It has been restless for some time within Just Eat Takeaway, the parent company of meal delivery company Thuisbezorgd. The company that tried to achieve world dominance by taking over other delivery companies en masse is increasingly being troubled by critical shareholders and it also seems to be becoming a mess internally. On Wednesday there was another riot when the operational director was fired because of possible transgressive behaviour.
Jörg Gerbig, the director in question, is said to have outdone himself during an event of the company, it is explained. Gerbig was supposed to be reappointed during the shareholders’ meeting, but that schedule has been removed from the agenda, so that his term ends immediately. Just Eat Takeaway has launched an investigation into the allegations against Gerbig. The company keeps open the possibility that the 39-year-old German will be nominated again as operational director at a later date if the outcome of that investigation is favorable. The riot also caused red colors for the company’s share on the stock exchange. The stock closed more than 9 percent lower.
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Angry Shareholders
Gerbig isn’t the only senior executive to leave the company. Furthermore, Supervisory Board President Adriaan Nühn is leaving, who is not available for a new term. Nühn’s position was under attack from a group of disgruntled shareholders and his reappointment was therefore far from certain. With the departure of Nühn, TomTom founder Corinne Vigreux will temporarily assume the role of chairman of the supervisory board.
Also read | Shareholder: ‘Just Eat Takeaway CEO Jitse Groen has to go’
Goofy Grubhub
It’s been a bit of a mess within Just Eat Takeaway for a while now. The biggest culprit is the acquisition of Grubhub, a delivery platform in the United States. The acquisition was completed in 2021 for more than $7 billion. According to CEO Jitse Groen, Grubhub and Just Eat Takeaway would be a ‘winning combination’, but little has yet been shown. Shareholders also see little in this ‘winning combination’, according to the valuation on the stock exchange. More than three quarters of the value has evaporated since the deal with Grubhub.
Also read | Parent company Thuisbezorgd.nl under heavy pressure from shareholders
Cat Rock Capital, one of the larger shareholders of Just Eat Takeaway with seven percent of the shares, previously demanded that the broom go through the board because they had a “complete loss of confidence” in the company’s management. As far as they were concerned, at least the financial chief, Brent Wissink, had to leave the company. At the shareholders’ meeting on Wednesday, that wish of Cat Rock Capital was in any case not fulfilled. A majority of the shareholders voted for a new term for Wissink.
Financial disappointments
It is obvious that they demanded the head of the financial chief. The company has been presenting ever-changing expectations lately. For example, it was said in 2021 that there would be a profit of 400 million euros. That number was later scaled down to a small loss and then a huge loss of 1 billion euros. However, the turnover increased from approximately 4 billion euros to more than 5 billion euros. Also in 2022, Just Eat Takeaway presents constantly changing expectations. First, a growth of fifteen percent in the gross transaction value was forecast. just a little over a month later, that expected growth was scaled down to just five percent.
Kees Cools, former professor of corporate finance and governance at Tilburg University, wonders why the focus was not on CEO Jitse Groen. He called Grubhub ‘one of the most wonderful companies on the planet’. What surprises me is that not all arrows are aimed at him. He is in charge of the strategy and he has determined the Grubhub acquisition and sold it to the public.”
Podcast This is why AEX flop Just Eat Takeaway will rise again
Negative lead role for Jitse Groen
At the shareholders’ meeting, Jitse Groen had a rather negative leading role, noted Nico Inberg, stock market analyst at DeShareholder. ‘We have known Jitse Groen for some time. He’s a pretty agitated, hot-tempered person. If you also look at his interviews, you see that he says it when a question comes up that isn’t smart.’ Groen also came across as irritated at the shareholders’ meeting, Inberg noticed. ‘Pieter Taselaar, a shareholder with 1.5 percent of the shares, was cornered as a little boy. He asked a question and Jitse immediately started with: ‘I don’t know who you are, I had to ask Investor Relations who you were’ and ‘You communicate through the newspaper, I don’t like that’. Taselaar was dismissed and insulted. Jitse Groen has apparently learned nothing from the criticism from shareholders.’
‘Keeps believing in your own success for too long’
Cools recognizes the behavior of other CEOs who went well for a long time, but ultimately failed. ‘They continue to believe in their own so-called success for far too long, which has been gone for a long time. You also saw it with Cees van der Hoeven, the former CEO of Ahold. He became more and more nasty and aggressive in calls with analysts. Or look at the CEO of Imtech, who was responsible for the largest bankruptcy in the Netherlands, which left 22,000 people on the street. He started berating an analyst from ABN Amro.’
The former professor thinks that top executives like Jitse Groen live in a bubble. ‘These people are at the top, where it is quite lonely. They’ve gathered yes-men around them, like with Just Eat Takeaway, and then they’ve maneuvered into a corner.’ According to Cools, Groen should be more honest: ‘He should have admitted that the Grubhub takeover was a failure.’ Yet the shareholders do not seem to have had enough of Groen. “He came through it smiling today,” stock market analyst Inberg describes the mood about the CEO’s future.
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