UBER BUYS POSTMATES, UPS DELIVERY GAME IN $2.65 BILLION DEAL

Uber has widened its reach in the fiercely competitive delivery market by acquiring Postmates in a $2.65 billion all-stock deal, the company said.

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The acquisition enables the ride-hailing giant to increase its delivery offerings at a time when the global pandemic has suppressed customers’ desire for rides while boosting home delivery needs. While Uber’s meal delivery business,

Uber Eats, has mostly focused on restaurants, Postmates delivers a wider array of goods including groceries, pharmacy items, alcoholic drinks and party supplies.

“The vision for us is to become an everyday service,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, in a conference call with investors Monday. “Postmates is a great step along that vision. Anyplace you want to go, anything you want delivered to your home, Uber is going to be there with you, and we think these everyday frequent interactions create a habit, create a connection with customers.

Uber and its Uber Eats food-delivery division will gain ground against DoorDash, which controls about 44% of the U.S. meal delivery market. That’s compared with Uber Eats’ 23% share before the Postmates deal. Grubhub and its subsidiaries had just under 23% of the U.S. meal delivery market, according to May figures from Second Measure, a data analysis company. Postmates had about 8% of the market.

“We really believe that the market is much bigger than, let’s say, the traditional delivery players,” Khosrowshahi said. “We look at groceries as a category, there’s a lot of hot food being delivered, we look at essentials as a category that we are going to go after as well.”