Impactful insights: M&A creates value in helping scale food delivery business models and generates marketing synergies to reach profitability. The main use of free cash flow has been M&A to accelerate growth by achieving critical mass to improve unit economics, leverage technology and achieve scale to win large chain contracts. Implementation of the business model and technology is essential for executing a successful acquisition. A higher level of confidence from investors on the implementation of an acquisition comes from a management team with a good track record and proven success on their ability of integration.

Impactful insights: There have been several key structural drivers accelerating the trends towards online food ordering. With that an evolution of the business model with the overall trend towards more vertically integrated marketplaces. In recent years the last-mile delivery has become an increasingly important foundation of business models leveraging the delivery infrastructure by expanding the offering with deliveries from other verticals such as supermarkets and the pharmacy. Broadening the offering the last-mile delivery increases the utility of the delivery for a bigger TAM for additional revenue streams.

Impactful insights: Private markets have evolved having an enormous expansion with huge value creation during the private phase of a company’s life. This has prompted an acceleration of activity in recent years with a significant shift in the dynamics of the capital formation process for companies.

Impactful insights: The tech sector has led the bull market over the last 10 years and many are surprised to see tech being the best performing sector during the pandemic. There are a combination of different factors happening simultaneously; there are strong fundamentals, companies are more mature and a structural shift of an acceleration towards tech nascent companies.

Impactful insights: The European tech landscape continues to broaden and it’s the fastest region of growing venture capital investment. A framework of founders and company builders has been created from the first generation of European tech companies at the same time venture capital in Europe is growing politically.

Impactful insights: Special Purpose Acquisition Companies are an old phenonium that’s been revived in the context of the pandemic. SPAC IPOs made up more than 50% of US IPOs in 2020 raising $76 billion, reaching by far the highest number on record and was more than 3x any previous year.

Expert perspective: The IR playbook of how to build a holistic framework to manage investor calls and establish an agile communications strategy that balances transparency and realistic messaging whilst seizing the opportunity to demonstrate an active management team positioning the company for an eventual recovery phase.