Delivery Hero has become the newest company to join the prestigious blue-chip DAX Index of Germany after scandal-tainted Wirecard AG got the boot, Deutsche Boerse announced late Wednesday.
The move was made after the German stock exchange owner laid down a new set of policies last week that made it mandatory for financially limping companies to be delisted from the exchange.
The Berlin-headquartered food delivery group will replace Wirecard in the 30-member benchmark ahead of the next quarterly evaluation set for September 3.
Delivery Hero went public roughly three years ago. Since January this year, the company's stock has rallied by nearly half, as pandemic-triggered lockdowns lifted demand in the food delivery business.
Delivery Hero is currently valued at nearly $24 billion (20 billion euros), around thrice its market value when the company first listed on Frankfurt Stock Exchange in June 2017.
DH hiked its future earnings estimate for 2020 late last month after it reported growth in sales in the second quarter, despite an initial decline in deliveries in the March-May period because of the ongoing health crisis.
The company is a somewhat unexpected newcomer to the German stock exchange, despite being listed on over 40 exchanges worldwide. Its entry into the blue-chip index is almost unheard of, even though Delivery was established in Germany's capital city in 2011.
Wirecard's removal from the German exchange comes almost two years after the credit card operator made its debut in the index and faced a series of bad publicity. In June this year, Wirecard revealed that over $2 billion in missing funds from its accounts were nonexistent.
In an email, Delivery Hero Chief Executive Officer Niklas Oestberg stated that being part of Germany's elite exchange is "an acknowledgment" that the country's investment market has faith in its principles. Delivery will debut on the DAX Index on August 24.
