British food delivery firm Deliveroo announced plans to launch its hotly anticipated London listing on Monday after recording a surge in business during the COVID19 pandemic, although it still posted a loss for 2020.

The initial public offering IPO is expected to value Deliveroo at more than 7 billion, based on a private funding round it completed in January, and will be one of the largest London listings in several years.

The company published a registration document and an expected intention to float which signals the start of the listing process on Monday, capping what has been a busy start to the London IPO season.

In an accompanying trading update, the company said it had grown the total number of transactions processed on its online platform, the socalled Gross Transaction Value, by 64.3 last year to 4.1 billion pounds from 2.5 billion in 2019.

It also narrowed an underlying loss to 223.7 million pounds 308.93 million, from 317.3 million pounds in 2019.

Today, Deliveroo is so much bigger than I ever would have thought possible, founder and chief executive Will Shu said in the trading update. We are building deliveryonly kitchens, delivering groceries, building tools for restaurants to take them into the digital age things I never contemplated when we launched.

CLASS SYSTEM

The company confirmed it plans to use a dualclass share structure that will give Shu more control over the company.

This means it will have a standard listing upon entry into the…