Just Eat today reported revenues up by 62% and pre-tax profits up by more than 400% in its 2014 financial year as more customers turned online, and particularly via their mobile devices, to order takeaways.
The online takeaway marketplace today announced revenues of £157m in the year to the end of December, up from £96.8m at the same time last year. Pre-tax profits grew to £57.4m, from £10.2m last time, a rise of 462.7%.
Just Eat said that it processed orders worth £1bn for the 45,700 restaurants that it works with as orders grew by 52% to 61.2m. Some 61% of those orders were placed via mobile devices, and 55% of mobile orders were placed via apps, up from 43% last time with the addition of iPad and Android tablet apps.
The company said its strategy was to raise brand awareness through television advertising, while improving the customer experience across channels. “Consumers trust strong brands,” said chief executive David Buttress in his report. “We believe that television remains the best way to reach a mass-market audience, to help create and strengthen our brand and accelerate channel shift from telephone to online. We remain strongly committed to building our brand in all of our markets, and we are now a TV brand in the majority of them.”
He described how an omnichannel approach had improved the customer experience in a “mobile-led product evolution” during the year. Web refresh, he said, meant customers saw the same products on the site, no matter what device they were using. The company is also trialling real-time order tracking through 11 restaurants. “In the long term,” said Buttress, “we believe our ability to innovate at scale will profoundly change the consumer experience and reinforce the benefits of building the leading market place for the fragmented takeaway industry.
In the UK, orders grew by 56% to 45.5m, and the company processed its millionth UK order in November. The marketplace signed up 4,500 UK restaurants during the year including 1,000 collection-only outlets. Overseas, the company is also focused on building its position in countries where the appetite for online ordering of takeaways is still emerging, including France, Brazil and Spain. The company also operates in Denmark, where the company was originally founded in 2000, and where revenues rose by 10% to £12.8m in 2014.
Image: Graham Corfield, UK MD of Just Eat (R), congratulates Ilyas Akram, owner of Bits N Pizza, when the millionth UK Just Eat order was placed through his restaurant in November.
