Online delivery firm Just Eat hit as sales growth disappoints   

Shares in the company, which completed its €6.2bn purchase of US peer GrubHub in June, were down by more than 4%, taking losses this year to more than 30%

Just Eat competes with Deliveroo and Delivery Hero across Europe, and Uber Eats, and Door Dash, in the US. File picture

Weaker than expected third-quarter orders at Just Eat Takeaway knocked shares in the online food delivery company, with orders in the US growing slowly. 

Just Eat competes with Deliveroo and Delivery Hero across Europe, and Uber Eats, and Door Dash, in the US. 

Shares in the company, which completed its $7.3bn (€6.2bn) purchase of US peer GrubHub in June, were down by more than 4%, taking losses this year to more than 30%.

Total orders in the quarter rose 25% to 266m, below the 35% increase expected by analysts at ING bank.

Growth in Britain, the company's largest market, was 51%, but weakest in the US, now its second-biggest market. 

GrubHub chief executive Matt Maloney said last week he intended to leave in December, and Just Eat Takeaway said it had started "an improvement programme re-focusing the company on GrubHub's strongholds".

Meanwhile, British online retailer THG's shares seesawed after a badly received investor presentation drove the stock 35% lower, even as the company said it did not know of a reason for the slump.

THG said no material new information was disclosed during the presentation and it knew of "no notifiable reason" for the share price drop. It added its liquidity was strong ahead of its peak trading season.

Shares in SoftBank-backed THG, which went public in a bumper initial public offering last September, plunged earlier this week. The stock rose as much as 8.8% in the latest session, before falling nearly 13%. 

Its presentation focused on THG's e-commerce services business Ingenuity, a direct-to-consumer sales and logistics platform which it sells to companies such as Nestlé.

Investors were disappointed by the lack of financial detail provided about Ingenuity, analysts said.

"We believe the company missed the opportunity to present satisfying additional stats and the detailed disclosure the investor community was hoping for," JP Morgan Cazenove analysts said. 

THG said in May it planned to spin off Ingenuity into a separate company. 

• Bloomberg