MENA is Delivery Hero’s top region in GMV to revenue conversion

Delivery Hero, the Berlin-headquartered global food delivery company operates in over 70 markets across four regions; Asia, MENA, Europe, and Americas.

The Middle East & North Africa has been one of Delivery Hero’s best markets for years. As Postmoney reported yesterday, it had an excellent year in 2023, with $10.3 billion GMV and $2.3 billion in revenue in MENA. In 2023, MENA continued to be company’s fastest growing region.

The numbers in preliminary financial results for 2023 also revealed that the Middle East & North Africa is Delivery Hero’s top region in terms of GMV translation into revenue.

The MENA business generated $1 of revenue for every $3.7 in GMV. In Asia, which is the company’s biggest market, the firm generated $1 of revenue for every $6.9 of GMV.

So, the Middle East & North Africa generated nearly double the revenue (compared to Asia) for every single dollar of GMV generated.

Asia contributed almost 56 percent or $27 billion of Delivery Hero’s group GMV. But in terms of revenue, its contribution was just 36 percent or $4 billion.

We’ll have to wait for the company’s detailed financials to understand this better but it is primarily due to the fact that Woowa, the South Korean food delivery company that DH acquired in 2021, for $4 billion, is primarily a marketplace.

The German firm has been trying to expand the share of its own delivery share (the percentage of orders that are delivered by DH’s fleet) across all its markets but as a result of the acquisition of Woowa, that number declined in Asia in 2022.

The Middle East & North Africa was the second highest region with own delivery share (61.5 percent) in 2022.

Only Americas had an even higher own delivery share (~92 percent).

And perhaps that’s why it is very close to MENA in terms of GMV translating into revenue; every $3.8 of GMV generated $1 of revenue.