Niklas Östberg is a rare beast. A founder-CEO who took his company public and survived a shareholder backlash. Sam Altman might like to take his number as he considers floating OpenAI. Reporting on your results every three months is not for the faint-hearted.
Östberg is the entrepreneur behind Delivery Hero, the €7.65bn global food delivery business which IPO’d in 2017. It was the largest float of the year on the German stock exchange, and unlike other, rockier food delivery debuts (Deliveroo, Blue Apron), its share price rose strongly.
That was then. Roll forward to 2025 and it has been far from a good year on the markets for the owner of Talabat (Gulf, North Africa), Glovo (Europe, Africa) and Foodpanda (South-east Asia). Delivery Hero’s share price fell to a low of €16.05 ($18.94) in November, from a high of €31.39 ($37.05) nine months earlier, a nearly 50% drop. Competition from the Chinese giant, Meituan, and regulatory fines for poor employment practices in the cutthroat world of moped and cycle delivery weighed on share price performance.
Delivery Hero Chair, Kristin Skogen Lund, was obliged to write to shareholders announcing a strategy review, a streamlining of costs and continuing exits from underperforming regions. “Despite this significant progress and our relentless focus to always deliver the best possible customer proposition, we acknowledge that the share price performance has been disappointing for all of us,” she said. Östberg was the letter’s co-signatory.
