e& Sells 12.5% Careem Stake to Uber for $100 Million

Uber has agreed to buy a 12.5% stake in Careem Technologies from e& for US$100 million in cash under a binding agreement signed by the two companies.

The sale reduces the telecom group's holding in the Middle East superapp from 50.03% to 37.53%. e& will keep the rest of its position and, once the deal closes, will report it under the equity method of accounting used in international standards rather than consolidating the business.

Karim Bennis, e& Group Chief Financial Officer, framed the transaction as a matter of focus. The group intends to concentrate resources on its core businesses, he said, while keeping a stake that gives it continued exposure to Careem Technologies' growth. Selling part of the position raises cash without severing the relationship.

The growth argument rests on recent numbers from the superapp. Careem Technologies has gained market share in the UAE over the past two years, and gross transaction value across its core services has grown nearly fivefold. Careem Pay, food delivery and quick commerce did most of that work.

The two sides have also written options into the agreement covering what e& still owns. e& holds a put option that can oblige Uber to buy its remaining Careem Technologies shares. Uber holds a matching call option that can oblige e& to sell them. Either can be exercised in a window running from 1 December 2031 to 31 January 2032.

Completion depends on regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, so the timetable is not fixed by the signature alone.

A partial sale, rather than an exit, is meant to give Careem access to Uber's global technology experience and to create synergies across the two platforms. That is the standard logic for bringing a global operator closer to a regional one: the local brand keeps its customer base and its regional reading of the market, while engineering, payments infrastructure and dispatch systems can be shared.

The transaction also leaves the ownership of Careem Technologies in an unusual shape for the next several years. e& remains the larger holder it can point to, Uber adds a direct position, and the paired options give both a defined route to a further trade if either wants one — but not before the end of 2031.

For e&, the accounting change that follows completion matters as much as the cash. Moving from consolidation to the equity method means Careem Technologies' revenue and costs leave the group's reported top line, and its contribution shows up instead as a share of profit. A business growing transaction value that fast can flatter a consolidated statement and complicate the reading of an underlying telecom operation. The new treatment separates the two.