AMBITION

Online takeaway delivery firm Just Eat has sunk into the red after taking a major hit on its Australian and New Zealand business, but cheered a record surge in orders.

The group – recently promoted to the FTSE 100 Index – slumped to a £76 million pre-tax loss last year against profits of £91.3m in 2016 after taking a £180.4m charge on the acquisition of its Australia and New Zealand arm.

Just Eat said yesterday that it would have made a profit of £104.4m with the provision stripped out. It posted underlying earnings of £164m – up 42 per cent on 2016 – and forecast this to grow further in 2018, to between £165m and £185m.

Chief executive Peter Plumb – the former Moneysupermarket.com boss who took the helm last September – said he planned to step up investment across the UK and its overseas markets.

He said that, despite the losses, 2017 had been a record year for the firm. “We helped 21.5 million customers order

0 The firm helped 21.5 million customers order 172 million takeaways

CEO PETER PLUMB 172 million takeaways around the world, growing group revenue by 45 per cent to £546m. I will be increasing our investment in brand, developing markets and delivery services that will be engineered to complement our thriving marketplace business by bringing more choice to our takeaway-loving customers.”

But the group warned that competition was “intensifying” across some of its markets, such as Australia and New Zealand.

In the UK,

where

it recently snapped up rival Hungryhouse, underlying earnings lifted 28 per cent to £155.4m for 2017 after sales also jumped 28 per cent.

Helped by its sponsorship of the X Factor and recent marketing push, UK orders grew by about a fifth to 105 million and December, when Just Eat joined the FTSE 100 top tier, saw a record of more than ten million orders. Active UK customer numbers rose 14 per cent to 10.5 million.

Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown,

“I will be increasing our investment in brand, developing markets and delivery services… bringing more choice to our takeaway-loving customers.”