DoorDash - Q4 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the DoorDash Q4 2025 earnings call. After today's opening statement, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. I will now hand the call over to Weston Twigg. Please go ahead.

Weston Twigg (Head of Finance and Investor Relations)

All right. 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, Chairman, 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 the 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-Qs. You 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 such 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 a substitute for our 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 you can take our first question.

Operator (participant)

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 one on your telephone keypad. If you need to withdraw your question, please press star one 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 Khajuria. Your line is open. Oh, with Wolfe Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Shweta Khajuria (Managing Director of Global Internet)

Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Let me try two, please. One is on competitive intensity, globally and specifically in Europe, if you're seeing anything different, and then if so, has it been rising? And then second is on investment. This may be for Ravi. 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 delivery platforms. So could you please, Ravi, help us think through how we should think about it? Is it a one time in 2026, or should we expect some elevated level of spend in 2027 too, because it could bleed into next year? Thanks a lot.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

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 acquisition. 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 Wolt side. And so when I overall look at our business outside of the U.S., what I see is faster growth than what we see in the U.S., which, by the way, the U.S. had, you know, two of the fastest-growing quarters in 2025 in the last four years.

So too, 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.

Ravi Inukonda (CFO)

Shweta, on your second point, right, like, I'll make a couple of points. One, my expectation for the full-year EBITDA for 2026 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 Deliveroo, and Deliveroo to produce about $200 million 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. Look, we are happy with the progress. We're 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 2026, some of that will be in 2027, which 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 Khajuria (Managing Director of Global Internet)

Okay, that's very helpful. Thanks, Tony. Thanks, Ravi.

Operator (participant)

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

Michael Morton (Senior Research Analyst of Internet)

Hey, good evening. Thanks for the questions. Maybe one for Tony to start. In the press release, you talk about investing to support growth in longer distance and higher effort deliveries. I was wondering if you could provide some more details on what type of deliveries those are related to. Just following up on that, like, Dash has made a lot of investments in DashMart and DashLink. Tony, I'd love to hear, maybe if it's related to that longer distance investment, but how you see the e-commerce landscape evolving. Do you expect to see local inventory worked more into the kind of consumer shopping experiences? Anything around that would be great. Then maybe a quick one for Ravi. I love the commentary on the inflection in unit economics for your new verticals business.

Could you 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.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Yeah, I'll start. 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 kind of 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, you know, answer directly your question about how Dashers and frankly, some of our other audiences play into, you know, this broader ecosystem. It...

You know, when I think about like, what it's going to be required in order to allow, you know, all the small, medium, and large physical businesses to become omni-channel businesses and compete against, you know, one or two large, behemoths, it's going to require, you know, software, it's going to require warehousing and physical infrastructure. It's going to require the lowest cost of delivery at the highest quality, and it's going to require amazing software. And if you think about a lot of what we, announced, actually in 2025 at our Dash Forward product event in September, as well as the investments we're making into 2026, I think they line up nicely to give you a view of what we're building.

If you think about it, we're starting by, obviously, building software for every small, medium, 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, you know, the leading third-party transaction platform in the U.S., and we're growing very, very fast outside of the U.S. as well in that dimension. We're bringing software in that dimension.

We're bringing software also in the dimension of all of the B2B products we're shipping, where we're helping businesses offer delivery through their own channels. We're helping businesses also stand up their own e-commerce solutions. We're building warehouses to bring inventory closer to where consumers live. We announced DashMart 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 quality, the perfect, you know, inventory accuracy, at the lowest cost and the fastest speeds, so that they can compete and offer, you know, same hour, same day delivery against their peers. That's something that we're doing. 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 Dot, 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 Dashers kind of fit into this system, one of the things that has to be true and that is true, it's, I mean, it's been happening throughout, you know, last year or the years before, and obviously this year and into the future, is that Dashers 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 want to make sure that, you know, the pay models reflect that. We want to make sure that the 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 as well.

So there's a lot of things that we're building, but we're building all of the fundamental building blocks at the end of the day to enable local commerce so that, you know, for consumers, they can, 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 (CFO)

Hey, Michael, on your broader question around new verticals, right? Our retail and grocery business. Maybe I'll 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 U.S. as it relates to third-party peers. Look, today, you know, Tony mentioned the fact that 30% of our miles in the U.S. order from categories outside of restaurants, and our focus has always been: how do we get that 30% to be 100% over time?

... what we're seeing is, as we improve selection, as we are investing behind making the product better, whether it's quality or portability, yet more and more of our miles continue to order from categories, you know, 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 profitability, 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 unit economic positive in the second half of the year. I mean, it's just continued execution, right?

It's a combination of steady progress that we're going to make over a bunch of different fundamentals, whether it's scale, you know, density, 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 continued execution, finding basis points, largely how we operate our entire business. Our primary focus continues to be, hey, how do you actually get the business to scale? You know exactly what we need to do on the unit economic side. How do we get 100% of our miles to use grocery and retail? That's the real focus that we've had as a team.

Michael Morton (Senior Research Analyst of Internet)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Nikhil Devnani (U.S. SMID Cap Internet Senior Analyst)

Hi there. Thanks for taking the question. Tony, I wanted to ask about agentic commerce and where you see things going longer term. I think today, you know, it's clear that Dash has very strong, direct relationships with 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 position, positioning DoorDash, for that future as consumer behavior evolves? Do you want to 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.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Sure. No, I think it's a great question, and, you know, 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 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, you know, when I think about these, you know, terrific products, whichever, you know, chat assistants that you love using or just protocols with agentic commerce that you like using, I kind of view them very much as almost like the new forms of the Googles or other large, you know, kind of top-of-funnel channels, if you will. And if you think about, you know... I'll give you a couple of examples from history that kind of maybe touch on your question. One is, look at what happened to product search over the 2010s. You saw over time, you know, companies like Amazon take increasing share of product search, 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 maybe 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 surfaces.

Look, they drove a ton of traffic, you know, multiple full traffic of what DoorDash could generate, you know, to these restaurants. 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, or 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. The end-to-end job, at the end of the day, I think, is how customers will ultimately judge where they do their shopping.

At the end of the day, wherever, you know, the customers, you know, keep going back to, that's where the audiences will flow, and where the audiences flow, you know, so will, you know, the advertiser budgets, as well as, you know, the interests along, you know, that dimension. So when 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, you know, brought to them in the condition they expect on time, every time. That's actually really hard to do. You got to 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.

You 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 different items, as well as the personalization you can perform if you actually have all of the customers and all of the customer information. And I think when you put it all together, we're going to 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, you 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.

Nikhil Devnani (U.S. SMID Cap Internet Senior Analyst)

Thanks, Tony.

Operator (participant)

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

Deepak Mathivanan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

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 DoorDash Dot 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? You know, is that from maybe slower advertising growth due to scale, or perhaps moderation and some efficiency gains, or maybe reinvestments? Can you expand on that, if you don't mind? Thank you so much.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Yeah. Hey, Deepak. You know, on autonomy, you're absolutely right that the autonomous 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 inside our four walls and others of which we will partner. And I think, you know, the most important part is actually playing the 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 gonna see Dashers perform deliveries that AVs are not well equipped to do. And so it's really, you know, the kind of goal for 2026 then is really to figure out what are all of these different use cases, where can we apply the most pragmatic business impact and 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 very excited about the future.

Ravi Inukonda (CFO)

Hey, Deepak, on the U.S. restaurant point, maybe I'll, you know, give you a, like a slightly broader answer, right? Look, when I look at the performance of the U.S. restaurant business, it continues to be quite strong. In fact, in Q4, the contribution margin for the U.S. restaurant business was up on a year-over-year basis, 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 2025, 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.

When I look at the top line and the bottom line of the restaurant business, both continue to be very healthy.

Deepak Mathivanan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

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

Youssef Squali (Managing Director and Head of Internet and Digital Media Research Group)

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe, Tony, just a question on competition again, but maybe from a grocery and perishables and 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.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Yeah. Hey, Youssef, yeah, on first question regarding grocery, you know, in short, no, we haven't seen an impact on our growth. In 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, for this year as well. And I think if, 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 to 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 tens of thousands of supermarkets in the U.S. It's 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, et cetera.

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 exists so many grocers out there, which indicates that I think consumers prefer choice, then that will continue to be very strong, you know, interest in the DoorDash product.

Then, especially if you add some of the capabilities now we're adding, where we're adding, you know, Fulfillment Services with DashMart Fulfillment Services, 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 offering.

Ravi Inukonda (CFO)

Hey, Youssef, 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 Deliveroo. Some of that investment is front-loaded. I expect Q1 EBITDA from Deliveroo to be about $25 million lower than Q4, but the full-year number is still $200 million, which stays very consistent. The second part is there was an impact because of the winter storms in January. That's roughly about $20 million. 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, 2024, 2025. 2026, 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, when I look at it as a percentage of GOV on a year-over-year basis.

Youssef Squali (Managing Director and Head of Internet and Digital Media Research Group)

Great. Thank you both.

Ravi Inukonda (CFO)

No problem.

Operator (participant)

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

Josh Beck (Managing Director)

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, you know, investments elsewhere? Just would really like updates on those topics. Thank you.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Sure. Hey, Josh, it's Tony. I'll maybe take a crack at both questions and feel free to jump in, Ravi. You know, on Deliveroo, I think, to kind of echo what we've 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 a 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, frankly, this quarter to be able to improve.

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 quite specific, you know, simple fix. It's usually the combined sum of lots of small things that compound that ultimately, you know, is what allows us to offer surplus to 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 Wolt, 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 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 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, you know, tool calls and kind of processes that make no sense. And so what 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? And 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 kind of play out nicely in the, you know, four months that we've worked together with Deliveroo, where when we do ship something that has worked in the U.S. for us or in another part of Europe with Wolt 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 (Managing Director)

Super helpful. Thanks, Tony.

Operator (participant)

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

Eric Sheridan (Managing Director)

Thanks so much for taking the questions. With respect to DashPass, how does that fit within your broader strategic priorities? And 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, how do you think about that as a potential stimulant for order frequency when you think about cohort evolution looking out over the next 12-18 months? Thanks so much.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Hey, Eric, it's Tony. I'll maybe start on DashPass and, you know, feel free to add in, Ravi. I mean, DashPass is critical to our business. If you look at, you know, this program, it's a program that we started at the end of 2017, really shifted in 2018. And it's continued to be the core driver of our relationship with consumers. And, 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, you know, we've reported, but also in terms of the benefits that, you 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.

We think there's a lot to do. You know, for example, you know, a lot of the benefits that you've seen recently has occurred as we've launched all of our non-restaurant categories, right? We are effectively charging the same fee for DashPass. We're adding even more value to get, you know, discounted or preferential pricing delivery, you know, for, you know, more complicated deliveries in retail and grocery, and more valued, you know, you know, discounts on, on, 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 2025 during the September Dash Forward product event, where we're starting to drive traffic inside to restaurants now with our, you know, 56 million MAUs, our, you know, over 100 million annual customers, and, and, 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. You know, if I, if I kind of take a step back and, 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 of times a week or something like that.

But when I think about the number of eating occasions, there are 20-25, and then when I add in the shopping occasions on top of food consumption, it exceeds 20-25. 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 (participant)

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

Ross Sandler (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, I just wanted to ask, too, can we get an update on the storefront software business and how SevenRooms 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 of 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. When do we kind of see the benefits starting to show up? Is this gonna be, like, a continuous thing in 2026 onward, or is it more kind of like after this year? Just any thoughts on the timing. Thanks a lot.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Yeah. I can 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 SevenRooms 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.

you know, 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, for these restaurateurs who really want to 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 in which SevenRooms currently addresses, you know, SevenRooms is kind of, serving the higher end kind of cohort of restaurants.

But as we simplify the features to be able to address a larger segment. That's where Storefront and SevenRooms 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 of the tech stack, look, I wish that the tech stack were already here, but the truth is, you'll see a majority of the tech stack work completed this year, or that's at least my expectation. And I think 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, you 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 (participant)

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

Ken Gawrelski (Managing Director and Senior Internet Analyst)

Thank you so much. Two, if I may, please. First, could you provide some color on what you see in the cohort data that gives you the confidence and 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 looked at 2027, I know it's really early to speak about 2027, and we'd appreciate the color on the 2026 quarters, but anyway, any early take you could give us on the balance between investments and margins beyond 2026? And you know, any early thoughts on how you view incremental margins beyond 2026 versus maybe historical? Thank you.

Ravi Inukonda (CFO)

Sure. Hey, again, I'll take the first one, too. Look, I mean, when I look at the performance of the U.S. restaurant business, right, like I said in the earlier question, I mean, 2025 grew faster than 2024 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're at an all-time high in terms of MAUs. In order, 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. Both Q4 as well as 2025, we added record number of subscribers.

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. 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 U.S. 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 margins. Look, I mean, we're not guiding the business towards incremental margins. We're not operating the business towards incremental margin. 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 try to run both tech stacks in parallel. Majority of that spend will be in 2026, some will be in 2027, but that will 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 going to be velocity of feature development. You're going to become more efficient as developers work on the same tech stack across all three platforms, and you should see the impact of that from an underlying cohort perspective, as well as overall growth in the business.

Ken Gawrelski (Managing Director and Senior Internet Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Bernie McTernan (Senior Analyst of Internet and Consumer Tech)

Great. Thanks for the question. Just wanted to follow up on the discussion on the AVs. Do you think the use case for delivery AVs will be broader than robotaxis and mobility, meaning that at least for the foreseeable future, robotaxis 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.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Yeah. Hey, Bernie, it's Tony. I'll take the first question on AVs. I mean, the short answer is absolutely, yeah. Of course, we think that 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, it, you know, that, that's true in its form factor. That's true in how we think about integrating it into the 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 traveled are much farther, and you can, you know, go, a lot faster in the air sometimes than you can go on land.

Ravi Inukonda (CFO)

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 2025, excluding Deliveroo, and Deliveroo to be about $200 million. 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? The volume grows through the year, unit economics grow, and you 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 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 is going to be no different.

There are a couple of things which are different. One is investment in Deliveroo. Some of it is front-loaded. Like I said, it impacts Q1. I would expect Deliveroo 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 ex Deliveroo, 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 Deliveroo 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, where second half is going to be higher than the first half EBITDA.

Bernie McTernan (Senior Analyst of Internet and Consumer Tech)

Very helpful. Thank you both.

Operator (participant)

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

Andrew Boone (Managing Director)

Thanks so much for taking the questions. Ravi, I wanted to stay on costs and the intensity of investments. If I look at R&D and G&A, it's 211 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, is 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? Thanks so much.

Ravi Inukonda (CFO)

Yeah, I do. I'll take the first one, right? When I look at OpEx in Q4, I think that's probably what you're asking about as well. There's inclusion of Deliveroo, so you should take that into consideration. When I look at, you know, 2026, I would expect OpEx to be roughly about 2% of GOV 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 of it as cost of doing business, and our goal is to continue to generate leverage on it, just like, you know, any other part of the P&L.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

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 kind of the middle-of-the-week run, which, you know, is kind of how DoorDash started, you know, five years ago in the grocery category, to now the larger baskets that happen on the weekends, you know, here in the U.S. 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, and 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 us.

Andrew Boone (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Lloyd Walmsley (Managing Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst)

Great. 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, the comments on the EBITDA cadence, but anything you can help us out with on GOV growth?

Ravi Inukonda (CFO)

Yeah, look, I mean, I think a couple of things, right? Like, one, growth in the business, you know, 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 has had a record year, as well as continues to drive, you know, overall growth. So the way I think about it is, as long as we are continuing to improve the product, the underlying cohorts 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 rest of the year as well.

Lloyd Walmsley (Managing Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst)

All right. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Lee Horowitz (Co-Head of Internet Equity Research)

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe building on an earlier one, 2026, obviously a big year for investments in sort of the software and services stack for your merchants. I guess looking beyond this year, where do you see sort of the natural adjacencies that you can build on top of once you've sort of rolled out this, sort of new software service stack for your merchants that will drive more value to both your merchants and the consumers in the coming years? Thanks so much.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Yeah. Hey, Lee, I can start. I mean, the short version of this is, I mean, in 2026 in many ways is like a setup year of building, like, you know, a new company that's, that is now a global company, you know, operating in 40+ geographies around the world, but doing the same thing. We just have like, you know, different countries and different markets to consider, and they're also at different maturities of when we've shipped certain products, right? So, you know, there, 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, so if you think about the different missions we have, one is we want to bring you everything inside the city.

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. We've 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 offer same-hour, same-day delivery and be competitive with other, you know, big, big, big companies. We also have to, you know, invest in autonomous, you know, technologies so that, you know, these companies can do it at the highest quality and the lowest cost. That's one big mission in terms of how those adjacencies work.

A second one is: how do we actually, you know, build software, such that these companies can be omni-channel businesses? We talked a little bit about this, you know, on this call, where we talked about Storefront, SevenRooms, but there's also DoorDash Drive and offering, you know, 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, and 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 SevenRooms. And so I think there, you know, there, 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 long journey in terms of building the operating system for local commerce and connecting consumers and merchants in more ways than we currently do.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 (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Justin Patterson with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Justin Patterson (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Great. Thank you. Good afternoon. On the ad side, it looks like you made some nice progress with Symbiosys. I'd love to hear more about how you're evolving the ad product this year and some of the key steps you're taking to capture more grocery and retail advertising dollars. And then separately, you know, I know this is not related to re-platforming, but we have seen a lot of companies see benefits from agentic coding. Curious what type of efficiencies, if any, you're seeing from that and how that might fit with the broader re-platforming initiative. Thank you.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Yeah. Hey, Justin, it's Tony. Yeah, maybe I'll take both. You know, on the question around ads, our ads business is growing really, really fast, and you know, 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 Symbiosys, I mean, it again, kind of similar to some of the other acquisitions that we've made, it's off to a great start.

You know, we see that we've doubled the number of advertisers for Symbiosys, as well as tripled the spend from those advertisers, and I think that's been, you know, the kind of performance kind of speaks for itself. In terms of kind of the roadmap 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, you know, agents and agentic commerce and things like this. One of the biggest agents that actually we've shipped last year was really our Smart Campaigns product, in which we are helping restaurants buy on their behalf, always ROI positive ad campaigns, effectively.

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 restaurant side. You know, with respect to, kind of 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, and likely will continue to change, given the pace and trajectory that we're on. I mean, we see 90%+ daily active usage, something like that, across all of our engineers when 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 kind of 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 (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Justin Post with Bank of America. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Justin Post (Managing Director)

Great, thanks. In the release, you talked about unit economics of grocery retail going positive in the second half. What, 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 U.S. restaurant? Thank you.

Ravi Inukonda (CFO)

Hey, Justin, 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 we 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 cohorts. So just continued execution, trying to find, you know, pockets of efficiency up and down the P&L, improve the product, which will ultimately get us to being gross profit positive in the second half of the year. Look, I mean, longer term focus continues to be how do we get 30% of our MAUs that order from categories, you know, outside of restaurants to be closer to 100%?

If we're able to work on the product, if we make the quality of the product better, I think this is gonna be a large business, which will, you know, produce, you know, strong free cash flow for us over a long period of time.

Justin Post (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney with Evercore ISI. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Mark Mahaney (Senior Managing Director)

Thanks. I was just gonna ask one question on Deliveroo. You talk about how you accelerated year-over-year growth and total orders for Deliveroo in the December quarter. That's faster than I would have expected. Was that... Just explain how you were able to do that, and just, are there a lot of other things you see that make you think that you can continue to accelerate those orders? Thank you very much.

Tony Xu (Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Yeah. Hey, Mark, it's Tony. Look, the short answer is we just shipped improvements to the product. And there was no, like, one thing. And, you know, what I've learned about, you know, a lot of these businesses is it sounds really easy to bring you a burrito on time, every time in the condition that you'd expect. It's actually another much more difficult thing to do it in practice. And it's just, you know, shipping a new thing every time we see a problem. And I think one of the, you know, great things was just how easy the partnership has been with the Deliveroo team. I mean, I really commend, you know, our teams working together really well, and in just, again, shipping, executing to deliver against, you know, increasing customer expectations. We're not done.

We have, like, a ton of work to do. Yes, we had a great kind of start, and I'm really proud of the team. On the flip side, I also see, like, a ton of opportunity where we have to ship even more things. And so, most of it was like just shipping things that we know are broken to also adding things that we've seen work in other parts of our business. We just see a lot more of those opportunities in front of us.

Mark Mahaney (Senior Managing Director)

Okay. Thank you, Tony.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's Q&A due to the time, and this also concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.