Deliveroo plc

Good morning and welcome to our half-year 25 results. I'm Will Hsu, founder and CEO of Deliveroo, and I'm joined by Cilla, our CFO. It's 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. Then Cilla is going to get into the financials and we're going to give you a status update on the DoorDash transaction. And then I'm going to wrap up at the end. So let's get started. It's been a great first half in 25 for Deliveroo. We posted year-on-year GTV growth of 9% and adjusted EBITDA of 96 million pounds. That's up 46% year-on-year. And 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. The fundamentals of the business feel good. Retention and frequency across all cohorts continue to improve, and that's a trend that we've seen over the last six quarters or so. And we think this is the result of great work by the teams to relentlessly improve the CVP. And on the back of this strong first half performance, we're going to update our fiscal year 25 guidance. So Cilla 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. 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. And we want to do that very efficiently in all these areas that we operate. All right, so let's get into the CVP part, probably my favorite part. So 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, and 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. And then in the UK, what we've seen, of course, is national insurance and minimum wage has increased. That's increased in April. And that's put merchant partners under pressure. So we have seen some menu price inflation, but it has been lower than we have anticipated. And 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. But 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. Now, OMDNRs, of course, is when you actually don't get your food, which is the worst defect possible. And we've reduced this critical defect to a new all-time low. And this is on top of the 70% decrease in 23 and further improvements in 24. So it's an enormous, enormous reduction in this terrible defect. And then on the CVP, we also have loyalty. 24 is a big year of innovation for Plus, and 25 has been about refining that proposition. So 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. And then finally, we've offered more partner-funded benefits to offer value to subs. 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. So we've executed well across our CVP. Now let's talk about each vertical. Let's start with restaurants. So 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. Obviously, all of these, you know, all of these verticals help support each other. But, you know, it's still a, you know, the majority of our business today. And then 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. But we also talked, I think, at length about unlocking new occasions, so growing the market. And we remain very excited about these opportunities. We've made good progress laying these foundations in the first half. So 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. And our advertising business reached 150 basis points of GTV, making further progress to 2% plus by 26. So we've grown strongly across our key verticals, and we've got exciting growth opportunities ahead. So the output of all these actions in regards to our growth initiatives is a continued improvement in consumer engagement, i.e., the cohort. So this slide is something we show, I believe, every results. And I think it's worth showing again because they are absolutely moving in the right direction. So 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 in, you know, about a year ago or a little before that. And you can see that those lines are getting steeper and steeper, which is good. Okay. And 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. Now, that is below the historical average of 10% year-on-year growth per annum, but that is absolutely moving in the right direction. And you can kind of see the progress that has been made over the last few years on that. And then 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, right? So I think the outputs of what we're doing is driving that really, really important consumer engagement improvement, which is fantastic. So I'm now going to hand over to Cilla. She's going to go into the financials.

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 mixed effects and the impact of UK digital services tax, which I flagged with prelims. We continued to work hard on network efficiencies, and so gross profit grew strongly, up 7%. Adjusted EBITDA of £96 million was up 46% year-on-year, with EBITDA margin expanding 60 basis points to 2.5%, as we continued 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 talk 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. And 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. So we closed the half with net cash of £624 million, a £44 million reduction during the half, driven by £90 million of shared buybacks. So 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 continue 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. And 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. 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 UKI, we've continued to perform very well, with GTV up 10% year-on-year and an acceleration into Q2. And 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. And as I've said many times before, we continue to optimize for absolute quantum rather than rate. So increasing the actual users, orders, revenue, gross profit and EBITDA that we make. And that's 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. So 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. And that was due to the mixed effects I've just mentioned. And 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. 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. So looking now at gross profit and 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 grew 7% year-on-year and was a strong driver of our EBITDA growth. And 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. 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 optimise our cost base. Marketing was down 14% year-on-year as we continued to optimise our spend as we discussed at the prelims. And 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. The £12.9 million working capital outflow was largely due to the timing of the period end within the week. And so 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, and within that we had about £61 million to complete the £150 million buyback programme announced in August last year, and about £29 million related to the £100 million buyback programme we announced with our prelims in March. As a reminder, that programme was suspended towards the end of April when we confirmed the DoorDash approach. 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. So overall, good progress on free cash flow generation, and I'll now move on to our guidance. So after that strong H1 you'll have seen, we've updated our four-year guidance. We now expect GTV growth around the top end of our previously guided range of high single digits percentage growth in constant currency. We're also narrowing our EBITDA range to the upper half of the previously guided range of £170 to £190 million. 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. So the EBITDA shape half on half will look a little different to previous years. So 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. So all progressing in line with expectations. And I'll now hand you back to Will to wrap up.

Thank you, Cilla. So H1 is 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. And we're delivering it against that vision. And, 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, you know, whether that's the introduction of things like additions, you know, 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. And here we think about everything through the eyes of the consumer. And today, as we always have, we obsess about the consumer value proposition across selection, service, price. And 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. And we're delivering positive free cash flow. So I think, you know, I take a step back and, you know, we're really proud of what we've accomplished. And I just want to remind everyone a bit about Deliveroo and who we are as a company. So I'd say that, you know, and I talked a little bit about this at the Capital Markets Day back in November 22. But, you know, we are consumer obsessed, right? We are operators, but in the details. We are innovators and builders, and we are relentless. And then that is who we are. And these are the reasons why we've succeeded as a company. And as you know, these are likely to be our last set of financial results as a listed business. And 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. But I'm really, really proud of everything we've done. And now, pending completion of the takeover, we enter an exciting new chapter. And the partnership with DoorDash will further accelerate our full potential. And 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.