DoorDash (DASH) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Wednesday, February 18, 2026 at 5 p.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Co-Founder, Chair and CEO — Tony Xu
• Chief Financial Officer — Ravi Inukonda
• Director of Investor Relations — Weston Twigg

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TAKEAWAYS

• EBITDA Margin Outlook -- Management expects full-year 2026 EBITDA margin to be slightly higher than in 2025, excluding Deliveroo (RUE), with Deliveroo targeted to deliver approximately $200 million of EBITDA.
• International Growth -- Company reports faster growth overseas than in the U.S, highlighting accelerated gains in Deliveroo (RUE)'s and Wolt’s largest markets, with growth outside the U.S. characterized as “faster” than domestic.
• Tech Platform Investment -- DoorDash (NASDAQ:DASH) is consolidating three separate technology platforms, with most investment and redundancy costs to occur in 2026 and a smaller component extending into 2027, mainly for improved feature velocity and operational efficiency.
• New Verticals Progress -- Retail and grocery businesses experienced significant year-over-year improvement in unit economics, with management expecting the retail and grocery segment to become economic profit positive in the second half of 2026.
• DashPass Subscription Growth -- The DashPass subscription program set quarterly and annual records for subscriber additions, supported by rising customer frequency and engagement across multiple product categories.
• Ads Business Momentum -- The advertising segment doubled the number of advertisers and tripled advertiser spend for Symbiosis, with "smart campaigns" cited as one of the fastest-growing ad products in the restaurant segment.
• U.S. Restaurant Segment Health -- Core restaurant business achieved higher contribution margin year over year in the fourth quarter, continued leverage in Dasher costs as a share of Gross Order Value (GOV), and increased engagement from both mature and new cohorts.
• Capital Allocation Philosophy -- CFO stated, “our goal has always been to maximize long term free cash flow,” emphasizing disciplined investment tied to overall cash flow growth potential.
• Deliveroo Acquisition Integration -- DoorDash reports Deliveroo (RUE) is growing faster while maintaining expected profit contribution, with integration offering opportunities to transfer best practices and innovations across platforms.
• Autonomous Delivery Platform Strategy -- Plans for a mixed fleet of land and air autonomous vehicles, with orchestration between autonomous vehicles (AVs) and Dashers to optimize deliveries according to market and assignment characteristics.
• OpEx Targeting -- 2026 operating expenses are expected to be about 2% of GOV, with ongoing focus on leveraging fixed costs as scale increases.
• Q1 2026 EBITDA Guidance Components -- Management expects Deliveroo EBITDA in Q1 to be approximately $25 million lower sequentially from Q4 2025, with an additional ~$20 million EBITDA impact from winter storms.

SUMMARY

Management highlighted accelerated international growth, particularly from recent acquisitions, supported by ongoing integration and technology investments. The company outlined technology stack unification and merchant-focused innovations as major areas of spend, with explicit expectations of continued margin expansion and positive unit economics in new verticals during the latter half of the year.

• Company leadership framed recent competitive pressures in grocery as unchanged, asserting consistently high growth and strengthened customer value proposition.
• Executives detailed a multi-year capital allocation plan prioritizing software, merchant services, and autonomy to drive “operating system for local commerce” ambitions.
• Operational cadence in profitability is anticipated to follow established seasonal patterns, with the second half typically generating higher gross profit and EBITDA than the first.
• Business model strategy in the agentic commerce and AI domains is to act as a channel partner to emerging platforms, while maintaining focus on end-to-end customer fulfillment and exclusive proprietary data assets.
• The consolidation of three global tech platforms into a unified stack has already produced efficiency gains, notably with accelerated feature rollouts and knowledge transfer following the Deliveroo and Wolt integrations.
• Platform modernization and software upgrades for merchants are expected to drive future adjacencies, including in-store traffic generation, expanded fulfillment capabilities, and omnichannel commerce solutions across all served geographies.
• Management expects the company’s advances in autonomous delivery and drones to address both urban and suburban markets as a differentiated logistics enabler.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• Gross Order Value (GOV): The total dollar value of orders placed, including sales, taxes, and delivery fees, before refunds or adjustments, serving as a primary top-line metric for on-demand marketplaces.
• DashPass: DoorDash’s consumer subscription service offering members reduced fees, exclusive discounts, and additional value incentives across multiple delivery categories.
• Symbiosis: DoorDash’s advertising technology platform focused on supporting advertisers within the marketplace ecosystem, particularly in restaurants and emerging retail and grocery categories.
• Deliveroo (RUE): DoorDash’s recently acquired European online food delivery brand, referenced specifically with respect to international segment performance and EBITDA contributions.
• SevenRooms: A guest experience and customer relationship management (CRM) platform integrated with DoorDash to deliver venue onboarding and in-store experience enhancements for restaurant partners.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Weston Twigg: Alright. Thanks, Elizabeth. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us for our Q4 2025 earnings call. I'm pleased to be joined today by Co Founder, Chair and CEO, Tony Xu and CFO, Ravi Inukonda. We'll be making forward looking statements during today's call, including, without limitation, our expectations for our business, financial position, operating performance, profitability, our guidance, strategies, capital allocation approach, and a broader economic environment. Forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Many of these uncertainties are described in our SEC filings Including our most recent Form 10 K and 10 Q.

Should not rely on forward looking statements as predictions of future events or performance. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward looking statements except as required by law. During this call, we will discuss certain non GAAP financial measures. Information regarding our non GAAP financial measures, including a reconciliation of non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures may be found in our earnings release, which is available on our Investor Relations website at ir.doordash.com. These non GAAP measures should be considered in addition to our GAAP results and are not intended to be substitutes for GAAP results. Finally, this call is being audio webcasted on our Investor Relations website.

An audio replay of the call will be available on our website shortly after the call. Operator, I'll pass it back to you, and we can take our first question.

Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you need to withdraw your question, please press star 1 again. Please pick up your handset when asking a question. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Shweta R. Khajuria with Wolfe Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Let me try two, please. One,

Tony Xu: is on competitive intensity globally and specifically in Europe. If you're seeing anything different, And if so, has it been rising? And then second is on investments. This may be for Robbie. How should we be thinking? There's a lot of maybe debate that's going on in terms of the level of investments, not only in 2026, but to the degree that it may continue into 2027, especially as it relates to debt relief platform. So could you please probably help us think through how we should think about it? Is it a onetime in 'twenty six? Or should we expect some elevated level of spend in '27 to because it could bleed into next year? Thanks a lot.

Tony Xu: Yeah. Hey, Shweta. I'll start by talking about Europe. You know, overall, we feel really great about our position in Europe. You know, we're the leading player in many of the countries. In that continent, and we're off to a really great start with our Deliveroo You know, with respect to Deliveroo, we are you know, growing much faster at the same profit, you know, contribution that we expected before the acquisition. We're gaining share in its largest markets. We're doing the same on the Vault side.

And so when I overall look at our business outside of The US, what I see is faster growth than what we see in The US, which by the way, The US had, you know, two of the fastest growing quarters in 2025 in the last four years. So to, you know, trump that is actually quite impressive. And we're continuing, you know, to improve our unit economics across the board. So I feel really strong about our position overseas. Sure. On your second point, right, like, I'll make a couple of points. One,

Ravi Inukonda: my expectation for the full year EBITDA '26 has not changed since the last call. The way I think about it is 2026 EBITDA margin is gonna be up slightly compared to 2025, excluding group. And RUE to produce about $200,000,000 of EBITDA like we said. So that remains very consistent. Look. As we're thinking about investing, there's three major parts of investing that we called out. The quantum of investment dollars is also very similar to what I'd expected at the time of the last call. One of the major areas to spend, as you called out, is our global tech stack. We are happy with the progress. Making good progress there.

There are components of that spend that are redundant. Especially as we take on the cost of running both tech stacks in parallel. Majority of that should be in '26 Some of that will be in '27. Will come off, but that's a smaller component of the overall spend. The other two areas are look you know, both autonomy as well as merchant services. We are expanding both of those areas. We are investing. We like what we're seeing there. And in fact, I mean, if we continue to make more progress from a customer benefit perspective, our goal is to continue to invest more. Look, I mean, our goal has always been to maximize long term free cash flow.

We believe these investments are the right investments, especially as we think about becoming the operating system for local commerce. As we make more progress, we'll continue to invest behind them because, ultimately, they lead to more areas where we can invest behind as well as improve overall free cash flow generation.

Shweta R. Khajuria: Okay. That's very helpful. Thanks, Tony. Thanks, Ravi.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Michael Morton with MoffettNathanson. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ravi Inukonda: Hey. Good evening. Thanks for the questions.

Tony Xu: Maybe one for Tony to start. In the press release, you talked about investing to support growth in longer distance and higher effort deliveries. I was wondering if you could provide some more on what type of deliveries those are related to. And just following up on that, like, Dash has made a lot of investments in Dashmark. And DashLink. And, Tony, I'd love to hear maybe if it's related to that longer distant investment, but how you see the ecommerce landscape evolving

Operator: you

Tony Xu: expect to see local inventory worked more into kinda consumer shopping experiences, and anything around that would be great. And then maybe a quick one for Ravi. I love the commentary on the inflection in unit economics for your new verticals business.

Ravi Inukonda: Could you

Tony Xu: speak a little bit about some of the drivers of that improvement? Is it scale and also maybe less investment requirement? Anything in that would be great too. Thanks.

Operator: Yeah. I'll start.

Tony Xu: On the question with respect to you know, Dashers and the evolution around, you know, what DoorDash is doing in the world of you know, commerce. I mean, I think Ravi kinda touched nicely about this on the previous question about how we're building the operating system for local commerce. And so I'll maybe take, you know, a couple minutes to expand upon that a little bit, and then I'll know, answer directly your question about how Dasher's frankly, some of our other audiences play into, you know, this broader ecosystem.

It you know, when I think about, like, what it's gonna be required order to allow you know, all the small, medium, and large physical businesses become omnichannel businesses and compete against know, one or two large you know, behemoths. It's gonna require you know, software. It's gonna require warehousing and physical infrastructure. It's gonna require the lowest cost of delivery at the highest quality. And it's gonna require amazing software. And if you think about a lot of what we announced actually in 2025 at our dashboard product event in September, as well as the investments we're making into '26 I think they line up nicely to give you a view of what we're building.

So if you think about it, we're starting by, obviously, building software for every small, medium, and physical and large physical business, whether that means helping them and adding them into the DoorDash app. You know, one of the things that we've been seeing is just continued growth across all categories at DoorDash. Now you know, around 30% of customers are ordering, you know, outside of the restaurant category, especially as we broaden our reach into grocery, retail, where we've become the leading third party transaction platform. In The US, and we're growing very, very fast outside of The US as well in that dimension. So we're bringing software in that dimension.

We're bringing software also in the dimension of all of the b two b products we're shipping, where we're helping businesses offer delivery through their own channels. We're helping businesses also stand up their own ecommerce solutions. Building warehouses to bring inventory closer to where consumers live. So announced Dashboard fulfillment services last September, We're very excited to, you know, be partnering with companies like Kroger or CVS to really offer the highest possible

Operator: quality

Tony Xu: the perfect, you know, inventory accuracy, at the lowest cost and the fastest speeds so that they can compete and offer know, same hour, same day delivery against their peers. That's something that we're doing. And, you know, we're also investing in how to do this in the future. Right? And that's really our investment into autonomous vehicles where we announced doordash. As well as some other projects that we're working on in order to make sure that no physical business will be at a disadvantage when it comes to offering you know, the best possible delivery experience at the lowest possible cost.

So when you think about how Dasher's kinda fit into this, one of the things that has to be true and that is true is I mean, it's been happening throughout, you know, last year, the years before, and obviously this year and in the future is that Dashboard will have more choice in terms of the types of orders they can take on. And that's why one of the investments we're making this year is actually directly into Dashers so that as they do more types of grocery retail orders, which can travel longer distances, which are usually more complicated because there's a shopping nature involved, although not always.

But because of the greater complexity, you know, we wanna make sure that, you know, the pay models reflect that. We wanna make sure that app experience actually reflects that. And there's a lot that we're also doing in cataloging all of the physical information that exists nowhere on the Internet that we're also partnering with Dashers to do well. So there's a lot of things that we're building, but we're building all the fundamental building blocks at the end of the day to enable local commerce so that for consumers, they can get anything inside the city delivered to them you know, at the you know, best possible experience at the lowest possible price.

Ravi Inukonda: Hey, Mike. On your broader question around new verticals, right, retail and grocery business, did you zoom out and just talk about the performance and what we're seeing in that business. Look. I mean, new verticals had a really strong quarter as well as the year. We are the fastest growing in The US as it relates to third party peers. Look today, you know, Tony mentioned the fact that 30% of our mouse in The US order from categories outside of restaurants, and our focus has always been how do you get that 30% to be a 100% over time.

And what we're seeing is that we improve selection, as we are investing behind making the product better with its quality affordability, more and more of our mouse continue to order from categories outside of restaurants. In fact, the number of new consumers that join and start their journey with new verticals is also improving, you know, on a year over year basis. At the same time, we've been focused on improving the efficiency of that business. I mean, look when I look at the I mean, the team has made really good progress in unit economics year over year.

I expect our entire retail and grocery business to be you know, economic positive in the second half of the year. When I look at that, I mean, it's just continued execution. Right? It's a combination of steady progress that they're gonna make over

Tony Xu: bunch of different fundamentals, whether it's scale, you know, density,

Ravi Inukonda: continue to improve the efficiency on the logistics side, basket sizes are getting larger, There's no one thing which is a step function change. It's continual execution, finding basis points, largely how we operate our entire business, And our primary focus continues to be, hey. How do you actually get the business to scale? Exactly what we need to do on the ergonomic side. How do we get a 100% of our miles to use grocery and retail? That's the real focus that we've had as a team.

Operator: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Nikhil Vijay Devnani with Bernstein. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Tony Xu: Hi there. Thanks for taking the question. Tony, I wanted to ask about AgenTek Commerce and where you see things going. Longer term. I think today, you know, it's clear that Dash has very strong direct relationships consumers. And even with where things currently stand with AI chatbot experiences, that feels well intact. But there is a debate around how this might change in an agentic future where search discovery transaction flows start to compress and get more automated? You know, you might still be part of the transaction, but perhaps the economics look different is the debate. So how do you think about positioning DoorDash for that future as consumer behavior evolves? Do you wanna integrate with third parties?

Does it make more sense to double down on your own vertical solutions? Maybe you disagree with that altogether and think AI agentic AI's upside is a broad premise. So just curious for any thoughts you have on that. Thank you.

Operator: Sure.

Tony Xu: No. I think it's a great question. And, you know, the my the first thing I always come to when it comes to any new technology whether it's, you know, autonomous vehicles or agentic commerce, and kind of, you know, how that interacts with LLMs. It's really how well does it solve the end to end job for a customer. Kind of becomes the lens in which I approach all of these things. And, you know, I actually think that maybe the best way to think about this is to look a bit through history. And maybe offer you a couple of examples, and then maybe work our way towards the present and think about the future.

So know, when I think about these, you know, terrific products, whichever, you know, chat assistance that you love using. Just protocols with the Jetta Commerce that you like using. I kind of view them very much as almost like new forms of the Googles or other large you know, kind of top of funnel channels, if you will.

Ravi Inukonda: And

Tony Xu: and if you think about you know, I'll give you a couple examples from history that kind maybe touch on your question. One is look at what happened to product search over the twenty tens. You saw over time you know, companies like Amazon take increasing share of product search in a you know, from traditional search engines. Because they did the end to end job for customers, because searching to buy an item is only one task.

But perhaps reading reviews or tracking the package or returning the package or any other form of customer support are also part of the end to end job that you have to solve for customers And, you know, over that decade, you saw, I think, companies like Amazon and others you know, take increasing share when it comes to something like product search.

Another example that comes to mind and may be closer to home is, you know, something that actually Google launched with called Google Food Ordering, which they launched in you know, I believe it was, like, 2016 or something like this, where they offered the ability for, restaurants to offer delivery directly through Google Maps and other Google services. And, look, they drove a ton of traffic, you know, multiple full traffic of what DoorDash could generate you know, to these restaurants. But when you looked at the retention and you know, the frequency of use of that channel versus you know, companies like DoorDash it really was a fraction of what DoorDash could provide. Why is that?

Well, because after a checkout, you know, things can happen in the physical world. For example, a driver might be late or an item might be missing

Operator: or

Tony Xu: some substitution on a spoiled, carton of milk. Needs to be made or not the exact brand of you know, whatever produce that a customer was looking for needs to be changed. So the end to end job at the end of the day, I think, is how customers will ultimately judge where they do their shopping And at the end of the day, wherever, you know, the customer's you know, keep going back to, that's where the audiences will flow. And where the audiences flow, so will, you know, the advertiser budgets as well as, you know, the interest along, you know, that dimension.

And so I put all this into perspective, the historical context into where I look at DoorDash today, I think DoorDash is really well positioned because we're actually solving the end to end job you know, for a customer, which is to get them some item know, brought to them in the condition they expect on time every time. That's actually really hard to do. You gotta map the physical world, all of which that information does not exist anywhere on the Internet. That's you know, data that DoorDash has to collect in a proprietary way. Have to actually be excellent at the execution of the operations.

You have to be excellent at collecting all the metadata as well, you know, for all of these items, as well as the personalization you can perform if you actually have all of the customers and all of the customer information. I think when you put it all together, we're gonna be the best place for to solve the end to end job for customers. And so long as we are that best place, we will also attract all of the audience and all of the advertiser dollars that comes from that audience. But, look, I think with respect to, you know, how that informs our partnerships with, you know, you know, some of these know, AI assistants.

I view them as channel partners. And we'll see, you know, how much traffic they can drive in a in a very similar way to how, you know, companies like you know, Facebook and Google did the same for DoorDash in the past.

Operator: Thanks, Tony.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Deepak Mathivanan with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ravi Inukonda: Great. Thanks for taking the questions. One for Tony and one for Ravi. Tony, can you talk about the strategy with the autonomous delivery platform What do you think this platform looks like in two to three years, perhaps between first party efforts with Dart and maybe through a and also with some of the other third party partnerships. And then for Ravi, can you elaborate on the reasons why the unit economics improvement in the core U. S. Restaurant business will be lower this year than prior years? Is that from maybe slower advertising growth due to scale? Or perhaps moderation in some efficiency gains or maybe reinvestments? Can you expand on that, if you don't Thanks so much.

Yeah. Hey, Deepak.

Tony Xu: You know, on autonomy, you're absolutely right that the on a missed delivery platform is probably the most valuable part of what we're building because the way I kind of view it is that in the future, there will be a collection of different vehicles, a fleet of different vehicles. Both by land and by air, you know, some of which we'll build in inside our four walls and others of which we will partner And I think, you know, the most important part is actually playing the orchestra orchestration of all of the activity and movement and the handoffs. Because it's not gonna be immediately or it's at least not immediately obvious to me.

That, you know, autonomous vehicles are gonna perform every single type of delivery. There are certain times where you're gonna see handoffs between you know, dashers and AVs. At other times, you're gonna see AVs perform deliveries that dashers don't wanna do. At other times, you're going to see dashers perform deliveries that AVs are not well equipped to do. And so it's really, you know, the kind of goal for '26 then is really to figure out what are all of these different use cases? Where can we apply the most pragmatic business impact customer impact immediately We're doing that right now in a couple of different markets. So we actually have real live deliveries happening right now.

With AVs, and we're we're very excited about the future.

Ravi Inukonda: Hey, Deepak, on point, maybe I'll, you know, give you a, like, a slightly broader answer. Right? Look. When I look at the performance of The US restaurant business, it continues to be quite strong. the contribution margin for The US restaurant business was up on a year over year basis. In fact, in Q4, And I do expect us to continue to improve margins in 2026. When I look at the last few years, I mean, growth has been quite strong. In fact, in '25, the restaurant business grew faster at a larger scale compared to 2024. And even when I look at the efficiency that we've driven over the last three or four years, it's been quite good.

We've driven improvements in margin. Dasher costs have become more efficient. CNR has become more efficient. We've driven leverage in sales and marketing. Like you called out, ads is becoming a larger portion of the overall business. And we're still continuing to invest behind that business, whether it's selection, you know, quality, affordability. As I look ahead, I do expect us to continue to improve margins. You know, albeit it will be at a lower pace compared to prior years. Some of that is gonna come from DashPass. As you know, DashPass had a record year as well as a record quarter. DashPass is gonna have an impact on margin, but look.

Overall, the ROI is strong because profit dollar production is gonna be high. Largely because it's very simple. Subscribers retain more. They order more, which means that they produce more gross profit dollars. Look, our focus has always been on overall profit dollar production. Which continues to be quite strong. And when I look at the top line and the bottom line of the restaurant business, both continue to be very healthy. Right. Thank you so much.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Youssef Houssaini Squali with Truist Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Tony Xu: Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe Tony, just a question on competition again. But maybe from a grocery and perishables perspective. So as Amazon is doubling down on those categories, can you maybe talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of your growth within that category? In Q4? And have you seen any changes in the competitive landscape so far? And then Ravi, on the headwinds to Q1 margins, can you just help us kind of quantify the impact of the higher dasher costs? And I know there's a seasonal effect there, but is it more seasonal this year than in prior years or is it just normal seasonality? Thank you. Yeah. Hey, Youssef. Yeah.

On first question regarding grocery, you know, in short, no. We haven't seen an impact on our growth fact, you know, we continued very high growth rates kind of as fast as we've you know, seen in the grocery sector, not just in Q4, but also you know, you know, for this year as well. And I think, you know, if you think about perhaps why we continue to see fast growth, I think I think there are a few points. You know, the first thing I would say is if you think about what we're trying create, we're trying to create a world in which there's you know, the maximal amount of choice for what customers can get delivered.

And that includes all of the grocers. You know, there's a reason, you know, why there exists you know, tens of thousands of supermarkets in The US, not just because it's a large geography. It's because, you know, the average customer does buy from a couple of different places when it comes to their groceries, whether it's, you know, buying from you know, place a for their meat and fish place b for their produce, place c for their pantry items, place d for some specialty items, etcetera. I think DoorDash is the place in which you can get all of this at the best possible price, and the highest quality of delivery.

And so that's, I think, you know, our angle at it, where we think that in the future, so long as you believe that customers are gonna want choice, and I think that can be, you know, well reasoned when you just look at the landscape of grocery and how there exist so many grocers out there. Which indicates that I think consumers preferred choice then that will continue to be very strong you know, interest in the DoorDash product.

And then you especially if you add some of capabilities that we're adding, where we're adding you know, fulfillment services with Dashboard fulfillment service where we're increasing the quality and doing that for every single grocer so that they have the capability to compete against companies like Amazon you know, I think that just bolsters the product up for me.

Ravi Inukonda: So, Yusuf, on your second point, I think it was on Q1 EBITDA as well as Dasher. Look, I mean, I think there's a couple of factors in Q1. One, it's just phasing of investment, which is somewhat unique this year in the sense that we are investing in RU. Some of that investment is front loaded. But the full year number is still 200,000,000, which stays very consistent. I expect Q1 EBITDA from Roo to be about 25,000,000 lower than Q4. The second part is there was an impact because of the winter storms in January. That's roughly about 20,000,000. And finally, to your point, Dasher has been very seasonal. Right?

Like, we saw seasonal impact of Dasher in Q1 every single year over the last several years. 2023, '24, '25. '26, I would expect it to be very similar. But your second point around your broader Dasher look I mean, Dasher trends fairly consistent what we've seen in years prior. When I look at Dasher cost, as a percentage of GOV, we generated leverage in Q4 on a year over year basis. And I expect us to continue to generate some leverage in Q1 as well. I look at it as a percentage of year over year on a year over year basis.

Tony Xu: Great. Thank you both.

Ravi Inukonda: No problem.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Josh Beck with Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Josh Beck: Yeah. Thank you for taking the question. I wanted to ask I know it's only been maybe about five months since you've closed Deliveroo. Have there been any standout learnings when you think about the loyalty program or the fulfillment network or merchant terms? Just anything that has really jumped out to you as an opportunity area to lean in towards And then on the platform modernization I know it's arguably very early there as well. But anything you can update us on in terms of maybe some of the efficiencies that you're expecting to gain and maybe how that could either accelerate velocity or maybe free up know, investments elsewhere. Just would really like updates on those topics.

Thank you.

Tony Xu: Sure. Hey, Josh. Tony. I'll maybe take a crack at both questions, and feel free to jump in, Ravi. On Deliveroo, you know, I think to kinda echo, said on the call so far, it's just been a great start. I mean, like, you know, I think the numbers and the performance speaks for itself. Whenever you're growing faster, you know, at the same budget, and you see more room for upside, I think that's always great place to start. I you know, with respect to opportunities to improve, yeah, I agree. There's a ton of things we kind of have identified.

You know, I think we'll be able to ship you know, many things This I mean, frankly, this quarter to be able to improve. And it's really just across the board. I mean, when I look at you know, these kinds of businesses, it's really a bunch of small things that add up to make the difference. There's never, like, one glaring huge thing because usually when there is, that's a very actually, it's quite, you know, simple fix. It's usually the combined sum of lots of small things that compound that ultimately know, is what allows us to offer surplus to cuss customers. Or a deficit and fail at delivering what the customers want.

And so we see opportunity pretty much across the board. And we're shipping, you know, things literally every single day to improve them. So we've already, you know, seen benefits from things that we've taken from our lessons learned at you know, building DoorDash, at acquiring Voalte, and have shipped those to our audiences over at Deliveroo to see improvements in all of the audiences. On the second question with respect to the tech platform, you're completely right in the high in the kind of premise of the question where I believe you know, right now, if you think about our setup, it's really not ideal. We have you know, we operate on three tech platforms.

You know, pretty much a very similar business. And that what does that mean? That means that you're gonna be slowed down because in order to you know, ship one feature, you have to ship that three times in slightly different know, tool calls and kind of processes that make no sense. And so we're doing is we're making this, you know, pretty big investment. In order to both improve the velocity in which we ship as kind of you know, to clear out some of the, you know, inefficiencies that I described, and also just be more efficient with our global footprint. Right?

I think we'll be able to do both of those things, you know, as a result of building this tech platform. But I think above all else, actually, you know, we've already seen this kinda play out nicely in the, you know, four months that we were together with Deliveroo where when we do ship something that has worked in The US for us, or in another part of Europe with gold, to deliver it has added immediate impact to the customer audience. And we see hundreds of those opportunities in the platform work that we're doing moving everyone into the single tech stack that I think customers across all audiences will benefit.

Josh Beck: Super helpful. Thanks, Jenny.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Josh Beck: Thanks so much for taking the questions. With respect to DashPass, how does that fit within your broader strategic priorities when you think about growth investments in the business? In terms of incenting DashPass adoption more broadly? Across your markets? And then in terms of DashPass adoption, do you think about that as a potential stimulant for order frequency you think about cohort evolution looking out over the next twelve to eighteen months? Thanks so much.

Tony Xu: Hey, Eric. It's Tony. I'll maybe start on DASH PASS and know, feel free to add in Robbie. I mean, DashPass is critical to our business. If you look at this program, it's a program that we started on at the 2017 really shifted in 2018 and it's continued to be the core driver of our relationship with consumers. And, you know, I think and I think it's you know, grown in leaps and bounds, not just in some of the numbers that know, we've reported, but also in terms of the benefits that, know, we're starting to, you know you know, shift, you know, to customers.

And you know, our goal right, you know, with DashPass is to continue to increase the number of benefits in which we can offer. And we think we there's a lot to do. Know, for example, you know, a lot of the benefits that you've seen recently has occurred as we've launched all of our nonrestaurant categories. Right? We are effectively charging the same fee for DashPass. We're adding even more value to get know, discounted or preferential pricing delivery you know, for, you know, more complicated deliveries in retail and grocery. And more valued, you know, discounts on key value items things like this.

You know, another potential area that we see a ton of opportunity is all of the work that we're doing with our in store business. You know, we announced our in store business in '25 during the September dashboard product event where starting to drive traffic inside to restaurants now. Our, you know, 56,000,000 MAUs or, you know, over a 100,000,000 annual customers. And offering them, you know, either access or value to restaurants that they couldn't get otherwise if they were not members. And so I think the DashPass ecosystem has a long runway ahead of it.

And, you know, if I if I kinda take a step back and kind of just think about that in quantitative terms, if you think right now, you know, the average DashPass customer might be interacting with us you know, a couple times a week or something like that. But when I think about the number of eating occasions, there are 20 to 25. And then when I add in the shopping occasions, top of food consumption, it exceeds 20 to 25. So I think we're a fraction or a single digit percentage of what DashPass could actually achieve. So there's a lot of work to drive frequency, but that starts with adding more use cases to add more value.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ross Sandler with Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Josh Beck: Yeah. I just wanted to ask two Can we get an update on the storefront software business and how seven rooms and kind of the CRM part of it might be kind of accelerating the efforts on that side. And then back to the replatforming, you guys have done a nice job laying out how these components are coming together. Just the question is on timing. So, clearly, this will benefit both, like, speed of new features being rolled out and potentially expanding products or geos

Operator: When do we

Josh Beck: kind of see the benefits starting to up? Is this gonna be, a continuous thing in '26 onward, or is it more kind of, like, after this year? Just any thoughts on the timing. Thanks a lot.

Operator: Yeah. I can

Tony Xu: start. So on first question with respect to, you know, storefront and software in general, it's going really well. I mean, like, if you look at the integration of SevenRooms, you know, that also has been a relatively newer project for us, you know, about six months. In partnership with the Seven Rooms team. And, you know, already we've been able to tremendously speed up their work I mean, they're now adding venues 50% faster post acquisition. Than, you know, before we partnered with them.

And it you know, the and if you think about, like, we step back and think about the thesis, it's kind of proving the thesis that if you can add the best in class CRM software, with the largest demand generator, platform, which is DoorDash, it is a really valuable asset, you know, these restaurateurs who really wanna build more regular customers and have that direct relationship. That is also true for the storefront products, which you know, is less about in room dining or in store dining and much more about the takeaway product.

But especially as we expand kind of the merchant cohort which Seven Rooms currently addresses, it's you know, Seven Rooms is kind of serving the higher end kinda cohort of restaurants. But as we simplify the features to be able to address a larger segment, that's where storefront and seven rooms really can team up to both serve a restaurant's four wall business as well as their business outside their premise. You know, your second question on the timing the tech stack. Look. I wish that I wish that the tech stack were already here. But the but the truth is you'll see a majority of the tech stack work completed this year, or that's that's at least my expectation.

I think it with respect to the benefits, you know, you don't have to wait all at once. In fact, we're already seeing benefits from the work we're doing. With the global tech stack in all of our different geographies in which we're shipping features from one market that are working into a different market. So that's already happening. That's, in fact, one way in which you can test whether or not know, the value of the tech stack actually has any positive value to customers. And so we're seeing that. But, yeah, we expect we expect the majority of the work to be to be done this year.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ken Gawrelski with Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Josh Beck: Thank you so much. Two, if I may, please. First, could you could you provide some color on what you see in the cohort data that gives you the confidence in continued robust core U. S. Restaurant growth? Anything you might share on how later adopters behave differently than the base? And the second question, I just want to touch one more maybe on where Ross was going. As we look to 2017, I know it's really early to speak about '27, and we appreciate the color on the twenty six quarters. But any way any early take you could give us on the balance between investments and margins beyond twenty six?

Any early thoughts on how you view incremental margins beyond '26 versus maybe historical? Thank you.

Ravi Inukonda: Sure. Hey, Ken. I'll take the first one too. Look. I mean, when I look at the performance of The US restaurant business, right, like I said in the earlier question, I mean, '25 grew faster than '24 at a larger scale. I think that should tell you the health of the underlying cohorts. MAUs continue to be quite strong. In fact, we hit an all time high in terms of MAUs. You know, our frequency continues to be quite strong. When I look at the engagement of new consumers that still join, I mean, that continues to be quite strong.

And the other thing that you're seeing is, I mean, subscription continues to be a big driver of growth for us.

Operator: Both Q4 as well as '25, we added record number of subscribers.

Ravi Inukonda: What you're seeing in the business is as the product continues to get better, there's more people that habituate. They graduate towards subscription. You know, they retain more. They order more as well as they try new categories. So overall, when I look at the mature cohorts as well as the newer cohorts, the engagement level in The US business continue to be strong, not just across restaurants, but even our new verticals business. And I think your second question, Ken, was, you know, just, you know, sort of, like, incremental margin. Look. I mean, we're not guiding the business towards incremental margins. We're not operating the business towards incremental Our focus has always been on overall profit dollar production.

Just to, you know, frame your thinking in terms of you know, overall tech stack and what the impact there is. Right? Look, there's a couple of costs in there. One is some redundancy in cost as we run try to run both tech stacks in parallel. Majority of that spend will be in '26. Some will be in 27, but that'll come off. And you should expect that to be a smaller component. But the biggest value driver for us like we touched on earlier, is gonna be velocity of feature development. You're gonna become more efficient as developers work on the same tech stack. Across all three platforms.

And you should see the impact of that an underlying cohort perspective as well as overall growth in the business.

Josh Beck: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Bernie McTernan with Needham. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Tony Xu: Great. Thanks for the question. Just wanted to follow-up on the discussion on the EVs. Do you think the use case for delivery AVs will be broader than robo taxis and mobility meaning that at least for the foreseeable future, robo taxis expected only to be in dense cities. Is there a use case for delivery AVs in the suburbs? And then as we're, you know, asking follow-up questions on the financial guidance, you know, in the press release, talked about EBITDA a lot higher in the second half of the year. I would say that's probably typical to normal seasonal trends that we see within the business Just any additional color you could provide would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah. Hey, Bernie. It's Tony. I'll take the first question. AB is I mean, the short answer is absolutely. Yeah. Of course, we think that

Operator: the

Tony Xu: the delivery vehicles will be able to address both suburbs and city centers. In fact, if you look at actually you know, dot, it was constructed in a purposeful way to actually serve many of the suburbs. And, know, that's true in its form factor. That's in how we think about integrating it into autonomous delivery platform in terms of which assignments it ought to receive or just which assignments it should not receive. You know, that's also true for all of our projects, you know, for our drone projects too.

Which, you know, cover, I would say, you know, even beyond suburbs, but even more rural regions where, you know, the distance the distances travel are much farther and you can, you know, go a lot faster in the air than you can go on land.

Ravi Inukonda: Hey, Bernie. On your second question, I mean, look. What I'll say is my expectation, like I said, for the full year has not changed. Compared to the last call. I expect the full year margin to be up slightly compared to 25 excluding RU and RU to be about 200,000,000. You're also right. Look. The shape of the curve for us for EBITDA has always been second half is higher than the first half. That's naturally how our business works. It's purely math. Right?

Tony Xu: The volume grows through the year. Unit economics grow.

Ravi Inukonda: And if we put both those two together, you'll have more gross profit dollars as you go through the year, which means second half will be higher than first half. We have delivered on that in '23, '24, '25, '26 gonna be no different. There are a couple of things which are different. One is Investment in rules. Some of it is front loaded. Like I said, it impacts Q1. I would expect rule EBITDA to increase as you go through the rest of the year.

The second one that we are seeing in the business is when I look at the pace of expansion of profitability for both our new verticals and international business x o, that will increase or the pace of expansion is higher than in previous years. Especially as I expect new verticals to be gross profit positive in the second half? And international ex rule, to be contribution profit positive in the second half. So you put all this together, That's what's giving rise to the shape of the EBITDA curve there. Half is gonna be higher than the first half EBITDA.

Tony Xu: Very helpful. Thank you both.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Andrew M. Boone with Citizens Bank. Line is open. Please go ahead.

Josh Beck: Thanks much for taking the questions. Ravi, I wanted to stay on cost

Michael Peter McGovern: and the intensity of investments. If I look at R and D and G and A, it's two eleven basis points of GOV. We've talked about kind of that 2% target historically. Should we expect GOV to kind of grow when we just grow into this higher fixed cost? Or how do we think about the fixed cost component of the business on a go forward basis? And then going to grocery, there any detail that you can provide us in terms of the graduation of customers into the Sunday shop. Can you talk about just the evolution of customers and whether you're starting to capture larger baskets?

Ravi Inukonda: Yeah. I do. I'll take the first one. Right? I'll look I at OpEx in Q4, I think that's probably what you're asking about as well. There's inclusion of rules, so you should take that into consideration. When I look at, you know, 2026, I would expect topics to be roughly about 2% of DOV that we talked about. Look, we're being very disciplined. We're investing in areas where we're improving the product. To ultimately drive both scale as well as profitability. You're seeing that in terms of the overall growth as well as the profit dollar production. Look. I mean, our goal is to continue to generate leverage. Right?

Like, OpEx, I think, over cost of doing business, and our goal is to continue to generate leverage on it just like, you know, any other part of the PNL.

Tony Xu: Andrew, on the second question, you know, with respect to grocery, yes is the short answer. We are seeing the evolution of customer behavior both now incorporating of the middle of the week run, which, you know, is kinda how DoorDash started, you know, five years ago. The in the grocery category. To now the larger baskets that happened on the weekends. You know, here in The US. And in other parts of the world, it has a slightly different behavior. But we do see, you know, both behaviors now where people use us for both kind of the quick runs as well as the stock up. Use cases.

You see this in fact, happening faster and faster with each successive cohort. You see each, you know, existing cohort actually increasing their spend and, you know, their overall share of wallet when it comes to grocery with

Operator: us. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Lloyd Walmsley with Mizuho. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Michael Peter McGovern: Great.

Tony Xu: I was just wondering if beyond the first quarter guidance, you can help us with just how to think about a framework for GOV growth for the balance of the year? Appreciate the comments on the EBITDA cadence but anything you can help us out with on GOV growth?

Operator: Yes. Look, I mean, I think

Ravi Inukonda: a couple of things. Right? Like, one, growth in the business. Continues to be quite strong. And we are seeing that from both existing consumers as well as new consumers where MAU growth continues to be strong, order frequency continues to be strong. Like I said in, you know, one of the earlier questions, I mean, DashPass is had a record year as well as continues to drive, you know, overall growth. But the way I think about it is as long as we are continuing to improve the product, the underlying core are responding. As you can see from engagement as well as, you know, sort of retention.

And for us, you know, I feel pretty good about the overall growth, not just in Q1, but for the of the year as well.

Tony Xu: Alright. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Lee Horowitz with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Michael Peter McGovern: Great. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe building on an earlier one.

Josh Beck: '26 obviously a big year for investments in sort of the software and services pack for your merchants I guess looking beyond this year, where do you see sort of the natural adjacency

Tony Xu: that you can build on top of once you've sort of rolled out this

Josh Beck: sort of new software service stack for your merchants that will drive more value to both your merchants the consumers in the coming years. Thanks so much.

Tony Xu: Yeah. Hey, Lee. I can start. I mean, the short version of this is I mean, 26 in many ways is like a setup here of building, like, you know, a new company that's that is now a global company you know, operating in 40 plus geographies around the world. But doing the same thing. We just have, like, you know, different countries and different markets to consider and there are also a different maturities of when we've shipped certain products. Right? So you know, there's a there's a lot of different things. And I think a lot of the adjacencies to your question you know, can be derived from what we're shipping at DoorDash. Right?

I mean, if you think about the different missions we have, one is we wanna bring you everything inside the city.

Operator: So

Tony Xu: a lot of the work is going beyond restaurants. I think we've certainly proven ourselves you know, capable, you know, at least in the categories of grocery convenience, and some of the early innings of other retail categories. So we got a lot of work there to do. A big part of that has to do with also building fulfillment services in which we can you know, forward deploy inventory on behalf of retailers so that they can same hour, same day delivery and be competitive with other, you know, big companies. Also have to, you know, invest in autonomous, you know, technologies so that know, these companies can do it at the highest quality and the lowest cost.

So that's one big mission in terms of how those adjacencies work. The second one is how do we actually, you know, build software such that these companies can be omnichannel businesses? We talked a little bit about this, you know, on this call where we talked about storefront, seven rooms, But there's also DoorDash Drive and offering delivery as a service. There's other services that we ought to be building as you think about how a physical business must, you know, effectively adopt in order to become an end to end digital business. So we have a lot of merchant services work that we have to do.

That's also connected to the third mission of actually driving in store traffic. To merchants. Right? We're starting this with restaurants in the form of two products, going out in which we're offering value to customers to discover new restaurants for casual dining, we're also doing it in the form of access, you know, where we're offering reservations to you know, some of the best restaurants that work with seven rooms. And so I think there you know, there's there's a ton of work there to do as well.

So I think those are three big missions that will take us, you know, quite a, you know, a long journey in terms of building the operating system local commerce and connecting consumers and merchants in more ways than we currently do. And if we can do this, you know, across every geography in the way that makes the most sense for that geography. I think it's a very exciting future for DoorDash.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Justin Post with KeyBanc. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Josh Beck: Great. Thank you. Good afternoon.

Tony Xu: The ad side, it looks like you made some nice progress with Symbiosis. I'd love to hear more about how you're evolving the ad product this year.

Josh Beck: Some of the key steps you're taking to capture more grocery and retail advertising dollars. And then separately,

Michael Peter McGovern: I know this is not related to replatforming, but we have seen a lot of

Josh Beck: companies see benefits from agentic coding.

Tony Xu: Curious how what type of efficiencies, if any, you're seeing from that and how that might fit with the broader replatforming initiatives.

Ravi Inukonda: Thank you.

Tony Xu: Yeah. Hey, Justin. It's Tony. Yeah. Maybe I'll take both. You know, on the question around ads, if your our ads business is growing really, really fast. And, you know, it's it's probably you know, something I should have added in terms of just you know, when I think about the record year that DoorDash had in 2025, you know, ads was a big part of it in terms of you know, it's more of a derivative or an output. In terms of the growth from our marketplace. But it really had a strong year. With respect to symbiosis, I mean, it's again, the kinda similar some of the other acquisitions we've made. It's off to a great start.

You know, we see that we've doubled the number of advertisers for Symbiosis as well as tripled the spend from those advertisers. And so I think that's been you know, the kind of the performance kinda speaks for itself. And in terms of kind of the road map this year, I think there's a couple things You know, one is just I think one of the things is that there's a lot of, obviously, talk in the ecosystem. About just know, agents and agent to commerce and things like this.

But of the biggest agents that actually we've shipped, you know, last year was really our smart campaigns product in which we are helping restaurants buy on their behalf always ROI positive ad campaigns affected. And, you know, I think that has been one of our fastest growing products you know, on the restaurant front. With respect to grocery and retail, yep, we're definitely earlier to, you know, on that maturation. But I think that just means that there's a lot more opportunity and runway for us. In that space because most of the focus on the ads business thus far has been on the has been on the restaurant side.

You know, with respect to kinda coding agents, I think, which is kind of the premise of your second question, this is a topic that is changing literally by the day, maybe by the week. It's been kind of astonishing and almost breathtaking how fast the coding is changing or has changed, is changing, can likely will continue to change given the pace and trajectory that we're on. I mean, we see 90 plus percent daily active usage something like that across all of our engineers. It comes to these coding agents, which certainly has made them productive. The question now is, like, what is the right new environment?

For them to kinda keep up that, you know, sustained productivity gain? And so that's, you know, I think, the role that we and many others are trying to figure out.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Justin Post with BofA. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Tony Xu: Great. Thanks. In a release, you talked about unit economics of grocery retail going positive in the second half. What's enabling that? Is that scale? Or are you seeing new efficiencies on that front? And then thinking long term, how do you think about grocery retail bottom line profitability relative to US restaurants? Thank you.

Ravi Inukonda: Yes. And I touched on this, you know, earlier in the call. Right? Like, look. I mean, overall, new verticals continues to be doing really well. You know, the profitability side, we've made really good improvements on the unit economics. To me, there's nothing step function or, you know, one big thing that you have to go solve. It's continued execution across improving logistics efficiency, improving the quality of the product. We talked about the fact that we're seeing basket sizes being bigger both for existing as well as mature cores. So just continue the execution, trying to find, you know, pockets of efficiency up and down the p and l.

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