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Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 27, 2026

Operator

Welcome to the Delivery Hero Q4 2025 Trading Update. Today's presentation will be followed by a Q&A session.

For those of you who have joined the Zoom webinar, you can use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen at any time to join the queue to ask a question, and you will be called upon during the Q&A session. If you have dialed in, please press *9 to enter the queue.

If you want to withdraw your question, please lower your hand using the raise hand function in the Zoom app, or via telephone press *9. I will now hand over to Christoph Bast to begin the presentation.

Christoph Bast

Hello, and welcome, everyone. Thank you very much for joining our Q4 2025 earnings call.

Joining me on this call are Niklas Östberg, CEO, and Marie-Anne Popp, CFO at Delivery Hero. Together, they will present the key highlights of our Q4 2025 results.

Following the presentation, we'll be delighted to address any questions you might have. Now over to you, Niklas.

Niklas Östberg

Thank you, Christoph, and welcome, everyone, and thank you for listening in. So 2025 was a challenging year with tough competition, FX headwind, and regulatory uncertainties.

Therefore, I'm very happy to share that we returned to growth in Korea, as promised. We completed the rider model change in Spain and Italy.

We accelerated growth in Saudi Arabia at the end of the year, which was even beyond our highest expectations. I'm also very happy to have turned the Integrated Verticals segment profitable while growing very fast.

Staying on the topic of Integrated Verticals and quick commerce in general, then let's move to the next slide. What you can see here is our quick commerce business, which represents the next frontier of our platform's evolution.

We have moved beyond traditional food delivery to become an indispensable everyday app, leveraging a hybrid model of food delivery, owned Dmarts, and local retail partnerships. The primary strategic advantage is the deep structural stickiness it creates within our user base.

We aren't just a service; we are a daily habit. We capture diverse shopping occasions across the entire consumer journey, starting from your essential grocery shopping over pet food, electronics, to health and beauty products, and so on.

The results speak for themselves. Quick commerce is currently outpacing food delivery with GMV growth of over 30%.

In addition to continued strong growth in groceries, we are seeing significant momentum across non-grocery verticals. Within this, health and beauty stands out, contributing over 50% year-on-year growth, while non-grocery as a whole already accounts for 20% of our quick commerce volume.

With 2025 GMV surpassing €7.5 billion, we are scaling rapidly to meet our 2026 GMV target of around €10 billion, solidifying our position as the leader in instant grocery and retail delivery. Now moving to AdTech.

Sometime ago, we gave the ambitious long-term target for our AdTech business to reach more than €1.5 billion revenues in the full year of 2025. As you can see, we came very close to this target despite a slower rollout of our AdTech products in South Korea.

Although the share of AdTech revenues in Korea constantly increased in the last two years, it is still behind the group average, leaving plenty of upside. On group level, AdTech revenues grew to 3.0% of GMV in 2025, and in Q4 2025, the share reached already 3.2%, with very attractive adjusted EBITDA margins.

Our continuous improvements to the performance of the ad products contribute strongly to this growth. To name some key developments, our personalized ad ranking system leverages neural networks to improve the relevance of ads and the efficiency of our user targeting.

This combined with our machine learning-based automated ad bidding and pacing enabled return on ad spending to improve from 3.9 times to 6 times between 2022 and 2025, and this unlocking significant additional investments from vendors. In simple words, we offer better and more relevant ads with greater returns to our vendors.

Throughout the years, we have stretched and strengthening our ad product portfolio from launching display ads in 2025, our CPC rollout in Woowa in 2022, to keywords revamp and video ads launched in 2025. These products support restaurants and vendors to increase visibility and conversion rates.

Going forward, the main growth drivers for our AdTech business will be Woowa, Glovo, and foodpanda, which are all below group average right now, but growing strongly. Our long-term ambition remains to achieve AdTech revenues of above 4% of GMV.

AdTech is just one area where we're seeing huge improvements from AI. As we navigate the broader AI transformation, we view our complex physical operations as profound structural moat.

AI agents help us predict demand or recommend great restaurants to customers, but they cannot move physical goods, manage millions of real-time merchant integrations, or run hyperlocal logistics, Dmarts, and kitchens. Because our business is fundamentally anchored in hard, real-world execution, we are highly insulated from purely digital disruption.

Ultimately, we see ourselves as massive beneficiaries of this revolution, leveraging AI to drive huge upside across consumer experience, merchant success, and bottom-line efficiencies. With that, let me now hand over to Marie-Anne, who will guide us through the financial highlights.

Marie-Anne Popp

Thank you, Niklas, and a warm welcome from my side as well. We finished the year 2025 strong, with Q4 showing further improvements in our three main focus areas: top-line growth, profitability, and cash generation.

GMV in Q4 increased by 8% year-over-year on a like-for-like basis and excluding hyperinflation and FX effects, accelerating from 7% year-over-year in Q3, driven by significantly improved momentum in Asia. Revenue grew by 21% year-over-year on a like-for-like basis, growing again markedly faster than GMV.

Profitability also improved, with gross profit margin expanding to a new all-time high of 8.3% in Q4. Adjusted EBITDA grew to more than €900 million in 2025 despite elevated growth investments in MENA and Asia, as well as particularly strong FX headwinds from the US dollar and Korean won.

One thing I'm particularly pleased about is that our free cash flow came in at more than €200 million. If we go to the next page, orders on group level grew by 9% on a like-for-like basis in Q4, accelerating from 8% in the previous quarter as the Asia segment has returned to growth while all other segments continue to grow strongly.

As mentioned, GMV growth for Q4 reached 8% on a like-for-like basis in constant currency and excluding hyperinflation accounting, improving from 7% in Q3. Revenue increased by 21% and has remained above the 20% mark at the group level for several consecutive quarters.

This robust growth continues to be fueled by the ongoing expansion of our own delivery logistics, particularly in South Korea and Turkey, as well as a shift to the new rider model in Spain. In addition, the sustained strong performance of AdTech business and the continued appeal of our subscription programs have further supported this momentum.

Let us take a closer look at the preliminary results for the full year 2025. The guidance for GMV was increased to the upper end of 8% to 10% year-over-year growth during our H1 trading update.

Our slightly increased growth in Q4 was not able to fully compensate for a slightly weaker than expected Q3 growth rate, and we arrived at a 9% year-over-year growth. Total segment revenues rose by 23.1%, coming in at the midpoint of our 22% to 24% year-over-year guidance on a like-for-like basis.

Adjusted EBITDA reached above €900 million compared to our guidance of €900 to €940 million, and free cash flow exceeded our guidance of more than €120 million and came in at over €200 million due to improved working capital efficiency and lower tax payments. Hence, we're pleased with our preliminary results for the full year 2025 and will now dive deeper into the Q4 performance on a segment level.

In Europe, GMV growth was temporarily softer in the second half of 2025 since we were still optimizing the operational efficiency following the successful transition of our rider fleet to an employment-based model in Spain. This will still have some effects on the top line in H1 before growth is set to reaccelerate again in the second half of 2026.

Performance in markets outside of Spain stayed robust, supported by healthy increases in orders and GMV in the majority of countries. Revenue growth in Europe was again driven by the year-over-year expansion of our own delivery logistics, which reached 82% in Q4 2025.

The implementation of the new rider model in Spain and its associated change in revenue recognition, as well as strong AdTech revenues and increasing basket sizes, resulted in a particularly strong growth of 34% in segment revenues. After business review of our operations in Finland, we concluded that reaching a category leadership position would require prolonged and disproportionate investment relative to the long-term returns.

That's why we exited the market as of mid-February and will focus our energy on countries where we already number one or strong number two and where we can generate the highest long-term returns. Adjusted EBITDA in Europe came in close to the break-even point in Q4 2025.

Through further efficiency improvements, we expect to be around adjusted EBITDA break-even for the full year 2026. Let's move on to MENA.

We have again delivered robust GMV growth despite challenging prior year comparables, as Q4 '24 was exceptionally strong due to concentrated growth initiatives. Throughout the region, fair competition regulations are being rolled out across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar, creating a more balanced environment that benefits the entire MENA ecosystem.

It puts a halt to predatory pricing mechanisms that distort competition, disrupt smaller innovators, and add a significant cost burden on local restaurants. Order growth in Saudi Arabia picked up again in December, with momentum even accelerating through January and early February.

This performance was driven by an enhanced subscription offering, with half of Saudi's GMV already coming from subscribers. Further investments are targeted incentives for high-value customers and the expansion of the multi-vertical proposition.

Talabat once again delivered strong operational results, achieving 20% year-on-year GMV growth in Q4 2025 despite exceptionally high comparables from the prior year with growth of 33% year-over-year in Q4 2024. Growth was supported by the continued expansion of quick commerce and subscription offerings, improved partner funded savings, and an ever-growing selection.

In Turkey, profitability improved substantially, resulting in positive adjusted EBITDA in the second half of 2025. Now on to the Asia segment.

GMV returned to growth on a like-for-like basis in Q4 '25 across the entire Asia segment, supported by category share gains since May and an increase in orders in South Korea, both driven by ongoing improvements in customer experience, which, among other things, has resulted in an outstanding year-on-year growth of 31% in the quick commerce business. The rest of Asia continued to strengthen, delivering GMV growth of 11% in Q4 2025, supported by an improved restaurant selections, more attractive vendor funded deals, subscription rollout, and a leading quick commerce proposition.

We expect this positive momentum to accelerate further throughout full year 2026. Our operations in Hong Kong can look back on a particularly strong year in 2025, with accelerating growth throughout the year in both orders as well as GMV.

Building on the momentum, the region, and in particular Korea, has had a strong start to Q1 2026, with further acceleration in top-line growth. Revenue growth remains robust, underpinned by the continued rollout of own delivery operations as its main driver, with the OD share for the segment increasing to 76%.

Profitability was reduced by investments in product and customer experience to further strengthen our long-term business. Now continuing with the Americas segment.

We accelerated order growth to 24% in Q4, reaching the milestone of 1 million average daily orders. GMV grew 17% year-on-year, slightly below order growth, even though basket sizes increased across most countries.

This reflects the impact of reporting Argentina in euro, even within our constant currency framework, since Argentina qualifies as a hyperinflation country. Quick commerce and our subscription offering continue to be key growth drivers, strengthening our value proposition across the Americas.

Revenue growth was further supported by the strong performance of AdTech, which outpaced the overall top line and still offers significant upside potential going forward. Adjusted EBITDA also improved materially in 2025, demonstrating the resilience of our business despite ongoing macro headwinds.

Now on to Integrated Verticals. Our Integrated Verticals business continued to deliver outstanding momentum, achieving 25% GMV growth year-on-year.

This performance was especially strong in the MENA region, where demand is exceptionally high. Adjusted EBITDA improved markedly and reached break-even for the full year 2025.

This progress reflects our ongoing efforts to enhance the customer value proposition through broadening and strengthening the assortment to be more relevant, as well as effective pricing strategies across our store portfolio. For the full year 2026, we expect a small positive adjusted EBITDA despite investments in our Dmarts expansion.

Besides the pure Dmarts business, also our local shop offering, which is actually included in the regional segments, continues to perform exceptionally well, supported by the onboarding of key partners like Jumbo in Argentina, Carrefour in Qatar, or Kiku Milano in UAE. Our combined Dmarts and local shop business, collectively known as quick commerce, has now surpassed €7.5 billion in GMV, and we're on track to approach €10 billion in full year 2026, underscoring the strength of the business model.

Let's now have a closer look at the gross profit margin. At the group level, our gross profit margin continued its upward trajectory, increasing by 10 basis points year-on-year to reach 8.3% of GMV, which is a new record high.

Both MENA and Americas are already operating at strong and attractive GP margin levels. These regions are using their solid profitability as leverage to scale rapidly in the quick commerce space.

In Asia, gross profit margins also showed steady improvement, expanding sequentially by another 20 basis points in the fourth quarter of 2025, largely driven by stronger profitability in South Korea. Europe is gradually recovering from the temporary impact of the transition to the new rider model in Spain.

With that adjustment now largely behind us, we anticipate further margin expansion as we move through fiscal year 2026. Just as a reminder, as part of our continued efforts to streamline financial disclosures, starting in 2026, we will report gross profit only in accordance with IFRS and on a semiannual basis.

Up until the release of full year 2025 numbers, we've had two structurally different P&Ls for management reporting purposes and for IFRS reporting purposes. These differences drove significant manual reconciliation, limiting speed and transparency while increasing risk across many levels.

Hence, we harmonized the two P&Ls, and from 2026 onwards, we'll disclose slightly amended, but fully aligned KPIs. This will accelerate our internal reporting cycles and provide greater transparency and comparability of our profitability drivers for the financial community.

Let's now have a look at the affected KPIs. We're basically talking about two shifts.

First, we will reflect revenue reductions like vouchers or refunds as a direct deduction from revenue instead of marketing expenses, thereby having the total segment revenues fully aligned with the IFRS revenue, as published in our half-year and annual reports. Secondly, we will have certain cost reclassifications within the P&L to ensure both reporting structures are fully synchronized.

While this results in higher cost of sales and a lower reported gross profit, it reduces our other operating expenses, meaning this does not have any impact on adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. Also, GMV and group revenues will remain unaffected by these changes.

Let's have a look at the upcoming dates. On 26th of March, we will publish our Annual Report 2025 and the Full Year 2025 Earnings Release, and also organize another analyst call.

We will also give formal guidance for the full year 2026 that day. Until then, we would like to refer back to what we already stated in the Q3 Trading Update, namely that we expect moderate adjusted EBITDA growth for 2026 as we increase our investments in Talabat, Korea, and Integrated Verticals.

Without providing a specific outlook at this stage, we would characterize this as an adjusted EBITDA increase of up to a mid-single-digit percentage. From a cash flow perspective, we anticipate that the business performance will continue to improve the underlying cash conversion.

At the same time, we will see higher investments in our Dmarts business, as previously communicated. Taking these opposing effects together, a free cash flow slightly above €200 million appears to be a reasonable expectation for 2026.

Regarding the strategic review, we're carefully evaluating all relevant strategic options together with our advisors to unlock shareholder value. Given the nature and scope of the strategic options being evaluated, it is not in the best interest of the company and shareholders to give any interim details of discussions while they're underway.

We will provide updates as soon as we're in a position to share details. Some options available to us may progress quickly, while others naturally require more time.

Let me assure you that the organization is fully focused and working diligently across all work streams to assess every avenue to drive value for our shareholders. One more heads-up we would like to give to today's audience.

We're thrilled to announce that Andrea Ferraz will take on the newly created role of VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Andrea joins us from Klarna in March, and you will get to know her over the coming weeks.

That's it from my side. Thank you for listening, and we're now looking forward to taking your questions.

Christoph?

Christoph Bast

Thank you very much, Marie-Anne. Before we enter the Q&A, I would kindly ask you to limit your questions to one per analyst because this way we can ensure that every analyst has the opportunity to ask a question.

With this, operator, please go ahead.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our Q&A session. For those of you who have joined the Zoom webinar, if you have a question, we ask that you please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen.

Once called upon, please unmute your audio and ask your question. If you have dialed in, please press *9 to enter the queue, and *6 to unmute once called upon.

Our first question comes from Andrew Ross with Barclays. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Andrew Ross

Great. Good afternoon, everyone.

Thanks for those comments on the outlook for '26 and the strategic review. Given that, I'm going to ask on Saudi, and ask if you can give a bit more color as to the changes that you've seen since the new regulation came into place at the end of last year.

Could you be more specific about where Hungerstation's market share is today versus where it was pre-Keeta launching in 2024 and how much share you've been able to regain since the first changes came into place? Then I guess the follow-up to that is then how you're thinking about regulation coming in through the rest of the GCC region in this year.

Thank you.

Niklas Östberg

Thanks, and hey, Andrew. We don't really look at category share the way maybe you do.

We rather focus on how we are growing. If someone gives out €500-€600 million in vouchers, of course you'll get a lot of orders.

The question is what is the kind of long-term sustainable order level. What is the true category share that such a player has versus what is the temporary order growth that someone would generate?

Therefore, we don't really pay too much attention to that. We don't think it is that relevant.

We try to look at underlying fundamental category share gains and losses, and that the best way to do that is look at our own business and see how that is evolving and are we losing any of our customers. We believe that the customers that we have, which we have gained over multiple number of years through aggressively pushing our service, whatever customer we didn't gain during that time period is probably not a very good customer.

Of course if someone offers 100 bucks to order from and so on, you will have a lot of riders and cleaning people and so on also ordering because it is simply free money to gain. Coming back to that, how does our business look and evolve?

Prior to Keeta entering, we grew at 15%. We obviously pushed a lot in Q4 that year when they launched, and we actually accelerated our growth to 10% to 15%, I think 15% in Q4 2024.

That's why we have a pretty tough comp as we entered Q4. Despite that, we managed to grow faster than 15% at the end of the year, let's say December here.

Faster than 15% in December, and this trend continued into 2026. That means we are growing faster now than we did before Keeta entered the market in Saudi, and we have done that without any material downgrade to profitability.

Our expectation is that we're going to grow in Saudi this year in terms of profitability. Overall, I think it's incredibly strong signals that we have there.

We have achieved this not by doing massive discounts and vouchers and enter into the price war. It's very easy to get dragged into that.

That's not what we have done, but we have actually rather focused on our best customer and continuously working on the service and the product offering that we give to them. That's what we see, that we haven't lost any of our good customers.

The only customer that we have lost have been very low quality, voucher-driven customers. Therefore, we are incredibly excited about Saudi and, yeah, and we see a very good development for us.

When it comes to impacts from regulatory, yeah, of course, if someone has to start making economics because you cannot do predatory pricing anymore, therefore you would see an impact if someone start adding different fees, they have to start charging restaurants, they have to start charging consumers, and so on. Of course it becomes a little bit more level playing field, and of course some of those, let's call it, fake customers or empty orders, those will disappear from those other platforms, which means that, technically speaking, yes, we will have gained share.

Again, we don't consider it share gain when someone lost an order or customer that wasn't really a true customer. From that point, we focus rather on our growth.

Outside of Saudi, I think the other markets have learned from the negative experience that Saudi had to go through, that is hurting the restaurant ecosystem and many of the technology disruptors got disrupted. I think the rest of Middle East learned from that experience and were much faster in applying and adopting predatory pricing practices.

That's what we also see then in the most of the markets that we operate, in majority of the markets in GCC have applied that, and yeah, I think overall we view it pretty positively for the industry and the restaurants and the full ecosystem.

Andrew Ross

Cool. Thanks, Niklas.

Niklas Östberg

Thanks, Andrew.

Operator

Our next question comes from Marcus Diebel with J.P. Morgan.

Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Marcus Diebel

Hi, everyone. I guess I have a CFO question.

Clearly the free cash flow, more than €200 million, is a strong message. My question is how should we think about 2026 in terms of the cash flow?

I think previously you commented that cash conversion should be better in '26 than '25. If I just say, okay, the sort of mid-single-digit percentage growth in EBITDA gets us to roughly 9- €945 million, would you say we still have a sort of, yeah, €600-€700 million gap between EBITDA and cash flow, or do we sort of factor at least a meaningful improvement also in there?

I appreciate it's not guidance time, but any sort of conceptual help would be quite useful, I guess.

Marie-Anne Popp

Sure. I think I gave a bit of soft guidance already around that, right?

Overall I think we think a level above €200 is also what we would see for the current year. Again, we can go into a bit more detail in about a month's time, right?

I think the way to think about it or the factors that would be driving it would continue to be some of what we've seen this year, right, which is to continue to actually work on in particular working capital improvements. I think we've done a lot already.

We have improved tremendously in 2025, inventory management, in particular cash conversion cycles in the Dmarts. We've been able to negotiate improved payment terms with payment service providers and monitoring payment cycles much more closely.

Again, a lot of improvement has materialized already, but I think there's still more to do, right? I think there's still some of that also happening or continuing to happen in 2026.

Obviously, any kind of overall improvement in the business will also translate into free cash flow. I think then, on the counter side, we obviously then also have investments that we've talked about, in particular in the quick commerce segment, and that would then have obviously repercussions on the CapEx and the lease picture in particular, right?

I think you've got these two movements kind of maybe not fully offsetting each other, but I think leading to dynamic where you probably looking at the numbers we so far gave for 2025 as well as 2026.

Marcus Diebel

Okay. Basically if we say €945 million EBITDA, the sort of incremental EBITDA should come through at better cash conversion, yeah, than '25, or even better, let's call it like this?

Marie-Anne Popp

Yes, but again, I mentioned other effects as well, right? The investments I think you have to factor in.

Again, you have a number of moving pieces here. Some of them will increase your cash flow, others will slightly decrease it as you invest more.

I think there's a number of checks and balances here.

Marcus Diebel

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Jo Barnet-Lamb with UBS. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Jo Barnet-Lamb

Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you very much for taking my question. You've spoken about the broadening out of your service and movement to being the everyday app.

You also specifically state your desire to raise quick commerce GMV to €10 billion and to invest in IV. Can you give a little bit more color on IV?

Can we expect it to remain break-even with you investing incremental adjusted EBITDA into it, or is it likely to get dragged back to negative adjusted EBITDA? Sorry to push a little bit further on the cash conversion question, but it's partly where Marcus was going, I think.

Are you going to expand your store footprint, and what's that going to mean for CapEx? A little bit of color around that would be helpful as well.

Thank you.

Niklas Östberg

Maybe I start, do you take then? Yes, we're taking it to profitable, and we will maintain it there, but the growth that we're having is of course adding a lot of positive profit contribution, and that portion, the incremental profit contribution that is being generated will go back to expand and grow.

Yes, we will keep it still around or slightly above EBITDA for 2026. Then maybe you want to answer the cash flow conversion.

Marie-Anne?

Marie-Anne Popp

Sure. Yes, I think the short answer is yes, there is obviously plans to further invest in the business, in particular in the Middle East, and that means Dmarts, additional ones, or looking at expanding Dmarts at our locations that are working very well.

You will see additional investments, and what that means for CapEx is you probably have a bit more of that. We also had some one-off effects in CapEx in 2025, which you'll see a bit less of.

We talked about Korea finishing some real estate projects there, right? Again, I think overall you will probably see CapEx going up a bit, and then I think the lease picture is obviously also important, right, as we expand the footprint of the Dmarts.

I think you should probably look at both of those increasing a bit.

Jo Barnet-Lamb

Thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Luke Holbrook at Morgan Stanley. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Luke Holbrook

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question.

I'm going to be the person that asks on your strategic review, just to try and get a little bit of sense here. Is everything on the table: small, medium, larger size, geographies?

When you say the timeline for some of these discussions might be shorter, some others longer, is those longer discussions still within the realms of 2026? I'm just trying to get more of a framing around how we think about that.

Niklas Östberg

It's very hard for us to comment much around here. As we said in our strategic review announcement, we are looking at a wide range of options.

We basically look at everything from the ground up, putting it this way, to review what could be shareholder-friendly. Based on that, we have also come to some assessment where we think there is value to be generated to shareholders, and we are working very hard and diligently through those potential options.

Some of them will be fast to execute and not dependent on others. Others will be take longer and/or dependent on others.

Therefore, it's hard to give a specific timeline on any announcement that will come there. We are taking a very deep look, and we are looking at a wide range of potential options.

That's what I can say.

Luke Holbrook

All right. Thank you very much.

Niklas Östberg

Thanks.

Operator

Our next question comes from Giles Thorne with Jefferies. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Giles, please unmute your line and ask your question.

Giles Thorne

Right, finally found the unmute button. My track record continues to be terrible at that.

Thank you, Niklas. A question on your definition of the everyday app.

Does it continue to exclude any services around mobility, or is that something that you could see yourself leaning in harder on? Thank you.

Niklas Östberg

Thanks, Giles. It does not include it as for us building it, but we are, as partnering in some locations and regions with existing ride-hailing companies to see how we can benefit or how it can benefit our customers to have that as part of our subscription program and also have it integrated into our app to cross-sell and leverage both our user base as well as improving the stickiness of our users.

We are still at, yeah, somewhat early stage there to see how much we're expanding on those partnership, how much it adds value for our users and to us. We have no plans to expand with our own business at the time.

Giles Thorne

Thank you. Just by way of follow-up, the Bolt partnership in the GCC and in the UAE, how's that going?

Is there any kind of color that you can share? I appreciate still pretty early doors, but any color on how that's going would be useful.

Niklas Östberg

I think we like the partnership. I think there is an argument for extending it or deepening some of these partnerships.

I would still say it could be value accretive, but it's not a game changer. As I have maintained before, there is a clear value in having restrictions to what your brand stands for.

Our brand stands for being the best delivery company, and of course the more you expand into other areas, more you dilute your message. I want people to think about how do I get something delivered to me and not anything else.

I think that is also the benefit that we have had in many markets and against many players, that we are that focused and that we are also dedicating all our tech resources and so on to building that. There is a lot that needs to be built and improved still, therefore we also like to be focused when it comes to our resources on what we're building and what we stand for.

I think there are also some encouraging signs. We see some value, but it's not a game changer yet.

Giles Thorne

Very good. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Annick Maas. Please unmute your line by pressing *6 and ask your question.

Please unmute your line by pressing *6 and ask your question. Thank you.

Annick Maas

Hi there. My question is on the AdTech business.

Could you just explain us again how much of the AdTech business is today contributing to profits? With that, you are today already at 3% of GMV.

You're now saying 4% of GMV is the long-term target. Why is that not higher?

I think at some point in your history, you had a bit more ambitious targets here. Can you just explain us what is driving this?

Thank you.

Niklas Östberg

Most of the revenue that we generate there goes to the bottom line, and increasingly so. Of course in the beginning when we sold ad products, we had to use sales team members.

That is gradually being moved over to automated bidding and self-service and AI-generated sales agents to support and reduce. We see that the margin on that revenue is increasing over time and will continue to increase.

In terms of our ambition, I think ambition was 3% to 5% for a long time. Now we are saying above 4%.

I think for the non-food side, if you look at groceries and in particular if we look at our own Dmarts, we think that level will be higher. That's maybe what you're referring to.

There we see that we can go substantially above 5%. We are still very early in that phase because we have been prioritizing the more on the restaurant side given that it was a larger part of our business.

During '25 and even more so in '26, we are pushing the NMR revenue stream, to say CPG companies and so on, and we think there is a lot of value and money that can be generated and improved there, but we are still very early in that stage. Yes, here we have bigger ambitions than that.

Of course you can look at things that, okay, if you make that margin, then a big part of your profit is coming from there and you see it as two businesses, but of course it's not two businesses. If we would have less ad revenue, we would have to make more money in something else, and then maybe we would have increasing our delivery fee or our commission or something else, because in the end we have a target on gross profit that we want to deliver.

Of course the more we can deliver through AdTech, the less we have to generate through other parts of the business, we can charge less to users and so on. You can't see it as two different businesses and that one is break-even and one is making money, because we calibrate those together to making sure that we hit our target margins and target profitability.

You can't do one without the other, either. Hope that answered.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Silvia Caneo with Deutsche Bank.

Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Silvia Caneo

Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone.

My question is on the guidance and the FX. Thanks for the color on the outlook for 2026 on the adjusted EBITDA growth front.

I just wanted to check because in the previous commentary around the Q3 stage, you referred to local currencies levels of growth in your message. I wanted to check if what you commented about today, the up to mid-single-digit percentage growth in adjusted EBITDA, is in reported terms for 2026, or is it not?

Related to that, if you could comment about the FX headwind that you currently foresee based on exchange rates at the moment. Thank you.

Niklas Östberg

Want to cover

Marie-Anne Popp

it? I will.

What the kind of soft guidance or indication we give today assumes the visibility we currently have on FX, and yes, so that basically is what we see at the moment. I think overall what we've obviously seen in 2025 is that FX had a very strong impact on our financials, and we talked about that a few times in previous trading updates, right, especially kind of after March 2025.

I think if I look at the overall impact on EBITDA that FX had at the end, over the course of all of 2025, it's probably around €100 €100 million and maybe a little less, about €90 million on free cash flow. There was a very very strong impact, which was obviously very hard to foresee.

I think where we stand right now in 2026, it's very hard to have a crystal ball. I think we don't see right now the same massive impact, but probably there will be some effect, right, and some slight headwind.

In terms of the outlook we're giving, it is currently based on current assumptions, right, and I think as we speak again in March, we can further confirm that.

Silvia Caneo

Thank you.

Operator

Our final question comes from Bharath Nagaraj from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Bharath Nagaraj

Thank you. How should we think about the timing lag between the higher investment that you're making and the EBITDA inflection?

Basically, does 2026 represent a trough year for profitability? Thank you.

Niklas Östberg

There are different types of investments. You could make investments that would give an instant kind of almost return.

For example, if you give a voucher, then very quickly you have made back that money on that order, that voucher, but there's no long-term positive effect. If you buy a customer, it costs a lot more and it can take a multiyear to get that return back, but of course it is still a a very good return from an IRR perspective even if it takes a multiyear.

Same if you invest in technology, it will take time until you you deliver that return. Or if you build a Dmart more, until you have building the volume and and and so on, it will be a it will be a longer payback period.

I think the investments that we have structurally done or want to do this year, in particular when we speak about Dmart in Middle East, is to strengthening our service and operations, product offering, and in particular with the Dmart and Integrated Verticals and multi-vertical. Some of those have a very long payback period, but they are nevertheless incredibly strong payback periods.

When we push multi-vertical, it will I mean we will keep investing also next year. We will invest in in expanding and improving our multi-vertical offering.

Long term, we will have built a business that is worth tens of billions probably in that space, but there will be also a number of years where we keep investing in order to get that. Even if the payback period is is good and and it it it's still some of these investments will be multiyear investment.

The same with Dmart. It took us we invested for three, four, something years.

Now we have an incredibly strong business, but it was still an investment over a number of years until we we start seeing a profit from that. It's a little bit hard to give in now an exact number.

I know it there will be returns of it already next year, but there will also be investments happening next year. That's why you you you it will still be hard to look like-for-like what were the actual returns from the investment this year as they may continue.

Bharath Nagaraj

Understood. That's really helpful color.

Thank you.

Niklas Östberg

Thanks a lot.

Operator

This concludes the Q&A session. I will now hand back to Niklas Östberg for closing remarks.

Niklas Östberg

Many thanks, everyone, for listening in, and thanks also all heroes for your hard work. We are, as I've said, leaning in during 2026, and it will be an exceptional important year to deliver.

Many thanks in advance for an even harder work during 2026. Thank you, everyone.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you, everyone, for joining.

You may now disconnect.