DoorDash Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 6, 2025
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Operator

Hello, and welcome to the DoorDash Q1 twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. I would now like to turn the call over to Wes Twigg, Investor Relations. Mr. Twigg, the floor is yours.

Weston Twigg
Weston Twigg
Finance and Investor Relations at DoorDash

All right. Thanks, Dustin. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us for our Q1 twenty twenty five earnings call. I'm very pleased to be joined today by Co Founder, Chair and CEO, Tony Hsu and CFO, Ravi Unukonda. We'll be making forward looking statements today on 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.

Weston Twigg
Weston Twigg
Finance and Investor Relations at DoorDash

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 ks and 10 Qs. You should not rely on our 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.

Weston Twigg
Weston Twigg
Finance and Investor Relations at DoorDash

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.door-.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. As a special note, by now, you should have seen our formal offer to purchase Deliveroo at 180p per share. Our rationale for the offer, intentions and other offer related details are available under the Tool 2.7 announcement. We understand there will be additional questions.

Weston Twigg
Weston Twigg
Finance and Investor Relations at DoorDash

For now, we are unable to provide details beyond what is available in that document. We may also make forward looking statements regarding both Deliveroo and Seven Rooms during today's call. These statements are also subject to the risks and uncertainties that I mentioned earlier and are described in our SEC filings. 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 ends.

Weston Twigg
Weston Twigg
Finance and Investor Relations at DoorDash

Operator, I'll pass it back to you, and we can take our first question.

Operator

Thank

Operator

With our first question, this comes from the line of Shweta Kajuria from Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Shweta Khajuria
Managing Director at Wolfe Research LLC

Thank you for taking my questions. Let me try two, please. On just international competitive landscape, could you please talk about now with DoorDash, Wolfe and Deliveroo, what the combined share is as it stands in your 40 markets? And then how fast is the European market growing from your vantage point? And is it fair to assume Deliveroo's unit economics and retention rates are as attractive as?

Shweta Khajuria
Managing Director at Wolfe Research LLC

I remember when you acquired Voalte, one of the reasons was the unit economics and retention rates as you saw them. So could you please comment for Deliveroo as well? And then my second question is on the tariff impact. If prices were to increase through the year, you've kind of touched on it in your release, how are you positioning yourself for the rest of the year in terms of what you could do as it relates to pricing, whether it's price parity, loyalty integrations, discounts, anything that you can talk about, that'd be great. Thanks a lot.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

Hey, Shweta. It's Tony. I'll I'll take both. You know, on the first question, question, we are excited. I think in many ways, this is business as usual for us.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

We're adding and investing, behind success in each one of our five business lines. Specifically with respect to Deliveroo, that really is adding obviously to our international business. We've had a strong track record now in teaming up with Voalte for over three years where we're leading in a majority of our markets with a playbook that we believe in. And when I think about the possible combination, should the deal close, what I really see is adding more scale to the same continent, in this case, Europe, and being able to lay the foundation for introducing all of the local commerce products that we are building. I can't get into all of the details, obviously, beyond that.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

But hopefully, that gives you a high level view of what we believe the investment opportunity is. And I think that if we do a great job in terms of investing wisely into the partnership as well as what the scale economies can produce, I believe that will even unlock even greater profit pools for us, especially given in some of the markets that Deliveroo plays in to allow us to invest even further in the future. With respect to the second question, which I believe is on tariffs, right now we're not seeing any effects. Obviously, as you know, a lot of the tariffs have been paused. And we haven't seen any changes in consumer behavior even if there are changes in consumer sentiment.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

I've always believed, and I think we saw this even as far whether it was during things returning back to normal after COVID-nineteen or peak inflation in 'twenty one and 'twenty two, I think what you really saw was that food or getting convenience delivered really is the most frequent form spend and consumption. And food really is the most resilient category. We continue to believe that. We continue to see signs of that. Obviously, we're going to focus on what we can control.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

Most of what that means is we've always been trying to increase the, selection that we offer, both of, merchants as well as items. We are, continuing to invest behind our affordability initiatives as well as our quality and service initiatives.

Shweta Khajuria
Managing Director at Wolfe Research LLC

Thanks, Tony.

Operator

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Deepak Mathivanan from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.

Deepak Mathivanan
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. One for Tony and one for Ravi. Tony, historically, you've been somewhat hesitant to make big acquisitions. You've done two this quarter.

Deepak Mathivanan
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald

Has the philosophy on how you generally think about M and A's now changed at all? What are maybe some of the other areas you think M and A's could help improve DoorDash? And then, one for Ravi on grocery specifically. Can you discuss on the factors that's accelerating the spend per customer? Are you seeing kind of the use case broaden out into larger baskets, maybe from weekly runs or monthly refills, anything you're specifically doing to drive this behavior?

Deepak Mathivanan
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald

Thank you so much.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

Deepak. Yes, on the first question, the short answer is no. Bar continues to remain high for M and A. Sometimes, obviously, the timing of some of these announcements, aren't or can't be perfectly forecasted. But, what I would say is it really is business as usual.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

I mean and again, I guess, as refresher, for us, when we look at something like M and A, the first thing obviously we consider is whether or not this increases the available market or the addressable market in front of us or whether or not it adds to our portfolio. And second, whether or not we have a proven track record in operating in that particular area, which includes both the management bandwidth, but also the question around whether or not we believe that we know how to execute in that area. So if I take that one by one, in the

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

case of

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

Deliveroo, as mentioned in that last question, it really is about continuing our expansion across Europe. If the steel were to close, we would operate in about 30 countries in Europe, 40 5 globally, 30 in Europe. And I think it's adding scale to the same place and also giving us a foothold in strong profit pool markets that will allow us to continue to introduce more and more products and hopefully have the biggest positive impact to the entire European local economy. In the case of SevenRooms, it's really about adding to our platform business. So our commerce platform started in 2016 when we introduced DoorDash Drive.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

Later on, we introduced DoorDash Storefront. So we went from logistics as a service to online ordering as a service. And with something like several rooms, and especially what we hear all the time from merchants, is this desire to understand everything that's actually happening about their guests and inside their dining rooms as well as their other channels. And so really, you can almost view this as marketing as a service and adding more intelligence into what restaurant owners, can do in order to build their strong direct relationships with guests.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Hey, Deepak. On the second one, let me broaden it out and talk about the performance of the overall new verticals business. Right? When I look at the performance of new verticals in q one, I mean, it was very strong, continues to grow. We increased the number of MAUs.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Q four, we talked about the fact that about a quarter of our MAUs are ordering grocery as well as restaurants. That number continues to increase. What you're seeing on the platform is as the cohorts continue to habituate, they're ordering more with us. They're using us for more use cases. And truly, the key differentiator is we've added more selection.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Today, when I look at the top 20 grocers, we have majority of them on the platform. We've extended that. We've continued to add more grocers, you know, even in the regional markets. Through the quality of the product, continues to get better. I mean, if I look at the product today versus about a year ago, the quality of the product and what we hear from customers and consumers, yeah, continues to be good.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

That's obviously driving order volume share. When I look at the share gain year over year, that's been meaningful. Like, we wrote in the letter last quarter. Right? Like, we expect to be volume share leaders, you know, the course of the next year.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

And even when I look at the overall margin performance of

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

the business, I mean, it's

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

pretty promising. I mean, margins have continued to improve. Net net, the key thing for us is what we're seeing is we're focused on scale. And as we are continuing to drive improvements in the product, that's driving improvement in retention order frequency, is increasing the scale of that business.

Deepak Mathivanan
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald

Great. Thanks, Tony. Thanks, Ravi.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mikhail Dazali from Bernstein. Your line is open.

Nikhil Devnani
Analyst at Bernstein

Hi, thank you so much for taking the question. I wanted to ask on EBITDA in light of the M and A announcements. I know it's quite early to be talking about 2026, but I guess in recent quarters, there's been pretty consistent GOV growth, pretty consistent EBITDA improvement. In your mind, when you think about the acquisitions of Deliveroo and Seven Rooms, does this change any of that in terms of the earnings algorithm? I think they could open the door to further investment in new markets or new products, which is a good thing long term.

Nikhil Devnani
Analyst at Bernstein

But when you think about the quantum of investment required and you anticipate spending to accelerate these businesses, I mean, does it materially change your perspective on how earnings the earnings power for DoorDash in 2025 and 2026? Thank you.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Hey, Nikhil. It's Ravi.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

I mean, I'll take that, right? I mean, let me broaden out that question, right? Nikhil, I mean, talk about the performance of the business. Look. When you look at the performance of the business, the business is doing really well.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

We're extremely pleased with the performance of the business, not just in q one, but over the course of the last several quarters. Right? The formula for us has always been grow the business while continuing to increase overall profit dollars. If you look at the EBITDA profit dollar growth in q one as well as the q two guide that we've given, you know, we're very pleased with the year over year growth. For us, the philosophy has always been investing behind strength.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

You've heard us say this before. Right? Our goal is to improve unit economics, take that and continue to drive improvements in retention and order frequency, which ultimately drives scale. And that scale drives profitability in the business. That is not gonna change.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Right? Nothing about how we operate the business is gonna change. And in terms of, you know, how we operate, you know, together with Deliveroo, that formula will continue to be the case. We're trying to drive duration of profit dollar growth over a long period of time. And when we think about investment, the key formula we think about is, is it gonna generate a healthy amount of IRR, a strong return?

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

And as long as we feel comfortable with that, our goal is to continue to invest to drive scale.

Nikhil Devnani
Analyst at Bernstein

Thanks, Ravi.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Youssef Squali from Truist Securities. Your line is open.

Youssef Squali
Youssef Squali
MD & Head of Internet and Digital Media Research Group at Truist Securities

Good morning. Thank you for taking the question. So can you expand a little bit more on the affordability initiative and mix shift that caused net revenue margins to be down quarter on quarter? And what will drive it back higher? I think in the release, you talked about the guidance for Q2 to for it to flip back higher year on year quarter on quarter.

Youssef Squali
Youssef Squali
MD & Head of Internet and Digital Media Research Group at Truist Securities

And then maybe, Tony, again on Deliveroo. Deliveroo's growth and margins have been much lower than DoorDash's. Are there any structural issues in Europe, maybe Deliveroo's competitive positioning, etcetera, that makes these margins structurally lower? And is there a chance for you guys, I I know it's early, but is there a chance for you guys to to kinda get those margins more in line with yours over time? Thanks a lot.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Hey, Youssef. Let me

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

take the first one, right, on, net revenue margin take rate itself. I mean, just a broader point, Youssef, I mean, just to clarify, Our goal has not been to optimize margin percentage. We're trying to grow profit dollars. We've always been focused on driving overall EBITDA profit dollars up, and you're seeing that in the business. Right?

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Whether you look at q one, whether you look at the last few quarters, I mean, that's what's visible in the business. You know, that said, when I look at the take rate, there's a few factors. I mean, there's some natural seasonality in the business. You've seen that in q one of last year as well. The second point I would make is look.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Mean, our goal is to improve unit economics and invest that back in the business. We found some specific initiatives, you know, both around affordability as well as selection that we invested back in q one that drove not just the JOB growth, but the order growth, which we feel very good about. So, yeah, look, I mean, the business is scaled now. You're at the point where you're starting to see all of our categories grow. So the impact of mix shift is visible from a take rate perspective when you look at the overall business.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

When you put all that together, right, that's what impacted the take rate in q one. But if you're thinking about it, user, from a modeling perspective, I would expect q two take rate to be higher than q one and the second half take rate to be higher than the first half. And to your question around, you know, what are the key factors that are driving it? One is we talked about seasonality. Q one, we lean into Dasher supply, that gets better as we go through the rest of the year, primarily because q one is a strong growth quarter for us.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Two, unit economics will continue to improve as we go through the rest of the year, and that'll continue to, you know, be a tailwind from a take rate perspective. Ads business continues to grow. That'll also be a tailwind. Net net, I mean, we feel good about where the overall business is, and our focus continues to be to drive the strong, you know, GOV growth that you're seeing in the business as well as overall EBITDA dollar production.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

And, you know, in in regards to your second question, it's actually, you know, a similar story in terms of how we think about things, which is really how do we maximize long term profit dollars versus looking at unit margins. And, know, again, obviously, I'll be limited in terms of what I'll be able to say about Deliveroo. But with respect to how to think about it or a mental model of why we might be able to actually generate more profit dollars in the long run, I mean, you're really adding more scale to the same geography in this case, you know, Europe. And we believe that, if we can do that and, you know, take some of the lessons that we've learned in operating across other European countries as well as other parts of the world and bring it into the markets where Deliverr operates, we believe not only can we increase the scale of the business, but that, if we do it in a disciplined way that we have done historically across all of DoorDash's initiatives, that we can actually improve the underlying profit potential as well, which will allow us to even have more opportunities to invest should those be good investment opportunities.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

But I think one of the important things to remember always about DoorDash is our capital allocation strategy has never changed. We only invest when we see something is actually working. For a start up project or for something you know, earlier stage, a lot of that starts with finding product market fit, finding great retention and and and frequency of use, building a product that is 10 times better than what's currently available. For later stage initiatives, a lot of it is looking at scaling the unit economics, improving those unit economics, reinvesting it back to give customers, more value, and then ultimately generating and maximizing long term profit dollars.

Youssef Squali
Youssef Squali
MD & Head of Internet and Digital Media Research Group at Truist Securities

Great. Thank you both and good luck.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Morton from MoffettNathanson. Your line is open.

Michael Morton
Senior Research Analyst at Moffettnathanson LLC

Hi, good morning, everybody. Thank you for the question. Can we follow-up, Robbie, on the net revenue margin commentary? And I would assume a lot of the affordability is coming in grocery. And I would love to know what type of behavior you're looking to drive in that.

Michael Morton
Senior Research Analyst at Moffettnathanson LLC

Is that to bring new grocery orders or to the new users? Or is it to increase frequency? And then is there any like under the hood, is there any changes in competitive intensity you're seeing in the grocery market that are that is maybe driving some of the affordability push? And then one for Tony. To the extent you can talk about European food delivery due to limitations with the delivery, it seems like it's consolidating.

Michael Morton
Senior Research Analyst at Moffettnathanson LLC

Wondering over the next several years, do you see any step changes in competitive intensity in those markets and how you maybe concentration playing out? Thanks, guys.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Hey, Mike. It's Ravi. I'll take the first one, right, on affordability and take rate. I mean, look. I mean, Mike, the goal for us has always been to reinvest back in the business.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Right? That's always been the number one goal as long as the investments make sense. Our you know, the way we try to do it is we try to generate efficiency. In every dollar of efficiency, we put that back in the business. Sometimes we invest behind consumers.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Sometimes it goes towards merchants, and other times it goes towards, you know, our courier supplier, Dasher supply. We invest in driving selection, you know, quality and affordability, and, you know, depending on, you know, what opportunities we find that changes depending on where we are in the cycle. This quarter, I mean, it was around specific affordability initiatives. I would say DashPass has been a key affordability lever for us. When look at the performance of DashPass, I mean, DashPass had a really strong quarter.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

All time high in terms of number of subscribers. The number of users grow. Order frequency continues to grow. You're seeing that in the growth of DashPass itself. When you look at the growth in DashPass in q one, it accelerated, you know, compared to the prior quarter.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Overall, you know, what you're trying to do is ultimately bring efficiencies back in the pockets of consumers to ultimately drive more order volume, and you're doing that across both restaurants as well as grocery. I mean, to your second point around, is it driving MAUs in order frequency? I mean, I think it's a combination of both. Right? For us, it's two sides of the same coin.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

I think we are seeing more users come back and order more with us, both across restaurants as well as grocery. And from a competitive dynamics perspective, nothing really has changed. When I look at the category share gain in our grocery business, we are very pleased. Right? We gained a healthy amount of share in q one compared to last year.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

We continue to gain share quarter on quarter. And as we wrote in the letter last time, our expectation is that we'll be order volume share leaders, you know, the course of the next year.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

Yes. I mean, I would say similar things to both of your questions, which is that we don't really focus on the competitive intensity. I mean, take something like affordability. I mean, are always going to want greater affordability, more selection, better service, higher quality. And that's something that we've been investing in since day one of the company.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

It's something we'll continue to invest in irrespective of external factors. And we've continued to see gains across the board. And that's something that I kind of view with respect to European landscape. I mean, I think you know that, it's always been a competitive market regardless of where we play, whether it's in The United States, Europe, other countries. And I think, what I can say is that you know, this, at the end of the day, is a scale business, and it's also a business about, at least for us, always doing better for customers, and always introducing, you know, more local commerce products because we think we're in the earliest innings still of connecting every local business to every local consumer.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Yeah. Mike, what I would add, really, when you think about us talking about investments to make the underlying product better because, ultimately, that's what's driving the scale leading to the profit dollar production that you're seeing in the business. Right? Whether it's the organic portion of the business or even some of the inorganic things that we're talking about, it gives us an opportunity to invest more ultimately to drive more profit dollar production. That's the, you know, key, you know, formula that we try to use when we think about all of our lines of business.

Michael Morton
Senior Research Analyst at Moffettnathanson LLC

Thanks so much, Matt.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Boone from Citi. Your line is open.

Andrew Boone
Managing Director at Citizens JMP

Thanks so much for taking the question. I wanted to go back to take rate and pair it with sales and marketing. Take rate stepped down, implying more promotions, and sales and marketing also showed less leverage in 1Q. Can we just step back and talk about the efficiency in which you guys are driving demand? Was there incremental pressure there?

Andrew Boone
Managing Director at Citizens JMP

Is there anything else you guys are seeing? And then, Tony, in the press release, you talked about DashPass evolving and adding more value. Can you just speak to your vision for DashPass and how you see that evolving over the next couple of years? Thanks so much.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Sure. I mean, Andrew, I'll take, the take it in the sales and marketing. Right? Let me start with, sales and marketing. I mean, I would not read too much into it.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Right? Q one, typically, a seasonal quarter for us where you see strong volume growth. We lean into Dasher acquisition. We've done that last year. We've seen that year over year.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

This is very seasonal for us in the fact that both q four, q '1 tend to be really good from a growth perspective, and we lean into supply to ensure that, you know, we can drive, you know, strong quality. You know, that said, when I look at the sales and marketing line over the last couple years, I mean, very pleased with the leverage that we've driven. Right? When I look at the product improvements that we made, whether it's on the consumer side or the Dasher side, all of that is driving the efficiency gains. And look at the list of features that we have yet to implement.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Know, I feel pretty comfortable that there's still a, you know, a lot of room for us to continue to drive leverage from an overall sales and marketing perspective. I will go back to the take rate. Right? I mean, like I said, if you're trying to model it, you know, and what I would say is the second half take rate is gonna be higher, and what's gonna drive that is, again, the business is gonna grow. Volume in second half is gonna be higher than the volume in the first half.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Unit economics are gonna continue to increase. There is seasonality in the business, which you've seen last year as well. Look. 2025 is gonna be no different than '24 or '23. We've executed against '24, '20 '3 just like we said we would, and '25 is gonna be exactly the same.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

The focus continues to be, again, like I said, overall EBITDA dollar production. And when I look at

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

that in q one or the q two guide that we've given, when I compare that on a year over year basis, we feel pretty good about that.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

With respect to the second question on DashPass, I mean, DashPass is the membership program or your membership program to the physical world, and that's kind of how we view it. Obviously, starts with two, the highest form of consumption. But we believe that if we can maximize the number of ways in which we connect local businesses to local consumers, there would be no other program in which you would have more or you'd gain, you know, more utility from. So that's really, you know, the ultimate goal, for DashPass.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

You know, primarily, you know, the focus, is on making sure that we can make the product more useful. And if we can connect local businesses and local consumers in more ways, if we can improve the service offering of the products we currently have as well as build new products in order to achieve that objective, then we believe that DashPass has the potential to be the membership program in which you would derive the most utility from.

Andrew Boone
Managing Director at Citizens JMP

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ken Gavroski from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Ken Gawrelski
Ken Gawrelski
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Thank you. Good morning. If I could come back to the questions around Deliveroo and Europe, and I know you can only speak to these at a high level. But could you just talk a little bit more about entering into some of these markets in a number two or number three position? I understand it increases the addressable market for you in Europe.

Ken Gawrelski
Ken Gawrelski
Analyst at Wells Fargo

But a UK consumer is different than a Norwegian consumer and they don't care about the restaurant supply in Norway. So help us understand your approach to these markets, not being in a leadership position currently, how you're thinking about that and maybe even the investment profile of those markets relative to growth today? And maybe the we'll just we'll hold it there.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

Sure. I can start. Look, the the, a few things to make sure that, you know, we see eye to eye on context. You know, I I the first thing I would say is that the most important thing to profit production or the ability to generate profit is actually scale, less so your relative positioning. And I think you actually have to get to a lower level of detail to understand this.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

And in terms of what we see, both in terms of our own operations, whether it's in The U. S, in Europe and other places, as well as what we've seen in Deliveroo, we think there's strong ability to generate great investment returns. Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing this. But that takes a lower level of study and analysis, which we've done. And and, you know, can't really comment on it at this point.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

That that's really the key. And and, you know, back to the other comment I made earlier, in addition to having the foundation in which we can add scale to our investments in Europe, we also have the possibility to introduce new products to the market. We think that the combination of both of those activities is what allows us to have the opportunity to generate great investment returns. I mean, we've done this with Voalte in which we partnered three years ago at this point and have seen that and we believe a similar story can play out here.

Ken Gawrelski
Ken Gawrelski
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Doug Annes from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Douglas Anmuth
Douglas Anmuth
Managing Director & Internet Analyst at JP Morgan

Thanks for taking the question. Really good progress in grocery and you talked about a quarter of users purchasing across restaurants and grocery. What do you think is required to exceed the in store experience going forward? What kinds of innovations and improvements?

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

Thanks.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

I appreciate it, Doug. I mean, look, mean, team has done a remarkable job getting us to this point. And, you know, I I think our our numbers kinda speak for themselves in terms of the performance. But you're right in saying that there's still a long ways to go before we can actually build a product that is 10 times better than the, you know, current leading product, which is shopping inside of a grocery store yourself. There's a lot of things that have to be done.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

And, I mean, the that's not it's not necessarily one dimension in which we get judged, but making sure that we can get you exactly what you ordered, making sure that those products are affordable, making sure that the products are delivered with high accuracy and quality of service, and then obviously making sure that the customer support experience is excellent, especially if something goes wrong. I mean, there there are investments in all of those areas required in order to, have a chance at being able to to, match the physical shopping experience.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

You know, that said, I

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

actually believe, and and and, you know, these were hypotheses four or five years ago. But we're starting to see evidence that there are there are opportunities in which, the online experience can actually beat the the offline, you know, shopping experience. You know, to to give you one example, I mean, you see this, for instance, with our Double Dash product where it's hard. Right? When you're even when you're shopping offline, even when you're in the store, even when you're in the intent of, you know, thinking about all of your shopping needs, that you may forget things.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

And, as a result, when you have products like Double Dash where you can shop from multiple stores on the same go, that's a pretty cool experience where it makes it even easier, to be able to shop the entire catalog from the city. Now we got a lot of work to do to be able to actually allow you to shop from, every single catalog in the city. We're working on that. But I do think that at some point, there is the potential in which the online shopping experience can even exceed the offline shopping experience. But we're still in the work of just getting the basics right.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

We feel like, you know, the the the biggest form of competition is always the customer expectation. We've certainly have done a lot better than when we got started four, five years ago, but we got a long ways to go.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Doug, I'll just add a couple of points. Right? Like, you talked about the fact that, you know, over a quarter of our users, that number continues to grow. And if you think about it, right, we have a strategic advantage because we have tens of millions of consumers that are active on the platform. But as when we expose consumers to grocery, whether it's via Double Dash or other product interfaces, that number continues to grow, is ultimately driving the retention as well as the growth that you're seeing in the business.

Douglas Anmuth
Douglas Anmuth
Managing Director & Internet Analyst at JP Morgan

Thank you both.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney from Evercore. Your line is open.

Mark Mahaney
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Okay, thanks. Let me ask a question on cash levels and then on the SevenRooms acquisition. So just talk about what you think is kind of a minimum level of cash you want to run the business with going forward. You're obviously putting out, I don't know, 4,000,000,000 and something in cash for these two acquisitions given where you are now. So just talk about your what is the right comfort levels in terms of the cash balance that you need or want to carry?

Mark Mahaney
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

And then on the Seven Rooms acquisition, it's not a huge pivot, but it is a pivot or it's an expansion of your offerings. And just talk about how much more, I think it's marketing as a service, I think you mentioned in there. You could do that with a lot of customers beyond just restaurants. So how far do you think you can extend seven rooms or or that idea to the rest of your customer base? Customer base?

Mark Mahaney
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

I guess, how much of a push do you want to make behind offering marketing as a service? Thank you.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Sure. Mark, I'll take the first one on cash. Right? I mean, the way we think about minimum cash is roughly from a working capital perspective, roughly about a billion dollars. So anything on top of that, you know, our goal has been to invest back in the business to ultimately try to generate long term, you know, free cash flow per share.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

And what you're seeing in the business is the business is free cash flow generative. So our view on capital allocation in general has not changed. If there's good opportunities for us to invest to ultimately drive, you know, long term production of, you know, more profit dollars, we are happy to do that. But the key for us is it has to meet, you know, sort of our IRR thresholds.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

And, Mark, on the second question, I mean, you're absolutely right. I I I think, you know, one of the hardest things about running, you know, DoorDash is that, there there's so much to do when you wanna connect every local business to every local consumer. There's a depth component to that, answer or objective. There's also a breadth, you know, component to that. And, I mean, take, for example, just restaurant delivery, which is probably our longest chapter, almost twelve years long at this point.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

Even after generating, what we have produced in a market, take for example The United States, we're still single digit percentages of the restaurant industry when it comes to sales. We're we're proud of of the results, but at the same time, you know, I think even something as old for us as restaurant delivery still has a long runway ahead of it. When it comes to our DoorDash commerce platform, I think we're even earlier in that journey where most of it has been focused on restaurants, whether it's DoorDash drive or storefront. When you add seven rooms into the mix, it's still focused on restaurants. You're right to say that, there, you know, could be opportunities to also expand a different dimension, you know, a a breadth component, if you will.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

But but building a business, I I I found a lot of it is about sequencing, making sure that we have the right amount of focus, but also increasing our ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. So that's what we're that that's what we're doing. But but, I mean, again, you know, everything that we're announcing today, to me, really is, business as usual and only something that we're investing in because we're seeing success in the five business lines that we have.

Mark Mahaney
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Novak from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Brian Nowak
Brian Nowak
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Thanks for taking my questions. I have two, one big picture So the big picture one, Tony, it kind of goes back to your last answer about sequencing and sort of prioritization. With Deliveroo, you're attempting to buy a business where 75% of the GMV is essentially a market laggard arguably. Can you give us some examples of what you've learned with Voalte or other European countries that sort of give you excitement or where you see opportunities for Deliveroo to execute better than it is right now than it has historically?

Brian Nowak
Brian Nowak
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

And then the second one on the Excel question. CapEx was up quite a bit in the quarter. What's driving the increase in CapEx? And how should we think about CapEx for the rest of the year? Thanks.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

Yes. I mean, I guess I'd say a couple of things, Brian. First, I think it's important to understand, you know, where profit pools are and also where, you know, market shares move. Because sometimes it's easy to to to look at a a country at the aggregate level and and and and not understand that. And what I, you know, what I would say is that, you know, Deliveroo has done an amazing job building, you know, leading positions in the stronger in the strongest profit pool, you know, places within Western Europe, which, you know, may suggest that they've concentrated their efforts in a different way, you know, than other players and allow them to set up in a way in which if they had extra firepower, then act they they can actually, you know, take a leading position.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

You know, the other thing we've learned, and this comes more to our relationship with Volt, is that, you're absolutely right that we can exchange, you know, lessons learned. I mean, we've brought along a lot of the products that we, you know, built at DoorDash over to Volt, and we've seen quite a lot of you know, from that exchange of of learnings and and also the other way as well, by the way. So I I think, you know, only until we had a a proof point internally where we saw that we can actually both improve, I think, the offering in the market so that we can make the biggest difference to the audiences in that market, as well as, you know, knowing how to do it from a management bandwidth perspective, did we get comfortable to actually increase our investment levels internationally?

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Brian, I'll take the the, you know, CapEx one. Right? Like, first, there's two points. One is we've done a refresh of tablets for some of our merchants because we're trying to improve the hardware experience, the software experience. Because, ultimately, we think that drives, you know, merchant satisfaction.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

So we're seeing an impact of that. You know, we talked about the fact that we are making, you know, investments from an autonomous perspective. You're starting to see some impact of that as well. And to your point around, you know, what the rest of the year looks like, you should think of it in terms of the overall DNA guidance that we've given. Similar level, you know, sort of what you would expect in q two for the rest of the year.

Brian Nowak
Brian Nowak
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Thank you both.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ron Josey from Citi. Your line is open.

Ron Josey
Ron Josey
Managing Director at Citi

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just another question on DashPass here, Tony. I know you've gotten a few, but in the letter you talked about extending the value prop of DashPass in 1Q and more things to come. So I just wanted to maybe get more insights on how the value prop continues to grow and how that's driving just accelerating growth on DashPass.

Ron Josey
Ron Josey
Managing Director at Citi

And then just more tactically speaking, I think we saw in New York recently the city council raised delivery cap fees. And wondering, I know we've talked about New York and the impact quite a bit since the pandemic, but we love your thoughts on that, particularly with the Seven Rooms acquisition. Thank you.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

You know, with respect to DashPass, the the main focus continues to be the same, which is to, you know, keep improving the products such that people wanna use DoorDash more. And it sounds really basic, but it's actually, you know, I think the, it's been the North Star from from day one, it continues to be. We want we want people to keep using it and increase the consumer surplus, if you will, that consumers or that subscribers see from using the service more often. With respect to the second issue in New York, think that's something that we're always in discussions with cities about. Our take has always been that a lot of the policies, especially in cities like New York, you know, not not only sometimes are questionable from a legal perspective, but they almost always do the opposite of what they're intended to do, which is they actually harm, you know, the number of opportunities for dashers.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

They lower the sales for small, medium, and large businesses within that city, and they exclude, you know, consumers because of the higher prices that usually gets passed on as a result of these fees. So we're working with the city, you know, to, to see if we can enact some common sense policies. Sometimes, you know, we get, a very productive outcomes. Other times, we face, you know, headwinds. But over the long run, we're really optimistic in finding common sense ways to work with common sense elected officials.

Ron Josey
Ron Josey
Managing Director at Citi

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Zudovitz from The Benchmark Company. Your line is open.

Mark Zgutowicz
Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

Thank you. I was just hoping we could take a step back and if you could maybe discuss how your affordability initiatives are being directed to restaurant versus grocery and domestic versus international and how your promo activity in 1Q compared to last quarter and year over year?

Mark Zgutowicz
Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

Thanks.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

I mean, our affordability work is true everywhere in every category. I mean, and that's because customers are always seeking more and more affordable options. It doesn't mean that's the only thing we get judged on our work You know, we always work on the same four things. How do we improve selection? How do we increase affordability?

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

How do we set a higher bar, for the quality of service? And how do we do better, in terms of customer service, especially we get it if we get it wrong. But, you know, our affordability initiatives really, you know, tackle every geography, every category because what we're doing is we're just trying to continuously build more and more value into our products and increase the scale of what we can do and reinvest back into customers.

Weston Twigg
Weston Twigg
Finance and Investor Relations at DoorDash

We can go to the next question.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Calamtoni from Jefferies. Your line is open.

John Colantuoni
John Colantuoni
Equity Research Analyst, Internet at Jefferies

Thanks for taking my questions. Just wanted to ask about average order value picked up nicely in the quarter. Maybe talk about the drivers of, that improvement from sort of U. S. Restaurant, international restaurant and grocery and convenience?

John Colantuoni
John Colantuoni
Equity Research Analyst, Internet at Jefferies

And specifically, curious how basket sizes have shifted across those three businesses in the quarter. And second, just

John Colantuoni
John Colantuoni
Equity Research Analyst, Internet at Jefferies

a quick one on GOB guidance.

John Colantuoni
John Colantuoni
Equity Research Analyst, Internet at Jefferies

Can you just give us a little sense for how much FX is contributing to, your outlook there? Thanks.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Sure. John, I'll take, the AOE one first and then, talk about the FX one. Look. When I look at the overall average, you know, order value at the total company level, there's definitely some impact from a mix shift perspective. Right?

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Grocery is becoming a larger component of the overall business, and you are starting to see, you know, that impact the overall company from an AOE perspective. Restaurants, AOV in general has been relatively stable, you know, over the course of the last several quarters. When I think about grocery specifically, the basket size continues to increase. That's largely being driven by consumers getting more habituated on the platform. And as they get more habituated to the earlier, you know, answer that I gave, they are starting to use us for all use cases, not just, you know, the top up, but also the top up use case.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

So we're starting to see increasing number of cohorts increase their spend with us over time. They're increasing, you know, both perishable as well as, you know, nonperishable. We're also seeing the impact from an overall commerce platform, which is driving, you know, volume and revenue, but it does not contribute to GOV. So that also impacts GOV if you're thinking about it from a modeling perspective. FX, when I think about the impact on, GOV in q one, roughly, there was roughly about a 1% impact on a year over year growth basis.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

For the second quarter, we do think there's going to be some impact, but that's embedded in the guidance for both GOV as well as EBITDA that we've given.

John Colantuoni
John Colantuoni
Equity Research Analyst, Internet at Jefferies

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank

Operator

you. Next question comes from the line of Michael McGovern from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Michael Mcgovern
Michael Mcgovern
Analyst at Bank of America

Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. I have two. You mentioned autonomy in terms of your uptick in CapEx this quarter. And I think you had some interesting announcements intra quarter about your first delivery robots in LA and also drone testing. Can you just provide an update on your efforts there in autonomy and how you view the long term opportunity?

Michael Mcgovern
Michael Mcgovern
Analyst at Bank of America

And then secondly, a question on regulatory. Recently, there was a bill proposed in the Senate about independent workers getting access to portable benefits at the federal level. I think you provided portable benefits in some states. Has that driven a big impact in those states? Just how do you view the possibility of that expanding more broadly?

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

Yeah. I'll start I can take both. I'll start with the autonomy question. You know, we're very excited about the autonomy initiatives and also just, I think, the promise of what it could bring up. You know, it's something that we've been thinking about and working on for about eight years now.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

You know, the key challenge with autonomous delivery that might be a little bit different from other autonomous efforts out there like autonomous, you know, taxis and things like this is that you really have to solve that first and last 10 feet problem of putting in items and taking out items from a vehicle. Obviously, that marriage of the operations and the technology to me is really what's gonna be key in unlocking the possibility of autonomous delivery in a way that is highly scalable, that increases or improves the value proposition of the product experience today, and builds us towards the future. You know, the second thing that I would say about autonomous delivery is that, you know, it probably sounds obvious, but you you don't need a 4,000 pound vehicle to deliver a one or two pound item or package. And so so the form factors are also very different, and and and they really have to match the use cases in which you're considering it. So there's lots of things that we're doing.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

You know, we'll have more to share later, but, we're super excited about both the progress as well as, I think, the the partnership ecosystem that is developing as well, as, you know, we bring more of this into reality. Your second question on regulatory, which is around portable benefits, is is definitely something that we're really, really excited about. You're right. We actually started this effort, and we started the effort in Pennsylvania with support from Governor Shapiro. And we're talking with other states right now of of taking the initiative that we brought forth in Pennsylvania, into those states.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

And, you know, we've always believed that, you know, I mean, and this is really coming directly from the Dashers themselves that they want the flexibility of the work that we provide, but they also want to have access to benefits which we believe in. And so that's really what you see with respect to the portable benefits initiatives. We're excited that we have leading states who are kind of the tip of the spear if you will, really innovating in this area. We see momentum and excitement now possibly at the federal level. And so these are all things, I think, moving in the right direction.

Tony Xu
Tony Xu
Co-Founder, Chair and CEO at DoorDash

And and and we really hope that, you know, that we don't just innovate on, products and and build more value for customers, but we also can innovate, although it may take a little bit longer, as we work collectively with all the stakeholders involved, to make productive changes to the legal system too, such that we can set up a world, where people can choose to work freely, you know, anytime they want, anywhere they want, and also have access to benefits.

Michael Mcgovern
Michael Mcgovern
Analyst at Bank of America

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Jim Sanderson from Northcoast Research. Your line is open.

Jim Sanderson
Equity Research Analyst at Northcoast Research

Thanks for the question. You mentioned earlier in the call that the first quarter for DoorDash is a very strong growth quarter. So I'm wondering in this context, are there any sectors, geographies, or demographic groups within the DoorDash US restaurant business that grew ahead of your expect expectations or lagged significantly below your expectations?

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

Sure, Jim. You know, I'll take this one. Let me look. The first quarter was a good quarter from an overall restaurants growth perspective because I assume you're talking about only the restaurants business. But even when I take a step back and look at the performance of the business, right, over the last, you know, five or six quarters, I mean, the growth has been pretty stable.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

I think what you're seeing in the business is users continue to grow, order frequency continues to grow, retention has been very stable. When I look at the newer cohorts versus the existing older cohorts, all of the cohorts continue to perform, you know, extremely well. I mean, look, I mean, we get over 8,000,000 signals, you know, on a daily basis, and we have a team of, you know, analysts that look at the underlying performance. And when we look at the underlying cohort health, I mean, it looks pretty healthy whether it's low income or high income or the new versus the existing cohorts. Again, a lot of that is being driven by the underlying improvement that we're making in the product.

Ravi Inukonda
Ravi Inukonda
Chief Financial Officer at DoorDash

And if you think about it, really, even if you peel back and look at the performance of the business over the last, you know, several years, I mean, the business has continued to be very resilient. We've operated the business in a variety of demand cycles. So we are pretty comfortable operating the business, you know, the different kinds of environments. And the overall restaurant business, both from a growth profitability, continues to be very healthy and very strong.

Operator

Thank you.

Operator

That concludes our question and answer session. That also concludes this call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Weston Twigg
      Weston Twigg
      Finance and Investor Relations
    • Tony Xu
      Tony Xu
      Co-Founder, Chair and CEO
    • Ravi Inukonda
      Ravi Inukonda
      Chief Financial Officer
Analysts
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Key Takeaways

  • DoorDash made a formal offer to buy Deliveroo at 180p per share, aiming to add scale across Europe and unlock new profit pools for its local commerce products.
  • The acquisition of SevenRooms will extend DoorDash’s commerce platform into marketing-as-a-service, giving restaurants deeper guest insights across all channels.
  • Grocery and new verticals saw strong Q1 growth driven by rising spend per user, improved unit economics and market share gains, positioning DoorDash to lead volume share in the next year.
  • Q1 results delivered robust GOV growth and expanding EBITDA profit dollars; a temporary dip in net revenue take rate was due to affordability investments and seasonal mix, with management expecting higher take rates in H2.
  • Capital allocation remains disciplined with a ~$1 billion minimum cash buffer, increased CapEx for merchant hardware refresh and autonomy projects, and continued focus on investments meeting strong IRR thresholds.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
DoorDash Q1 2025
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