Acquisitions A US competitor buys Wolt for € 7 billion

American food ordering service Door Dash buys Wolt for around € 7 billion. The purchase price will be paid in shares, ie it is a merger of Wolt with a US listed company.

According to the company, the value of the transaction is higher than, for example, the sale of Nokia’s mobile phone business to Microsoft or the sale of Sampo Bank to Danske Bank.

Wolt estimates that taxes worth more than EUR 600 million will be paid to Finland in the transaction when the shares exchanged in the transaction become taxable.

The company says in its press release that the service will remain unchanged from the perspective of its customers, merchants and messengers. Wolt will continue under its own name, product and current team in all 23 countries of operation.

In the process Wolt’s CEO Mickey Six takes over Door Dash’s international business and joins the management team of a listed company worth more than EUR 50 billion

The deal was announced in connection with the announcement of the results of Door Dash. The companies will continue as independent players until the transaction is completed.

Wolt’s head office will remain in Helsinki.

“Over the years, we have had many opportunities to connect with different players in the industry, but we have always finally decided to continue on our own path. In the discussions with Door Dash, we saw for the first time that there is a real opportunity to do something internationally unique here, ”Miki Kuusi says in a press release.

“As a result of the transaction, Wolt will have access to unprecedented resources to continue to expand and develop an ever-improving service, the value of which should not be underestimated in a truly competitive industry like this,” says Kuusi.

Completion of the transaction is subject to regulatory approval in various countries. The transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2022.

In 2020, the platform company Wolt more than tripled its turnover from EUR 87.4 million in the previous year to EUR 280.7 million. The company’s loss deepened from EUR -36.1 million to EUR -47.1 million.

Wolt has more than 4,000 employees and operates in 23 different countries.

Read more: Wolt seeks the right solution for the status of messengers – in Finland, too, laws may change to facilitate gig work in the platform economy

In January 2021, Wolt raised € 440 million in a round of financing from private equity investors. This was Finland’s largest financing company to date. It has collected several big pots one after the other, so far a total of 707 million euros.

Investors in the financing round included several of the world’s largest mutual funds, including Iconiq Growth and Tiger Capital in the United States and the private equity unit of the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

The company has said it is preparing for a stock exchange listing, so it was a surprise to end up on the stock exchange through an acquisition.

Read more: Wolt started with a poor business idea, spread to 23 countries and grew into a company worth over a billion – Now its Finnish founders tell how it all happened

The story is being updated.