No sooner had Delivery Hero presented its figures on Thursday morning than the company's share price collapsed.

The shares lost a good quarter of their value at the top of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, in absolute terms almost 4.1 billion euros.

Investors seemed particularly disappointed with the outlook for this year.

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Because after a year of strong growth, the delivery service has given a more cautious outlook for 2022 than expected.

For the current year, the Executive Board is aiming for a gross goods value of 44 to 45 billion euros.

Of this, 1 to 1.2 percent is to be incurred as an operating loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda).

This again corresponds to a loss of several million euros.

Benefited from Corona

"I'd rather do well than raise expectations that are too high.

We have always delivered what we promised," said CEO Niklas Österberg after the presentation of the business figures of the FAZ. He attributes the slump in the share price to investors who were hoping for short-term profits.

"We've made a lot of investments, which should pay off for long-term investors."

Like many delivery services, Delivery Hero has benefited from the corona pandemic.

Overall, the company generated a gross goods value of 35.4 billion euros in 2021, an increase of 62 percent compared to the previous year.

The Berliners were even slightly above what they themselves had expected.

The operating loss rose by almost a third to 781 million euros.

Since the loss did not increase as much as the gross value of goods, the margin also improved by 0.5 percentage points to minus 2.2 percent.

Although more and more corona restrictions are being lifted, Österberg is optimistic that it will continue to grow even after the end of the pandemic.

"We hardly had any lockdown effects in the past financial year," said the Swede.

We're almost back to normal.” This year, Delivery Hero wants to break even with its platform business for the first time.

That excludes the grocery delivery branch for now.

All divisions should then generate profits from 2023.

The delivery service is the only group in the Dax that has never been in the profit zone.

Berlin as a test laboratory

Although Delivery Hero is a German company, it has said goodbye to its home market for the time being.

Last year, it discontinued its food delivery service Foodpanda after only six months in this country.

According to the CEO, Berlin is now to become an “innovation lab” where innovations are developed and tested.

These are then to be exported from the capital to the world.

Which exactly, Österberg did not want to explain, only said that it was about efficiency and costs.

In Germany, Delivery Hero also has an 8 percent stake in the food supplier Gorillas.

He is criticized primarily because of his poor working conditions for the bicycle couriers employed.

Österberg said he sees improvements in that regard.

"I have the impression that they really care." Basically, the customer feedback is good and: "People want to work for gorillas."

The future lies in Africa

For him, however, the growth markets are outside of Germany, in Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa.

In the last quarter of 2021, Delivery Hero therefore increased its stake in the Spanish delivery service Glovo, which is active there, to 84 percent.

"Upon completion of the transaction, we will be able to serve a total of up to 2.2 billion people around the world."

Österberg thinks long-term;

Investments in countries like Nigeria or Kenya could only pay off in five or ten years, but Delivery Hero is an "early bird".

In addition to food orders, this also includes the delivery of groceries or medicines.

To this end, Delivery Hero has already opened more than 1000 of its own warehouses, where people collect the ordered products like in a supermarket and a supplier then brings them to the customer.

According to Österberg, there are around 6,000 products in each warehouse.

"That sets us apart from the competition."

Whether investors share the CEO's optimism remains to be seen.

The Delivery-Hero price has been going downhill since mid-November last year.

The level on Thursday could only be a temporary low.