Just Eat Takeaway.com wrote down the value of its US-based Grubhub unit by €3bn amid plunging stock market valuations and rising interest rates, a sign of the difficulty facing the business after it was acquired for about $7.3bn in 2021. 

The Amsterdam-based company also reported that orders slowed in the first half of the year after customers returned to restaurants and shops following Covid-19 lockdowns, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

Just Eat struggled in the first half of the year, announcing plans to eliminate staff in France and scale back expansion plans. Delivery companies industry wide have been grappling with slowing growth. Rival Deliveroo cut its estimates for order growth in 2022 and Gopuff said in July that it was closing warehouses and cutting jobs. 

Still, the cutbacks helped the company make progress towards reaching profitability goals. 

“Our path to profitability is accelerating,” CEO Jitse Groen said in the statement. He added that the company expects to generate adjusted earnings across the entire business in 2023, with its three largest geographies reaching that threshold in the past quarter.

Total orders on Just Eat’s platform decreased 6.8% from the same period a year ago to 509.4-million. That compares to 547-million orders forecast by analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Sales rose to €2.78bn, compared to analysts’ €2.85bn target. First-half losses on adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation narrowed to €134m.

Just Eat is exploring a partnership or sale for Grubhub, which it bought in an all-stock deal in 2021, and looking for a bidder for its 33% stake in iFood.

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