emerging pressure coming from others such as Uber, DoorDash or Deliveroo on the vouchers or fees and now that everyone is very close or they even had to break even. Thank you.

Thanks for the question. Well, I don't think a lot of people are near breakeven, to be quite frank with you, but that's a separate topic. We see less competitive pressure in a lot of countries, such as Holland, such as Belgium, Switzerland, a lot of obvious examples, in which there's just less vouchering. Now, you know our opinion on vouchers. We don't think that those orders are actually real, so sometimes people are very enthusiastic. They think that you know, we would get the orders if people stopped vouchering. Well, you know, our assumption is that most of these orders disappear because there's no more free food. But obviously that does help our competitive position in these markets. But generally, in the smaller markets, especially ones in which we're quite sizable, I would say we have much less competition now. But I would still say that in countries such as the UK, but also in Canada, there's still quite a lot of competition. And for instance, if you look at the UK, we are actually, of course, increasing our EBITDA, but also increasing our investments. We're lowering price, so we're just lowering the cost to the consumer. We're investing in marketing. You've seen our new campaign, I trust. So we're doing a bunch of those things. I think the globally competition is lessening, but I think there's a big difference between the markets.

Thank you.

Once again, as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Wim Giles at ABN Odo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes, a very good morning. I would like to zoom in a little bit on Southern Europe and Australia and New Zealand. Looking at the year-over-year developments over there, in particular on the currency side of things, it seems that Australia and New Zealand is feeling more pressure than Southern Europe. So can you give us a bit of context on how you're doing in Southern Europe versus Australia and New Zealand in terms of year-over-year developments, but also in terms of your competitive position in market shares? Thank you.

Thank you. No, I think actually in Australia we're doing quite well. I think as you said, in Southern Europe, especially in Spain, we do face a lot of irrational competition also by companies that don't necessarily follow the law. We just talked about that. Obviously our cost is much higher than the cost of competitors that sometimes pay three times less than us. We do think that that situation will resolve itself. That's why also we're staying put because of the legal situation of that problem. I think this segment obviously is lagging the rest, but I think it's also important to understand that most of the segment is actually countries that don't have sufficient scale yet. If you look at Spain and Italy, they have far less orders than our Dutch business, and these countries are larger. So we're actually further out from profitability in these markets simply because they don't currently have that size yet. And also this segment will grow. I mean, obviously, you know, it's still shrinking and we realize that, but also this segment will grow again. And going forward, it's also getting easier for this segment. But it's a mixed bag. It's 10% of our business. It's not most of the company. But we do believe that many of these markets are actually markets in which we should be able to create quite profitable businesses. And this might be a bit of a long-term view. You know, I've been doing this for 24 years. I've been doing this for, what, 15 years. So we have a long-term view. I know that especially in the current market, the view might be a bit shorter. But we have a long-term view on these markets, and we always try to compare it to, for instance, the view that we had on Germany when we launched there. Sometimes it takes a long time to create these highly profitable businesses. And if you don't have a visibility of profits, you should not be in a market. So we're the first ones that would understand that view. But as I said, it's a mixed bag of all sorts of countries, but these are not necessarily weak countries. We're often quite strong.

Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Sean Keeley at Panmure Gordon. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Shell, you might want to unmute your audio from your end.

Thank you. Your line is open.

Thank you very much. Morning, everyone. If I could just ask very quickly on the trajectory for adjusted EBITDA in Northern Europe. Obviously, you're expanding the logistics service in several cities and countries there, which typically operate at a much lower margin. How should we think about the adjusted EBITDA margin going forward, the rate of that expansion of the logistics service and sort of the trade-off between revenue growth and the EBITDA generation there. Thank you.

That's a very good question. We are investing heavily, and that should actually also be quite rewarding in this segment, given our market position. We will always, always, if we see an opportunity, invest in growth anywhere, anywhere, but also in these segments. I think, you know, the segment is probably, you know, I don't know too much about China, but the most profitable segment in food delivery. We're quite happy with that and also want to keep it that way. But we are investing in the business.

Okay.

So to be clear, you wouldn't necessarily see any dilution in the adjusted EBITDA margin sort of this half, FY24 maybe.

I think the EBITDA from this segment might be a bit lower, a bit higher, depending on the half year. But as I said, it's already quite high. So if you invest a couple of million in expansion of the network, it's probably a good investment. You'll probably recuperate that EBITDA the next half. Thank you, Dirk.

Thanks very much.

Thank you. And I'll take our next question. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Fantastic. Very warm welcome and good morning. Just a quick one on free cash flow. Indeed, you mentioned that that is indeed a significant upgrade here that you did. And I was wondering if you could maybe fill us in on some of the building blocks that made you change that aside of the EBITDA, obviously. But did you make any adjustments on the CapEx side or lease expectations, what have you? Any additional information here would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, before I hand over to Brent, because we did talk about this in the first half of the year, we are generally – I started also the call with that – we run a great number of very profitable food delivery businesses so we know exactly what we need to do or how we need to get to such a profitable position and what basically what the ingredients the ingredients of such successful businesses are and therefore also in terms of how we get there and how fast we get there we have quite good visibility so I will hand over to Brent to talk more specifically about the components.

Yeah, about components. Well, the KFRO bridge for the full year will broadly align with the core we provided in the annual 2020 presentation with three exceptions. Well, first of all, the EBITDA then presented was at 225, while currently our guidance is at 310, so that's an improvement. And CapEx in the first half was significantly below previous year's levels. And while we already said that we expect a higher CapEx spend in the second half, for the full year, it won't be as high as we guided in those annual earnings pool. And last is that the net cash interest is significantly better than guidance because of higher interest income on our cash deposits or setting our interest cost for the bonds. But that is the reason why it's improving compared to what you said before.

Fantastic. Very helpful. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And we'll now move on to our next question from Andrew Gwynne at BNP Boreberg. Wayne, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Yes, a quick question. Just thinking about 2024, I mean, the market's got some pretty high expectations for EBITDA, I think around about $450 million, given the ambition to return to volume growth. Do you think it's possible? Thank you.

That's a very clever question. Look, you've seen the progression of our EBITDA. Let me look up what slide that was, so that we can all follow the same picture. It's somewhere in the back of the presentation. Slide eight. Slide eight. So you'll see that we went from minus 350 to 21 to plus 19 last year, and that our guidance is now for approximately 310. We're progressing very quickly because we are improving the CPO. Also doing other things, obviously. You've seen us announce a couple of these things in the past. The most rewarding thing for us is, of course, improving the cost per order because we do so many orders. So the lower the cost per order, then obviously the higher the profitability. We'll probably guide you with our next meeting together. Yeah. You know, you can take any view on what this EBITDA is going to do. Obviously also, if the fee cash fall away in the US, that will help us considerably also in terms of increasing the EBITDA of the business. But generally, we feel quite good about profit generation in, say, call it 95% of the business. Now, we also have a segment of Southern Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, in which some of these markets, as I explained, are subscale, and they will take a longer period of time. But 95% of our business, we have very good visibility of profitability and we think that we have, I'm not going to call it a candy shop, but it is a bit of a candy shop because we are a merged business. I know with all the noise about COVID fluctuations in orders shrinking after COVID, people lost track of the fact that we are still a merged business. We are free businesses and we're merging at quite a pace, but we have all sorts of duplication of systems. And that also is costing us a lot of additional money. So the less systems we have, the higher EBITDA is going to be. So there's a lot of opportunity there. And what it is going to be next year, we'll probably be able to tell you at the beginning of the next year.

That's very clear. I'm not sure it was a very clever question. It was certainly a clever answer. But I suppose to ask it another way, is the priority next year top line growth or EBITDA? That's a slightly different question, but...

Oh, this is the beauty of our business. It's got to be both. Okay, very clear. No, it's very important. So especially the UK, right? I mean, the UK, before the pandemic was highly profitable, but it was mostly a marketplace business. It doubled in size, mostly because of the logistics. And obviously, we did not do that in the most efficient way. So it's quite rewarding that we can reduce the CPO and invest part of that into you know, silly TV advertisement, and part of that in just returning profits into the business. And this is how we've always ran our business, and it's becoming a bit more apparent now. We're still not there yet. I realize that also. But going forward, certainly, there's a lot of opportunity. And there's no not-so-clever question.

Thank you very much. Have a good day.

Thank you. There are no further questions in queue. I will now hand it back to you, Trey, for closing remarks. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I would like to round off this 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.

Thank you.