GrubHub Sees Volatility After Amazon Launches Competing Service

GrubHub Inc GRUB experienced volatility Wednesday following news that Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN had launched a competing food delivery service.

At 1:36 p.m. ET shares traded at $36.10 and then suddenly fell, reaching $35.48 by 1:44 p.m. ET before recovering later in the session.

The negative turn came following a Techcrunch report that Amazon’s "Takeout & Delivery feature was quietly turned on over last weekend — when many were probably still working their way through Thanksgiving leftovers."

The report added that "We have tried out different addresses in Amazon Local and it looks like for now it’s only live in Seattle, covering around 20 restaurants for delivery and around 110 for takeout orders that you pick up yourself. As with other Amazon services, Takeout & Delivery lets you charge everything to your existing Amazon account."

GrubHub shares recovered most of their losses by 3 p.m. and traded at $35.99, up 0.17 percent, but still down from the $36.75 high of the day.