Hello everyone, and welcome to Talabat Analyst Call for the second quarter of 2026. My name is Shadi Salman, and I head Investor Relations at Talabat. I will also be hosting today's call. All participants are currently in listen-only mode, and we will have a question and answer session at the end of the presentation. In the meantime, please feel free to use the Q&A feature in Zoom or the raise your hand feature. As in the past, we will prioritize sell-side analyst questions and those questions that are being asked live. Please be aware that we are recording this webcast to offer a replay through our website afterwards at ir.talabat.com, where a copy of this presentation can also be found. Today, I am pleased to be joined by Toon Gyssels, our CEO, and by Khaled Alfakesh, our CFO.
Before I hand over, the usual housekeeping points, I would like to draw your attention to our disclaimer, which is at the end of this slide deck. In particular, I would like to highlight the section on forward-looking statements, which cover such items as our financial guidance, future investments, dividend policy, and share buybacks. For today's agenda, Toon will kick off by presenting key highlights for the quarter, along with a business and investment update. He will then hand over to Khaled to run us through the period's financial highlights and outlook for the rest of the year. With that, let me hand it over to Toon.
Thank you, Shadi. Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us. Quickly go through the highlights. We had a strong Q2, continuing the momentum of the start of the year. Although the growth looks modest with the 12%, this is due to the Eid seasonality, which last year fell in Q2. Now in Q1, we talked about that with the previous earnings as well. Our top line is strong. We actually strengthened our leadership position in food in all the competitive markets since Q1, while the intensity remained the same. Profitability is also strong. EBITDA now at 5% versus 4.8% last quarter. This is partly because we did not have to spend as much on tactical measures to defend the food position. In Q2, we also started the buyback, and Khaled will share more on that later. Looking at the business pillars, strong performance across the line.
Maybe a few things worth calling out. We are now serving almost 100,000 vendors, and we are working with 189,000 riders. NCR was very strong. We jumped 0.3 percentage point versus last year, and of course, on a bigger base as well. The vendor-funded deals are now at 7.2% for H1, a total of more than $400 million. We also crossed 50% GMV from our subscription customers. Important to note that for Talabat, this number, more than 90% of that is from customers paying the full price on subscription. That is very strong. If there are more questions on these pillars later, happy to answer them. I want to spend a bit of time talking about the investment program. Beginning of the year, we announced $120 million across OpEx and CapEx to be invested in the everyday value proposition. Good chunk of that was going to the grocery infrastructure.
I want to show some initial results and talk about the dynamics, because as you remember, these investments, they were not just for capacity. Rather, they were for experience and quality, in particular focused on speed. It is early, right? We are six months in, and these investments, they take time to execute, and the behavior change on customers takes even longer. Nevertheless, we have some exciting insights, some exciting learnings I already want to share with you. Let us have a look. First, speed. Building out more stores, right? Obviously, you get more density, and the objective of that, shorter delivery, faster delivery. What we see is that in the markets where we did these investments, we have reduced delivery time already 18%. In others, we reduced 5% because always we do further improvements, of course. Why is speed so important?
We see that for every minute we get to deliver faster, we see an uplift of growth of up to 2 percentage points. So we see growth acceleration from that better experience. Even more, what we see in groceries now that we are hitting below 15 or even below 10 minutes, we see a change in the perception of the customers. They do not look at Talabat anymore as a way to replenish their cupboard. They look at Talabat as the cupboard. This is great. This is fantastic, really. It shows the big potential we have in groceries. The question is, of course, yeah, but at what cost? Of course, when we build out more stores, we increase the fixed cost, right? Because initially, we have more stores to deliver the same volume of orders.
Our plan was not just that it gives an acceleration of growth. It is also to offset that increased fixed cost with the reduction of the delivery cost because you get shorter distances. If we look at the fixed cost, the dark store model operates with a relatively low fixed cost. It is about 5%, and this includes rent, because actually below the line, but in the fixed cost it is included. What we see in the markets where we did these investments, we have indeed increased the fixed cost. It is up 0.8 percentage point due to that higher density. On the other hand, if we look at the delivery cost, and you have to know that for Talabat, the delivery cost is about 15% of the GMV.
We see that on the delivery cost for talabat mart, where we have done these investments versus where we did not do these investments, we have been able to reduce the delivery cost 10% more. 10% on 15% is about 1.5% benefit. So it is largely offsetting already the extra fixed cost. Just to clarify, we are looking at the year-on-year impact on delivery cost for focus areas for investment versus not, because the delivery cost is driven by a lot of elements, and we had quite some things going on in Q2 and in H1 in general.
To recap, these investments in groceries from our program, they have already significantly improved the customer experience, which has started to change the behavior and driving accelerated growth without hurting the economics. That is what we already see only 6 months into the program, so that is very exciting. Now over to Khaled to talk about financials.
Thank you, Toon. Hello, everyone. Let's look at the financial performance. When it comes to performance or when it comes to GMV, it's better to look at the first half of the year. GMV growth in H1 is at 15% on constant currency basis, reaching to $5.6 billion. Revenue grew 19%, both of them ahead of the full year guidance we have set in February. Of course, as Toon highlighted, Q2 GMV looks lower at 12%, but this is entirely related to the Eid calendar. Eid fell 10 days earlier this year, pulling demand into Q1. If we normalize this impact in Q2 growth actually at 15% on year-over-year basis. When it comes to profitability, EBITDA at 5 percentage points margin, $147 million, and net income at 3.4% margin at $100 million.
Both are also ahead of where we would expected them, and the margin impact that you've seen is entirely related to the planned investments. What we've seen slightly better than planned is that we have managed to think our food leadership position while needing to spend less than budgeted. Free cash flow also $162 million with high conversion above 100%, and it's very important to highlight that the year-over-year decline is a prior year base effect with no bearing on the underlying business fundamentals. On the Everyday App investments program, we are broadly on track during Q2. Specifically on the OpEx side, we have invested 0.7% of GMV in Q2, and that's in line with the program that we've communicated back in February. Now, moving on to the outlook and the guidance.
Based on this strong H1 performance and the continued positive structural trends we see in the business, we are revising the full year guidance across all the five key metrics. We now expect GMV to grow to a range between 13%-15% at constant currency, implying a full year GMV of approximately $11.4 billion-$11.6 billion. Revenue is growing faster and now guided to 16%-18% growth at constant currency as well. When it comes to profitability, adjusted EBITDA is raised up to a range of $535 million-$565 million, net income to a range of $325 million-$355 million, and lastly, free cash flow guidance also moves up to a range between $400 million-$430 million. The upgrade reflects many dynamics moving at the same time. On the first hand is on the demand.
We see customer acquisition and order volume have both come up ahead of the plans. Our multi-vertical model continues to prove resilient as we have seen during Ramadan and the regional conflict in March where customers continue shifting to use our grocery vertical. This is a structural behavior, and this is what gave us confidence to raise the top line. We have also seen a good start during the month of July with the World Cup being an additional tailwind, specifically for the food vertical. On the margin side, we managed to achieve plans across the board, including our main competitive markets. We have further strengthened our food leadership position while needing to spend less on marketing and pricing than budgeted.
On the everyday investments, we have spent 0.6% of GMV during the first half of the year, and we are now on track to fully deploy the full 0.7% of the upgraded GMV guidance, which give us also more firepower till end of the year. Lastly, on the regulatory environment, we have seen some developments that have emerged across our key markets, and our guidance reflect each of them. Specifically in Kuwait, there is a new ministerial regulation that takes effect 1st of September. We have reflected the anticipated negative financial impact in our upgraded guidance, and we are operationally ready to implement these new regulations on the effective date. At the same time, we continue engaging constructively with the regulator throughout this process. I want to close also with capital returns.
Our dividend policy remain unchanged, 90% dividend payout ratio, and our H1 interim dividends are due to be declared in September and paid in October. At the same time, we have also purchased 108 million shares of Talabat, approximately $35 million deployed as part of our approved buyback program that took place in May, and we are planning to continue starting next year. With that, moving to Shadi.
Great. Thank you, Toon and Khaled. If you wish to ask a question, please use the Q&A feature in Zoom to submit it in writing, and mention your name and firm, please. If you prefer to ask your question orally, then please use the raise your hand feature, and we will give you the floor to speak. We do have some raised hands. Let's start with Andrew Ross at Barclays. Over to you.
Great. Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I have two, if that is okay. First one is just to come back on your opening remarks around gaining category share in Q2, and hoping you can give us a bit more color in terms of what is happening with category share in your largest markets, so I guess U.A.E., Kuwait, Qatar, and a bit more color around competition would be great. Would also be helpful if you could help us with year-on-year growth in those three markets, given that the GCC division slowed in Q2, obviously understanding that some of that is the phasing of Eid.
Second question then is your view on the regulatory environment for consolidation in the U.A.E., in the context both of the new antitrust guidelines that have come in eventually, and the potential change in control of Delivery Hero from Uber and Uber's position in Careem Technologies, and your kind of thought process around that. Thank you.
Yeah, I will take the first one. Our competitive positioning in food in Kuwait, U.A.E., Qatar, has all increased versus Q1, and up to even more than 3 percentage points, where we increased the most. It is strong. When you look at the GCC growth, it is fully that Eid effect, which has pulled forward and why that growth might look a little bit less. But performance is very strong, and it is on the back of that because these are our core markets that we are able to revise that guidance upwards.
Okay, maybe I will take the second one. Hi, Andrew. Andrew, as you know that the transaction or the Uber anticipated acquisition should potentially take place if all the regulatory approval actually managed to be obtained by H2 next year. During this period, we remain in full competitive mode across the board, including U.A.E., including all the platform, even the one that is owned by Uber. I think also as part of the public disclosure Uber came up with and Delivery Hero, there is potentially a merger control filing in U.A.E., but that is a matter subject to regulator to decide on.
Okay, thank you, Andrew. Next question from Cesar at Bank of America. Go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions, and congrats on the numbers. Just had a question. I wanted to go back, I have three actually, but I wanted to start with the GCC GMV growth in Q2. I know you said it is all Eid related, but is it 100% all Eid related? There is almost 700 basis points of sequential slowdown. What would be the impact of competition on that number? Second question relates to your investments. I just wanted to check if there were. Obviously, they seem to be very successful, and thanks for all the detailed slides highlighting the use cases and the positive impact on unit economics, et cetera.
I just wanted to check if they are so successful, is there a chance that in the future, they could be repeated or even upsized? That would be the second question. I think the third question, I just wanted to circle back on the regulation. Any update from any of the local regulators on enforcing some of these anti, I would say, call them abusive competition behavior? Thank you.
I will tackle the first two. Looking at the growth Q1 versus Q2, there is a 7 percentage point slowdown, and the impact of Eid, as we have discussed, is around 3% of that. So really the food growth, if you compare it, H1 is 9%, and that is actually the same as you were to correct Q2 for Eid. We really see strong momentum continued in food. Look, I just disclosed how much we are gaining category position. I think that is quite clear that we got good performance and the drop is really seasonality. On the investment program, the results look very promising. We are six months in, so today we are still focused on executing all the rest of it, which is quite a number of stores.
If these results get confirmed, and if we really start to see we can offset the fixed cost rather quickly with the logistics reduction, then continuation will be a no-brainer, and it will also not be a significant investment required. Now we have to build on that initial traction to see we can scale it up and deliver these same results everywhere.
Hi, Cesar. Maybe just to add on the investments part, because I think also it is worth mentioning that we remain disciplined on the investments program that we have announced. As I mentioned earlier, we are fully on plan to deploy the 0.7% on the newly upgraded GMV, and that implies also some more investments in that in terms of dollars value. I think for the regulatory environment, what matters the most for us is the guidance.
I think on the guidance, we have taken these regulatory environments on the conservative side, so we do not assume any upside on the guidance due to the regulatory enforcements, specifically when it comes to predatory pricing. Of course, in Qatar, there is already a code of conduct out there. In U.A.E., we would expect the federal regulation and hopefully enforcements as well. But we do not bake this in our guidance. We have, I think, in the Q&A section also, a more detailed information around the regulatory environments in general.
Thank you so much. Just to check, is there any update on positive regulatory development that could happen in the next couple of quarters? I think you seem to indicate in prior calls that you were expecting something to potentially happen, and there's not been any updates. Just wanted to check if you do still expect something to come up, especially in the U.A.E.
Yeah. We continue to be hopeful on the U.A.E. that these enforcement takes place as well.
Thank you so much.
I think maybe, yeah, thanks, Cesar. I'll just maybe add, I think we still expect a kind of a federal sector specific guidelines in the U.A.E. to be issued, although the timing is not very clear yet for us. But I think clearly the Dubai sector guidelines would be a template of sorts for the federal guidelines. But we'll keep you updated as soon as those come out.
Thank you.
Thank you, Cesar. Next question from Joseph Barnet-Lamb at UBS. Go ahead.
Excellent. Thank you very much for taking my questions. A couple from me. First, I just wanted to ask on the building blocks of your GMV guidance specifically. We have GMV comps that get about 8 percentage points easier in H2, unchanged reinvestment guidance for the full year, which implies around about a 50% uplift in food reinvestment, H2 versus H1. Yet you are forecasting GMV guidance, which at the midpoint is slowing by about 1 percentage point. Can you give a little bit more color on why? I guess one of the explanations is probably the regulation as you refer to in the helpful Q&A in the back of your deck and the impact of Kuwait.
Can you quantify in your guidance what impact you think the evolution of Kuwait regulation will have on an H2 GMV growth? Then my second/third question, depending on if that was one or two. You say you have had a good start to July. Can you quantify GMV growth in July? That would be very helpful just to give us a steer on how Q3 has started. Thank you.
Yeah, maybe let me take the first one. On the GMV, yes, you are absolutely right. We are baking in, of course, the potential implication of Kuwait into the guidance when it comes to both growth and profitability. But I think it's soon to quantify. We have multiple scenarios. The regulations have been out maybe three weeks now. But we are confident with the revised guidance that we just upgraded today.
At the same time, also, we want to see what would be hopefully the implication or the positive momentum with back to school in September, in specific when people comes. So this is also a factor that we keep watching, and we hopefully have a positive results on that. On July, I can tell you maybe it's. I don't want to share the exact number, but I can tell you, of course, it's better than H1, what we've seen in July. What we believe is mainly driven by the strong momentum as well as the World Cup implication. Not sure, Toon, if you want to add.
Yeah. What we've seen in July is that people seem to have traveled later this year. So we had very strong momentum beginning of the month. That's why what Khaled mentioned, September, we want to see how back to school happens. Because now it's summertime, but if in September we see the same momentum of July, that would also be very positive.
Thank you for the color. Maybe just as a follow-up. Is it fair to assume, though, that you're being pretty conservative on that back to school season? You're being pretty conservative on the impact of Kuwait. Just because, as I say, from an underlying perspective, eight percentage point easier comp, 50% more reinvestment, but slower growth. If it's not those two factors, then the underlying market must be slowing a lot, or you're expecting competition to pick up a lot. Are your underlying assumptions quite conservative in there?
Look, with the revised guidance, we want to be very confident we can hit that, and that's how we've revised it up relatively little versus a very optimistic scenario.
Yeah, I always like to use the word responsible. I think it's very important for us to come up with a guidance that we feel very comfortable in achieving it. That's why we are responsible with the revision, I would say.
Perfect. Thank you. Very helpful, gentlemen.
Great. Thanks, Joe. Next question from Ankur Agarwal at HSBC. Over to you, Ankur.
Thank you for taking my question, and thank you for the presentation. So two questions from my end. My first question is, would you be able to quantify the impact of the World Cup promotion in terms of the uptake of the Talabat Pro and the benefits that accrued in the second quarter? I think the impact on margins as well. That is my first question. My second question is, if you can talk a bit about the strength in the AdTech revenue and how should we think about the evolution of that given your investments and the plans ahead? Those two.
Talking about World Cup, I think the impact, what we have seen in Q2, especially the TPro impact, will have been limited there because there was upside, but there were also investments to that campaign, of course. I think this is something rather we expect to see some benefits from later in the year, when these customers remain TPro customers. I do not know if you want to add something to that, Khaled?
Sounds good.
Okay.
Can you remind us of the second question, Ankur? Sorry.
That is on the contribution of AdTech revenue.
AdTech, sorry.
Yeah.
On AdTech, we are doing a lot of things. I think first of all, what is important to understand is that food business and the grocery business is quite different in terms of the type of AdTech we do, because on groceries, we can also sell not just to the vendors that are listing, but to the CPGs. The bulk of the business is still food today, and when we increase year-on-year, it is driven by better performance in food. We have a couple of new products that we had introduced, and these are products that allow vendors to target their promotions or to target their ads, which is very interesting for them, because then they can focus on lapsed customers, on people that are not customers yet, so it can be focused.
These are new products that we have introduced in Q2 that has given some uplift on food. For the long run, the big upside in AdTech exists more on the grocery side, where we are building the right products for CPGs. This requires a lot of tech investment and data investment, because they also want to do full loop measurement to see the impact on their campaigns. This is explaining a little bit the performance of Q2 and giving a perspective on where do we see the further growth potential in the AdTech.
All right. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Ankur. Next question from Shahrukh Nawaz at First Abu Dhabi Bank. Over to you, Shahrukh.
Hi, am I audible?
Yes. We can hear you.
Not anymore.
Well, yeah.
Am I audible?
Yeah, you are now. Yes.
Okay, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions. First is, we can see that there is a rise in the G&A expenses in this quarter. Can you highlight the reasons for it? Can you just add the color, like how can we look at this in the third quarter and the fourth quarter? Also, we can see that for the foreign exchange gain, how should we look at this element for the remainder of 2026? The second question is, you revised your guidance in terms of revenue growth and net income.
I believe it is with the existing market or you are planning to enter some new market, and are there any planned acquisitions in pipeline? The third question is about you mentioned in the GMV growth, there was increased incentives to support customer acquisition and retention. Can you just add more color to it?
Yeah. Let me try to address your three questions. I think on number one, in fact, if you would see, this is just a regular trend quarter-over-quarter and month-over-month on the SG&A, and we continue enjoying operating leverage. In fact, if you look at Q2, the EBITDA margins came up even higher than the full year guidance. We are at 5% EBITDA margin to GMV, while the top end of the previous guidance was at 4.8%. The second one is the guidance is fully organic.
We are not baking in the guidance or the upgrade on both on the revenue and GMV side or on the profitability, anything related to geographical expansion outside of the eight markets we are operating in or any M&A. This is just purely organic growth due to the stronger demand that we have seen. I think lastly on FX, our exposure to FX is quite limited because it is primarily from the Egyptian market, and it is already baked in in our guidance.
What about the increased incentives which you have done to support the customer acquisition and retention?
Yeah. So originally, we had planned the beginning of the year to have 0.5% extra incentives, extra marketing efforts to retain our leadership position. But what we've seen now is we don't need to spend all of that. So we're actually spending less than what we had planned in the beginning of the year.
Okay. But don't you think going ahead it will just add in pressure on the margins, or it's fine?
The way we spend, it's smart. It's not blanket discounts. We cannot do that. So where are we spending? We're spending on customers that we see are at risk of reducing frequency or have reduced frequency, and we're reactivating them. So these are targeted incentives that have a life cycle effect on these customers so that they come back and keep their frequency high. So it's more of a one-off shot to make sure they remain loyal, high-frequency customers. So no, we don't expect there to be long-term margin erosion from that.
Just also to highlight, this is also embedded already in our upgraded guidance with the revision on EBITDA and profitability margins as well. So it already has been taken into consideration, the guidance.
Okay. Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Shahrukh. Next question from Maxim Nekrasov at Citi. Go ahead, Maxim.
Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation. Just wanted to ask about the margin expectations, maybe slightly on the longer-term horizon. Assuming things go as they do now, would you think that this year would be the year of peak investments and the peak pressure on your EBITDA margin? And maybe based on the experience in other markets, like we have seen in Saudi Arabia, would you expect your profitability to improve basically next year or over the medium term as the competition potentially eases? So, just wanted to get your thoughts on whether this year is going to see the peak margin pressure.
Maybe I can just quickly tackle this, and Toon, feel free to chip in. If you look at the revised guidance, we are revising EBITDA at a margin of 5%, 5 percentage points of GMV. If you look at the investments program, it is basically 0.7% of GMV is related to this investments program. This, theoretically speaking, no need to continue unless we have a strong result, as just mentioned by Toon on the returns. We have seen actually these returns not only accelerated growth but also potentially offset the margin pressure that is related to increased fixed cost. I think it is early to give probably an outlook for next year, but I think what I can summarize is that what we see is potential expansion on the margins from this moment onward rather than further contraction. Toon, anything you want to
Yes, and the timing, I think as you point out, Khaled, too soon to comment on next year. There are also things that are not fully in our control, and so we will await how the rest of the year unfolds before we guide for 2027. But medium term, these investments, they are not recurring, so there should be margin expansion there.
Yeah. Understood. Thank you so much. Maybe just to follow up on the competitive dynamic, maybe just briefly if you can talk us through in what markets you see relatively higher competition, and what is the situation in the U.A.E., for example, and would you expect the competition to increase in that market?
What we have seen in Q2 is pretty much a continuation of Q1, which is quite intense competition. If it will increase or not, look, that will not be under my control. But what I can say is that our formula, focusing on multi-verticality, focusing on subscription, and giving an amazing experience works, right? In Q2, it is clear we had to spend less while we actually strengthened our leadership position. We are talking really all the key markets, right? U.A.E., Kuwait, Qatar. I hope that answers your question.
Yes. Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Maxim. We'll move on to some of the written questions. One from Ayub Ansari at Wisayah. I'll just read it out. Can you discuss the grocery margin trajectory in Q2, both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter? Given the supply chain disruption and margin pressure we're seeing across regional modern retail, what has Talabat experienced, and how are you adapting sourcing, pricing, and inventory strategy post-conflict?
Look, I'll take the operational part. Q2 continued to be challenging. Nevertheless, we increased availability. We actually increased the absolute number of items in store since the beginning of the year. We managed to find ways to work around. Government has supported also a lot with keeping a lot of the prices stable. On some items, prices have increased.
The hit we took is not so much on the direct margin, a little bit on logistics costs that have increased. For us, this was not a very significant impact on the margins. We also did not have to increase a lot of prices to absorb that delivery cost. From our business perspective, I think the best way to say is that the outcome is consistent. I wouldn't say the same, but similar, but the effort we had to do to get there was significantly more.
Any comment, Khaled, on margins for grocery?
I think on margins, if you're referring to an impact on margins when it comes to the increase in pricing, I think there's many dynamics, right? The price increase, and Toon I think covered that. There's also the level of the promotions and intensity of promotions. What matters the most for us is the more we grow the grocery business, the better potentially the margins we get because we enjoy operating leverage. We just shared that the fixed cost of the business is relatively small compared to, for example, the variable cost, which is delivery cost, and we've seen some improvement on them. Secondly, AdTech margins keeps improving. We are not concerned. In fact, we are very optimistic on the margins on the grocery business as well.
Great. Thank you, Toon and Khaled. Another follow-on question from Ayub, which is a bit more future-looking. How are you thinking or how are we thinking about agentic commerce? Do we see AI agents becoming a meaningful new discovery and transaction channel for Talabat?
On agentic or let's talk about AI, I think for us it's very important, right? It's not just on the discovery side, I think there are several other elements. First of all, the AI in how we build, in how we operate is a significant unlock. Since the beginning of the year, our engineering productivity, let's say, is increased by 2.5x . So we ship 2.5x as much functionality as we did before. So that's a fantastic unlock to already built better experiences. Second is talking about the customer. As I mentioned, it's not just the agentic search, it's agentic or AI-powered personalization in general. But what we are building now is a customer model with over 1,000 variables. Right?
So to truly understand not just the past history of that customer, but really understand who the customer is and what's the occasion that the customer has for placing that order. So based on so much more data that can be processed in a smart way, these recommendations and that curation is becoming so much smarter than before. I think the agentic search is also important. This is also an element where, especially for groceries, it can be very helpful in the basket-building experience. But as I mentioned, it's one of the multiple elements of AI, which is a big positive unlock for us as a company.
Great. Thank you, Toon. A question orally from Evgenii at Jefferies. Over to you, Evgenii.
Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. First, can you please decompose your food category growth into volume and average check growth? It seems that some of QSR players like Americana managed to successfully pass on higher cost of inventories into the prices. Just trying to understand how your average check evolved and more on pricing in terms of what is directly controlled by you. Do you see scope to raise cost of key markets, key use or Pro subscription anytime soon? My second question, quick one, can you please give an update on the shared group cost discussion? Has there been any slowdown related to the deal between Uber and Delivery Hero? Thank you.
On the basket side, when decomposing growth, we have a very significant order growth, and it is true that basket size has also increased year on year, but it is not that there is a very significant increase in basket size that is kind of driving the growth. We have very strong order growth, customer growth, MAU growth, and on top of that, additional basket size increase. When it comes to the pricing of Talabat Pro, there is a potential. Today, the pricing is very low, which is intentional. It is to make sure that we have great return for the customers. Our thinking is to further improve the value we can offer to the customers.
I think today we have got free delivery, we have got a number of exclusive discounts. We also have these big partnerships like TOD with the World Cup. If we can further improve the total value that subscription customers get, this is maybe at a point where we can increase the price. Today, we want to have it as a very low barrier of entry where your ROI is after a few orders, it makes sense to stay with that.
Yeah. I think on the group cost, it is actually the process is really very technical and takes time. We are already seeing some good progress. There is a little bit of slowdown during the summer just due to the vacations of the team, to be honest, rather than anything else. I do not see any slowdown in relation to the Uber Delivery Hero transaction. I think this is an independent process. We want to make sure that we tackle it very well from all angles, from technical and tax angle, because this is something we do not revise every year. Every couple of years you do this revision. It is just a process that takes its time.
Great. Thank you, Evgenii. Unless you have any further questions. Okay, thank you. Another question, in writing, which I will read out. This is from Yacine Trad at Integra . He says there was a slide in the Uber presentation suggesting the merger of Careem with Talabat, where they talked about the benefits of mixing transportation with food delivery. Are you modifying your expansion strategy in any way to prepare for this scenario? Perhaps in dark store openings overlap.
The answer there is no. We operate as we do today. We have been competing with Careem and many others for many years, and today we just continue as we are doing. I think what Uber is highlighting there is also what we believe in, right? The multi-verticality. We see people that order food. For the people that order food and groceries, the latter spend almost five times as much on our platform. I think they have a similar observation on multi-verticality on their platforms between food and mobility.
Great. Thank you, Toon. Question from Bharath at Cantor Fitzgerald. Over to you, Bharath. Please ask your question.
Hi. Thank you. Just a quick question from me. Probably you answered this in some form or shape earlier, but have you or the board of Talabat engaged with Uber on a strategic front with regards to intent that Uber has post-close, like maybe on commercial integration, delisting optionality, or status quo in the future? Thank you.
Maybe I can take this. If you look at Talabat, we are a listed entity in the Dubai Financial Market, and we have our own governance that is driven by that. All the conversation our board have is with the shareholders, and of course, with Delivery Hero being the major shareholder. We do not have any conversation directly with Uber.
What Uber has shared publicly is that closing expected H2 2027, they would use 2028 for planning and the first migrations, integrations would happen 2029 onwards.
Understood. Thank you. Very helpful.
Thank you, Bharath. I just want to check because I know, Andrew, you have still got your hand raised. Do you need to ask a question? Maybe not. Okay. Another question. Okay, another question in writing. Could you give us a sense on how the growth in food and the grocery and retail verticals progressed during the quarter separately?
Yes. I think these numbers are shared.
No, we do not disclose the growth by vertical on quarterly basis. You can expect similar growth previous to the trend. We do not see any major deviation from previous growth trends that we have seen.
Okay. I think we have another question in writing from Honey Khandelwal in the Al Habtoor Group about the main levers behind the EBITDA margin and how sustainable they are. How should we think about the cost of delivery per order as you scale both the fixed versus the variable dynamics? I think we have covered the EBITDA aspects. We can recap those, but the CFO—
Yeah. I think I need to talk about the cost of delivery. Today, we kind of have scale. We have quite significant scale. I think the further gains we have from just scale are limited. Gains will always be there from smarter operations and from increased density on the vendor side. The vendor side on food is even more restaurants. On the grocery side is, for example, this dark stores, because if you can further increase the density, you will always have shorter distances. It is with these shorter distances that we are able to further reduce the cost of a delivery.
Great. Thanks, Toon. Another question in writing, which I will read from Gaurav Schellar at ABI Analytics. It is in three parts. First part, revenue conversion increased to 39% of GMV in second quarter. Should we expect further improvement in revenue conversion going forward? What is the company's target for 2026 and beyond? Maybe we will go one by one.
Look, yeah, maybe just to explain what is underneath that. It is the growth of TM art. The TMart business, we recognize the full GMV as revenue. The more that grows as a share of the total, the more our conversion will grow. We expect that to continue to do so because the grocery business is growing significantly faster than the food business.
Perfect. The second part of their question is around the investment program. Around $58 million was deployed in the first half under the program. How should we think about the timing of the remaining investment through the third quarter and fourth quarter and its impact on 2026 margins?
We have announced an investments programs of $120 million at the beginning of the year, so we almost spent half of it between CapEx and OpEx in the first half of the year. We would expect then as part of the guidance, we fully deploy the remaining in the second half of the year at probably at the same base.
Right. Thank you, Khaled. The third and final part of the question. The company did reclassify some certain expenses in marketing, IT, and G&A to cost of sales in Q1 this year versus in the previous reporting. Could we provide maybe a short explanation on some of that?
Yeah. We shared a detailed explanation, I think, in the previous call around this, but this is just simply to get the management report closer to the IFRS. All these reclassification has no impact on EBITDA. So EBITDA margins and EBITDA values on both the previous classification and the new one remains unchanged. It's basically all the lines between revenue and expenses just to get closer to IFRS.
Perfect. Thank you, Khaled. And thank you, Toon. I think we don't have any further questions, so we can wrap up the call, and hand it over to you just for some final closing remarks.
Okay. Thanks, Shadi. So look, a quick wrap up. Q2 was strong again. We'll be continuing that momentum we started from the beginning of the year across all dimensions, which is the reason why we're revising the guidance upwards. I think it's also very exciting that already today we were able to share with you some of these positive results from our investment program, while it's only been six months. None of that would have been possible without the hard work of our Talabatis. So I want to thank them all for this amazing quarter, and I want to thank you for attending our call. See you next time.