Uber Launches Debut Euro Bond to Refinance Delivery Hero Takeover

Uber Technologies began marketing its first-ever bond sale denominated in euros on Tuesday, a five-part debt offering that will help pay down the bridge loan the ride-hailing and delivery company took out to finance its roughly $14.8 billion takeover of Berlin-based Delivery Hero. The deal is the latest sign that American corporations are turning to European credit markets in record volume this year to fund dollar-heavy acquisitions and diversify their borrowing away from home.

Uber hired a syndicate of banks, including Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, Bank of America Securities, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, to hold investor calls on September 7 and 8 ahead of the sale. The company opened books on the notes on September 9, offering tranches with maturities spanning roughly three to twelve years and pricing guided off mid-swap spreads, a standard benchmark for investment-grade euro debt.

The numbers

The financing need is large and dates to Uber's agreement in July to acquire Delivery Hero at €41.50 a share, a transaction that values the German food-delivery group at roughly €14.2 billion and that Uber's board and investor materials have pegged at an equity value near $14.8 billion, or about $13.7 billion net of the roughly 25 percent stake Uber already held. To fund the cash consideration, refinance Delivery Hero's existing debt and cover transaction costs, Uber lined up a €14.2 billion senior unsecured bridge facility maturing 364 days after closing. In August, Uber began converting part of that bridge into longer-term debt, signing a two-tranche term loan agreement that cut the bridge commitment by €4 billion, per a separate filing disclosed to the SEC that also details an accompanying $7.7 billion revolving credit line maturing in 2031. The euro bond launched this week is the next and largest step in replacing that remaining bridge financing with permanent, fixed-rate debt, following a round of investor meetings that put the initial size discussion in the billions of euros before final terms and allocations are set.

How Uber got here

Uber's pursuit of Delivery Hero has moved in stages since the two companies confirmed talks in the spring. Uber announced the acquisition offer in July, structuring it as a voluntary public takeover under German law in which Uber will absorb roughly 50 of Delivery Hero's markets, representing about $42 billion in gross bookings, while SSW Partners separately buys 14 markets that overlap with Uber's own delivery business for close to $1.6 billion. Germany's financial regulator, BaFin, cleared the offer document in late August, and Uber published the formal offer on August 27, opening an acceptance window that runs to November 5. Delivery Hero's management and supervisory boards backed the offer as fair, and Prosus, one of the delivery group's largest shareholders, has irrevocably committed its roughly 17 percent stake, pushing Uber's effective economic interest toward 53 percent even before ordinary shareholders respond. Settlement of the deal is not expected until the second half of 2027, pending antitrust and other regulatory clearances across the dozens of markets involved.

The euro bond itself reflects a broader shift in Uber's balance sheet. The company reached investment-grade credit ratings in 2025, opening access to a deeper and typically cheaper pool of institutional buyers than it could reach as high-yield borrower. Until now, Uber had raised nearly all of its debt in dollars; a euro-denominated deal lets it match liabilities more closely to the euro-denominated revenue it collects across its European mobility and delivery operations, and to the euro-denominated purchase price it owes for Delivery Hero, creating what bankers describe as a natural currency hedge for the acquisition.

Who is affected

The immediate audience is fixed-income investors: European insurers, pension funds and asset managers who buy investment-grade corporate paper are the natural buyers of a multi-tranche euro deal from a large-cap US issuer. Uber's own shareholders have a stake in the outcome too, since the spread the company pays on the new bonds — set against mid-swaps once order books close — determines how much of the expected earnings accretion from the Delivery Hero deal gets eaten up by financing costs; Uber has told investors it expects the transaction to be accretive to non-GAAP earnings per share once closed, rising to high-single-digit accretion by the third year. Delivery Hero shareholders deciding whether to tender into the €41.50-a-share offer are watching the financing markets as a signal of whether Uber can complete the deal on schedule and at investment-grade terms rather than scrambling for costlier bridge funding. And rival food-delivery and mobility operators — DoorDash, Just Eat Takeaway and others navigating their own recent wave of consolidation, which has also produced DoorDash's purchase of Deliveroo — are watching a deal that would roughly double the number of markets in which Uber offers both mobility and delivery, from 34 to 58.

"By bringing our platforms together, we will extend affordable, reliable delivery to many millions more people," Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said when the acquisition was announced.

What happens next

Pricing on the euro notes is expected to firm up as order books build this week, with final tranche sizes, coupons and maturities to be set once investor demand is tallied — a process typically completed within a day or two of a launch of this kind. Proceeds are earmarked to retire more of the bridge facility, reducing the step-up interest costs that would otherwise accrue on that shorter-dated debt beginning 90 days after the Delivery Hero deal closes. On the acquisition itself, the acceptance period for Delivery Hero shareholders runs until November 5, after which Uber will tally tendered shares against its 50-percent-plus-one threshold; even with a successful tender, the two companies do not expect to close and settle the deal until the second half of 2027, leaving antitrust reviews in the European Union and other jurisdictions as the main remaining hurdle. Uber's move also fits a wider pattern this year of large US companies — Amazon among them — tapping euro credit markets at scale, a trend that bankers say is being driven by tight dollar spreads, ample European liquidity and, in Uber's case, a straightforward hedge against a euro-denominated deal.