Naver Shares Jump 5% on Speculation It Will Bid for Baemin Operator
TL;DR - Naver, Korea's biggest internet platform, closed up more than 5% on May 14 after reports it was approached to bid for Woowa Brothers, the operator of leading food-delivery app Baemin. - Berlin-listed Delivery Hero is seeking roughly ₩8 trillion ($5.37 billion) for Woowa Brothers, with JPMorgan running the process, according to KED Global and The Korea Times. - Watch whether Naver pursues the deal alone, joins a reported Uber-led consortium, or steps back as Alibaba and DoorDash circle the same asset.
Lead
Shares of Naver (035420.KS), the operator of Korea's dominant search portal and a sprawling commerce, fintech and AI stack, jumped more than 5% on Thursday, May 14, after Korean business media reported that Delivery Hero SE had approached the company about acquiring Woowa Brothers, the operator of Baedal Minjok ("Baemin"), Korea's largest food-delivery app. Yonhap News Agency reported Naver shares jumped on speculation it could bid for Baemin. The move pushed Naver to one of the strongest single-day gains among large-cap Korean tech names this year.
What Happened
Berlin-based Delivery Hero SE, the global food-delivery group that owns Woowa Brothers, is running a sale process for the Korean operator and has appointed JPMorgan Chase & Co. as adviser, The Korea Times reported on May 14, citing unnamed sources. The German group is asking around ₩8 trillion (about $5.37 billion) for the business, KED Global reported the same day, in what would be one of the largest Korean internet M&A processes in years. Delivery Hero originally bought roughly 87% of Woowa Brothers for about $4 billion in 2019, The Korea Times noted.
Alongside Naver, reported potential bidders include Uber, Alibaba Group and DoorDash, according to The Korea Herald and KED Global. The Korea Herald reported that Uber is considering a consortium with Naver, structured on a 70-30 split, and that Hanwha Group (one of Korea's largest conglomerates) had earlier reviewed the asset but stepped back, viewing the price as too high. A Delivery Hero spokesperson told Yonhap News Agency: "We are conducting a comprehensive strategic review of our portfolio, asset allocation and overall cost structure," per The Korea Times.
Neither Naver nor Woowa Brothers has confirmed any bid, based on the reporting available at publication.
Why It Matters
If it materializes, a Naver bid for Baemin would mark the first concrete signal that Korea's largest internet platform is willing to make a step-change acquisition in offline-linked commerce rather than continuing its incremental, in-house build of services like Naver Pay, Naver Smart Store and Naver Plus Store. The reported price tag — roughly ₩8 trillion ($5.37 billion) per KED Global — would dwarf any single deal Naver has previously announced, and would re-anchor investor expectations around its capital allocation framework. It also challenges the consensus that Korean food delivery had become a structurally unattractive category for strategic acquirers after Coupang Eats began eating into Baemin's lead, a competitive shift highlighted by The Korea Herald in its May 14 report.
Business Impact
For Naver, Baemin would slot directly into its existing logistics, payments and merchant ecosystem, where it already serves hundreds of thousands of small merchants through Smart Store. Baemin's financials, however, have softened recently: Woowa Brothers reported 2025 revenue of ₩5.28 trillion ($3.3 billion), up 22% year-over-year, but operating profit slipped to ₩592.9 billion, down 7% from ₩640.8 billion in 2024, according to The Korea Herald. Operating profit was ₩699.8 billion in 2023.
For Delivery Hero, the disposal would advance a broader restructuring. Delivery Hero ended FY2024 with net debt of approximately €1.9 billion after a 55% year-over-year reduction, according to its own FY2024 trading update, and in March 2026 sold its Taiwan foodpanda business to Singapore-based Grab Holdings, The Korea Times noted. Selling Baemin — one of Delivery Hero's most profitable national platforms, according to industry publication The Low Down — would simplify the group's portfolio but remove a meaningful earnings contributor.
Industry & Historical Context
Delivery Hero's interest in selling Woowa Brothers comes seven years after its high-profile 2019 takeover, which was approved on conditions by Korea's Fair Trade Commission. Baemin has since faced intensifying competition from Coupang Eats, the food-delivery arm of NYSE-listed Coupang, which The Korea Herald flagged as a key driver of Delivery Hero's strategic rethink. The German company previously divested another Korean asset, the food-delivery app Yogiyo, in 2021 to a consortium of GS Retail, Affinity Equity Partners and Permira for ₩800 billion (about $684 million), according to contemporaneous reports by KED Global and The Korea Herald.
Naver itself has historically been cautious on large M&A in Korea, focusing global deal activity on assets such as U.S.-based fashion platform Poshmark. A successful Woowa Brothers transaction would represent a clear pivot.
What to Watch
- Bid confirmation: Any formal disclosure to Korea's electronic filing system DART (Korea's electronic disclosure system) by Naver or Woowa Brothers regarding M&A discussions.
- Consortium structure: Whether Naver pursues Baemin alone or alongside Uber on the reported 70-30 split described by The Korea Herald.
- Regulatory signals: Statements from Korea's Fair Trade Commission, given that Baemin remains under behavioral remedies from the 2019 Delivery Hero deal.
- Competing bids: Movement from Alibaba and DoorDash, both named as potential bidders by KED Global and The Korea Herald.
Sources: - Yonhap News Agency (yna.co.kr) — https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20260514045651008 - The Korea Times — https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/companies/20260514/delivery-hero-seeking-to-sell-operator-of-food-delivery-platform-baemin-sources - KED Global — https://www.kedglobal.com/mergers-acquisitions/newsView/ked202605140001 - The Korea Herald — https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10738059 - The Low Down (Momentum Works) — https://thelowdown.momentum.asia/why-might-delivery-hero-sell-its-best-asset/ - Delivery Hero FY2024 trading update — https://www.deliveryhero.com/newsroom/trading-update-q4-2024/
By LineVest Markets Desk — May 14, 2026
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
