Just Eat (#JE) buys out peers in Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico for £94.7m cash
- 2016-02-05 00:15:09
Pursuant to yesterday's warning by the US listed online restaurant order and delivery service, GrubHub (GRUB US, market cap $2.2 billion), I sold short a few shares in Just Eat (JE) - market cap £2.9 billion, the UK listed online restaurant order and delivery service.
It can be said that shares of Just Eat (JE) have been on the ropes at various times since they came to market just over a year ago.
A bunting of red warning flags is now billowing gently over the share price of Just Eat (JE.). I first identified this as a candidate to watch for an opportunity to short at the start of last December. Unfortunately I then chose shorting Just Eat as one of my tips for 2015. That decision is going to come back and bite me, but now that Just Eat is trading at 435p (last seen), and after the flurry of recent insider selling, it is time to revisit what could be a cracking trade.
I first covered Just Eat (JE.) at the start of December. Three of the company’s founding investors had just sold £139million worth of their holdings, through a discounted placement. This looked like a not so tacit admission that they saw limited further upside for the stock and were very keen to reduce their exposure.
Earlier this year, Doc Holiday made a sublime call to short Ocado (OCDO). His timing was perfect. No sooner had Doc sounded the death knell for this stock, the share price took a cliff dive. The logic of Doc’s call was deadly simple – “sell the founder”.
Shares in JUST EAT plc (JE.), which describes itself as “the world's largest online & mobile marketplace for takeaway… (which) connects 6.9 million active users to over 40,000 takeaway restaurants in 13 countries” have moved more than 9% higher, to a current 240p, on the back of results for the first half of 2014. The outlook is that “July's results continue to show significant year on year growth and we are confident that this momentum will be maintained”. With the shares having reached more than 290p following the April IPO, I now wonder how greedy the current share price is?







