Food delivery giant Just Eat Takeaway said on Wednesday that rising interest rates forced it to book a massive loss of around €5.7 billion last year and that it was looking to offload its subsidiary Grubhub.

Just Eat Takeaway was created in 2020 after Dutch online service Takeaway.com gobbled up Britain's Just Eat, and business boomed on the back of the COVID pandemic-fuelled surge in home delivery, which has since subsided. 

The Amsterdam-based company reported a loss of €1.04 billion in 2021, and in August 2022 announced a huge three-billion-euro write-down in the value of its US arm Grubhub, just a year after buying it for more than twice as much.

Just Eat Takeaway said the 2022 loss was "mainly due to impairment losses of €4.6 billion on past equity-funded acquisitions."

The 2022 loss was "mainly due to impairment losses of €4.6bn on past equity-funded acquisitions"- Just Eat Takeaway statement

"These non-cash goodwill impairments associated with the Grubhub acquisition and Just Eat merger were primarily driven by macroeconomic factors, such as increasing interest rates," it added.

Management is exploring "the partial or full sale of Grubhub," the company said.

It added that adjusted earnings, an indicator of profitability, have improved, reaching a positive €19 million in 2022 compared to a negative €350 million in 2021.

The company aims to boost adjusted earnings to €225 million in 2023.

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