The company has already shed billions in value.
Last week, UK-based and Amazon-backed food delivery service Deliveroo set the price range for their upcoming IPO. With the value set between 3.90 and 4.60 pounds per share, Deliveroo was on track to set a new record for profitable IPOs in the UK and make billions of pounds in the process. With food delivery services still in high demand due to the pandemic, it seemed like Deliveroo was an absolute winner.
Sadly, not only did Deliveroo’s IPO not set the record for largest UK IPO, it is currently on track to become the worst UK IPO. At the opening of trading this morning, Deliveroo’s stock value plummeted by an alarming 30%, almost immediately wiping out approximately 2.3 billion pounds (roughly $3.2 billion USD) from the company’s value. At time of writing, the stock was trading for around 2.86 pounds per share, a 27% drop from the bottom of the set price range.
Even before the IPO actually went through, potential investors were expressing concerns about Deliveroo’s sustainability. Since its surge in business was caused by the pandemic, that same business would most likely be lost once the pandemic is finally under control. Also, in spite of the surge, Deliveroo has yet to actually turn a profit on its business, and when combined with recent pressures to offer delivery drivers better benefits, the negatives of investing simply outweighed the positives.
Deliveroo tumbles 30% in London debut https://t.co/Gy3DzlcjFc
— Financial Times (@FT) March 31, 2021
“If forced to offer more traditional employee benefits, like company pension contributions, Deliveroo’s already thin margins would struggle to climb, and the road to profitability would look very tough indeed,” said Sophie Lund-Yates, an equity analyst at Hargreaves-Lansdown.
In addition to being a rough time for Deliveroo itself, this setback could prove to be harmful to the UK’s overall economic climate. As Brexit efforts have moved many of London’s major business dealings elsewhere, officials were hoping a Deliveroo success would encourage more British tech companies to go public.
