(Bloomberg) -- Takeaway.com shares rose as much as 4.1 percent on their Amsterdam trading debut after the online food-delivery provider priced its initial public offering near the middle of a pre-announced range, raising 328 million euros ($367 million).
The stock advanced as much as 95 cents from the 23-euro offer price, valuing the company at more than 1 billion euros. Takeaway had initially offered shares to investors in a range of 20.50 euros to 26.50 euros.
Takeaway is seeking to capitalize on the growth of an increasingly crowded industry. In the Netherlands, it's competing against Deliveroo and Delivery Hero Holding GmbH's Foodora. Uber Technologies Inc. unveiled Uber Eats in the Netherlands Sept. 29. Across Europe, more established companies such as Amazon.com Inc. are also getting into the game.
Business models vary -- Deliveroo takes orders from restaurants while Britain's Just Eat Plc and Takeaway.com act as a portal to restaurants that deliver food themselves. Valuations do, too: Deliveroo recently raised funding that values the company at more than $1 billion, while Just Eat has a market value of 3.6 billion pounds ($4.7 billion).
Takeaway, which plans to use proceeds from the IPO to pay off loans, had first-half sales of 50.5 million euros and a loss of 11.5 million euros. It's not profitable outside of the Netherlands, its largest market. Just Eat had sales of 247.6 million pounds in fiscal 2015.
The IPO is the first in Amsterdam since voters in the U.K. opted to leave the European Union in June, which caused transactions in the region to slow. Prior to that, the Dutch city had the busiest second quarter for IPOs in years, including that of Philips Lighting NV, gym owner Basic Fit and insurer ASR Nederland NV.
Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley were joint global coordinators and bookrunners for the IPO, while ABN Amro Group NV and UBS Group AG were also bookrunners.
To contact the reporters on this story: Paul Jarvis in London at pjarvis@bloomberg.net, Celeste Perri in Amsterdam at cperri@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Celeste Perri at cperri@bloomberg.net, Matthew Boyle
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