GrubHub Increases Its Outlook for 2015 as Profit Surges

GrubHub Inc announced on Tuesday that it raised its guidance for the 2015, as the food ordering and delivery online company reported that earnings had soared during the second quarter.

For the full year, GrubHub is projecting its earnings prior to taxes, interest, amortization and depreciation will be between $104 million and $112 million, with revenue reaching between $358 million and $364 million.

Those figures are up from its estimate previously of between $101 million and $109 million with revenue of between $346 million and $361 million.

For its third quarter, GrubHub projected its revenue to be between $85 million and $87 million, while analysts are expecting $86 million.

The company, which in April of 2014 went public, has generated an increasing amount of profits by charging restaurants a commission on their orders booked through the service.

The fast growth of the company based in Chicago was helped by a merger with Seamless in August of 2013.

GrubHub has faced increased competition amidst a growing amount of options for people dining at home, which range for Blue Apron Inc the meal kit service to Caviar the high end food ordering company, which Square the payment company based in San Francisco purchased last year.

GrubHub connects office and home diners with over 35,000 restaurants. The average daily orders for the company in the most recent quarter were up 26% to more than 220,000 while its gross sales for food were up 34% to more than $568 million.

The number of active diners – accounts that placed a minimum of one order over the last 12 months – increased by 42% to 5.92 million for last year during the same quarter of 4.18 million.

GrubHub reported a profit during the fourth quarter of $9.4 million equal to 11 cents per share, which was up from the same time last year of $2.7 million equal to 3 cents per share.

Revenue was up 47% to over $88 million, which came in above expectations of Wall Street of $85.5 million.