Food delivery platform Delivery Hero is expecting to break even during the second half of this year and become profitable next year, according to a company blog post Monday (Jan. 10).

“Delivery Hero has always been investing in growth initiatives, with the clear ambition of reaching the scale needed to achieve profitability,” Emmanuel Thomassin, chief financial officer of Delivery Hero, said in the announcement. “We have remained confident that through achieving the right size, we are able to bring tremendous benefits to all partners in our ecosystem, as well as to our shareholders.”

Thomassin added that the company’s investment strategy has so far proved successful, and “we are on a solid trajectory to turn our food delivery business profitable” sometime in the second half of 2022.

Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, Delivery Hero has operations in approximately 50 countries across Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa.

The company has processed more than 791 million orders — a 52% year-over-year growth, according to the company’s website. Delivery Hero’s own drivers delivered 50% of all orders in the second quarter of 2021.

Delivery Hero is also focusing on quick commerce, which it calls “the next generation” of eCommerce, and is striving to deliver groceries and household goods to people in less than an hour — often in 10 to 15 minutes.
Delivery Hero has been listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange since 2017 and became part of the leading index DAX (Deutscher Aktienindex) in 2020.

“I think it is fair to say, living up to our guidance, then we should be in a good position to choose if we want to be profitable in 2023,” CEO Niklas Östberg told Reuters.

Last month, Delivery Hero acquired a 39.4% stake in Barcelona-headquartered unicorn delivery app Glovo. The deal is anticipated to close in the middle of this year and will give Delivery Hero 83.4% ownership in Glovo, up from 44%.

The delivery giant also sold its $150 million ownership stake in Latin American delivery company Rappi, which equals most of the investment it had made in the company,