In a significant restructuring move aimed at satisfying European regulators, Prosus has offloaded a 4.5% stake in Delivery Hero to Uber Technologies for approximately €270-million, marking another crucial step in unwinding its German food delivery investments. The transaction, completed at €20 per share, represents a substantial premium of roughly 22% above the one-month volume-weighted average price recorded on 16 April, and will reduce Prosus’s overall holding in the Frankfurt-listed company from 26.3% to 21.8% once settlement concludes.
This divestment sits squarely within the regulatory commitments that Prosus undertook as part of its €4.1-billion acquisition of Just Eat Takeaway.com, which was announced earlier in 2025. When the European Commission initially greenlit the deal in August, it came laden with strict conditions—most notably, Prosus had to substantially pare back its Delivery Hero stake within a 12-month window and refrain from placing any directors affiliated with Naspers or Prosus onto the German company’s board structures.
The broader context here matters enormously for understanding where South Africa’s tech investment giant stands in the global food delivery landscape. With the Just Eat acquisition now complete and unconditional as of October 2025, Prosus has effectively positioned itself as the world’s fourth-largest food delivery operator by gross transaction value. This combined entity brings together Just Eat’s sprawling 17-country European footprint with Prosus’s existing stakes across Latin America through iFood, its quarter share of Indian platform Swiggy, and a roughly 4% slice of China’s Meituan.
Yet this consolidation came at a cost that many observers found difficult to swallow. Just before agreeing to the Prosus takeover, Just Eat Takeaway had dumped its US subsidiary Grubhub to start-up Wonder for a measly US$650-million—a staggering collapse from the $7.3-billion the company had paid for it just five years earlier in 2020. That fire-sale illustrated just how bruised the global food delivery sector had become heading into 2025, and why regulatory scrutiny was tightening around consolidation.
Prosus divests Delivery Hero stake while navigating complex regulatory landscape
The Uber transaction doesn’t represent the end of Prosus’s Delivery Hero exit strategy, however. Back in late March, Bloomberg reported that preliminary discussions had occurred between Prosus and Hong Kong-based Aspex Management regarding the potential sale of an additional 10% holding. Aspex, which currently holds 9.2% of Delivery Hero, has been vocal in recent months about pressuring the company’s supervisory board to make significant changes to executive leadership—adding another layer of complexity to Prosus’s unwinding process.
What makes this entire situation particularly compelling is the tension between regulatory obligation and shareholder value maximisation. Prosus has made clear that it remains committed to divesting its remaining Delivery Hero stake within the European Commission’s prescribed timeframe whilst simultaneously attempting to achieve the best possible exit terms for shareholders. That’s a delicate balancing act that no major investor wants to fumble.
For those watching Naspers’ broader portfolio strategy, these moves signal a continued recalibration of where the Johannesburg-based conglomerate sees its future growth opportunities. The company has been steadily pivoting its international tech investments, and the food delivery sector—once heralded as a potential goldmine—has proven far more challenging and capital-intensive than originally anticipated across most Western markets.
From where we sit, the Uber deal closing out 4.5% of the Delivery Hero position represents solid progress, but the real question hanging over Prosus is whether it can find equally attractive homes for the remaining 21.8% stake before regulators’ patience runs out.