Thirsty ? Uber Technologies, Inc. UBER has entered into a deal to acquire alcohol delivery startup Drizly Inc. for $1.1 billion. Following this news, shares of Uber closed yesterday’s trading session 7% higher.
Drizly operates across more than 1,400 cities in the United States. Upon completion of the acquisition in the first half of 2021, Drizly’s marketplace will be integrated with the Uber Eats app. A separate Drizly app will also be available. The purchase predominantly consists of Uber shares, with less than 10% in cash.
With coronavirus confining people to their homes, Uber’s core ride-hailing business has taken a back seat. Evidently, gross bookings and revenues from the company’s Mobility (formerly Rides) segment dropped 53% each in the third quarter of 2020 from the year-ago period. Amid this downturn, Uber’s delivery business helped the company stay afloat. Delivery revenues are seeing a surge with online order volumes from homebound customers rising. In the third quarter, majority (46.4%) of the company’s revenues came from Delivery. Revenues from this segment skyrocketed more than 100% year over year to $1,451 million. In order to take advantage of this boom, Uber has been trying to expand its delivery operations. To this end, it acquired food delivery company Postmates in December 2020 for $2.65 billion.