DoorDash Q2 2025 Earnings Report

DoorDash EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.65
• Consensus EPS: $0.42
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.23
• One Year Ago EPS: -$0.38

DoorDash Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $3.28 billion
• Expected Revenue: $3.16 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$124.85 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +24.90%

DoorDash Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2025
• Date: 8/6/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

DoorDash (NASDAQ:DASH), together with its subsidiaries, operates a commerce platform that connects merchants, consumers, and independent contractors in the United States and internationally. The company operates DoorDash Marketplace and Wolt Marketplace, which provide various services, such as customer acquisition, demand generation, order fulfillment, merchandising, payment processing, and customer support. It also offers membership products, including DashPass and Wolt+; DoorDash Drive and Wolt Drive, which are white-label delivery fulfillment services that enable merchants that have generated consumer demand through their channels to fulfill demand using its platform; DoorDash Storefront that enables merchants to offer consumers on-demand access to e-commerce; and Bbot, which offers merchants digital ordering and payment solutions for in-store and online channels. In addition, the company enables merchants to advertise and promote on its platform to acquire consumers. The company was formerly known as Palo Alto Delivery Inc. and changed its name to DoorDash, Inc. in 2015. DoorDash, Inc. was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

DoorDash Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Year-over-year US marketplace orders accelerated thanks to DashPass membership growth, enhanced personalization and faster delivery improving customer engagement.
• Positive Sentiment: Advertising revenue surpassed an annualized run rate of $1 billion, driven by disciplined ROAS-focused ads and bolstered by the Symbiosis acquisition.
• Positive Sentiment: The company is deploying AI models across search, personalization, merchant onboarding and operations to enhance user experience and drive efficiency.
• Positive Sentiment: New verticals grew faster than restaurants, with larger new and existing cohorts, higher order frequency and improving unit economics.
• Neutral Sentiment: The retail segment is scaling rapidly from a small base but remains early in its product maturity, indicating significant runway for future enhancements.

Presentation

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the DoorDash QT twenty twenty five Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to Wes Wigg. Please go ahead, Wes.

[Weston Twigg, Finance and Investor Relations at DoorDash]

Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us for our Q2 twenty twenty five earnings call. I'm pleased to be joined today by Co Founder, Chair and CEO, Tony Hsu and CFO, Ravi Anaconda. 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 ks and 10 Qs.

[Weston Twigg, Finance and Investor Relations at DoorDash]

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. 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.

[Weston Twigg, Finance and Investor Relations at DoorDash]

Finally, this call is being audio webcasted on our Investor Relations website. An audio replay of this call will be available on our website shortly after the call ends. Operator, I'll pass it back to you and we can take our first question.

[Operator]

Absolutely. We will now begin the question and answer session. And your first question comes from the line of Shweta Khajuria with Wolfe Research. Shweta, please go ahead.

[Shweta Khajuria, MD - Global Internet at Wolfe Research LLC]

Okay. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Let me try two, please. On The U. S.

[Shweta Khajuria, MD - Global Internet at Wolfe Research LLC]

Marketplace orders accelerating year over year, you continue to see strength in restaurants. So it sounds like the strength was driven by DashPass membership growth, frequency uptick and potentially some product improvements around personalization and maybe faster delivery. So I guess my question is, could you perhaps point to some specific examples around what you did on personalization and what specifically drove strength in membership growth and frequency? And then the second question is on advertising revenue. You've now exceeded $1,000,000,000 in annualized revenue run rate, and you got there fairly quickly.

[Shweta Khajuria, MD - Global Internet at Wolfe Research LLC]

So post Symbiosis acquisition, could you please share your thoughts on how you're thinking about scaling the on platform and off-site ads opportunity as you see it in the near to midterm? Thanks a lot.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Hey, Shweta. It's Tony. I'll I'll start, and Ravi, feel free to chime in. You know, on the first question about the, accelerated growth at, you know, bigger scale, look, a lot of these improvements and developments were the results of our team's work probably dating back, you know, a couple of years ago. You know, I've always believed that it's very, very difficult to make changes, especially at our scale, that can have material impact, you know, within a short, you know, time period, whether it's the quarter or even the year.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

And in many ways, you know, that goes to the work that we do today, which is, you know, the work that our teams are working on right now likely will have an impact on, you know, a quarter, you know, a few years into the future. And I think if we're doing our work right, that is always gonna be the cadence here at DoorDash where the North Star focus is always to make improvements, first and foremost, to our products, to the selection that we offer of both stores and items, to the affordability of those items and stores, the quality of delivery, the timeliness, the accuracy, and and certainly the customer service, especially when we get things wrong. And I think that's been a consistent narrative that reflects a consistent, you know, execution, at the company for, you know, the twelve years that we've been doing this, and it remains to be the case today. So, you know, we've seen improvements across the board in our various products that have achieved the results that you're seeing today. You know, with respect to the second question on ads, you're right.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

You know, at some point last year, we did across, you know, billion dollars of revenue run rate in the ads business, making it the fastest in history to get there. And I mentioned all along that, you know, the ads business has been progressing really healthily. But the focus for the ads business, you know, today and, you know, three years ago when we started the business and in the future will always remain the same, which is we have to achieve the best consumer experience and build the most successful marketplace, which is what will enable us to build the most successful return on ad spend products or the most successful advertising business for retailers, CPGs, and restaurants. And that's that remains the focus. With respect to, you know, Symbiosis, an acquisition that we closed, you know, one of the, you know, developments we've always had is that we've always been privileged where there is more dollars that advertisers wanna spend with us than we are willing to give in terms of the surfaces in which we allow them to advertise.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Again, we're trying to make sure that we have a best in class consumer experience, and therefore, you know, whether it's compared to peers or just compared to what we think the right thing to do is, we don't allow, you know, advertisements to just show up in the products. And so, that doesn't mean, though, that there isn't a good use of dollars or proceeds from these advertisers. This is why we purchased Symbiosis where, you know, together with our know how as well as our information that we collect, we believe that we can be the best marketer. You can almost think of it as we're the agent of choice, where we can do the best marketing, spend for each one of these merchants and advertisers. And, know, a lot of times, you know, I think when you think about our relationship with everyone we work with, we are not just a delivery provider.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Many times, you know, we are the growth engine or the growth button, both in terms of what we can bring incrementally from our marketplace as well as the know how that we bring from our first party business, in teaching these retailers and advertisers on how to build the most successful digital powerhouses in their own rights. And so you see that again here in the symbiosis, example, as part of our advertising business.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Hey, Shubhrant. It's Ravi. I think, you know, one of the things that you mentioned was the acceleration of the ad business. I mean, I would clarify. Right?

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

I would not read into the disclosure as as changing the way in which we are operating the ad business. We're operating the business with the same level of discipline. The two metrics are merchant ROAS as well as consumer conversion. We think we're best in class for both of those. The goal for us has always been to build a great marketplace business.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

And if we do that, the ad business will scale and will continue to grow. But we are going with the same level of discipline as we've done before.

[Shweta Khajuria, MD - Global Internet at Wolfe Research LLC]

Thanks, Tony. Thanks, Ravi.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Deepak Mathivanan with Cantor Fitzgerald. Deepak, please go ahead.

[Deepak Mathivanan, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald]

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Tony, I wanted to ask an AI question. You know what? We're seeing big improvements in search and recommendation systems across a lot of consumer Internet platforms, basically using, you know, AI models with reasoning capabilities.

[Deepak Mathivanan, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald]

You obviously have a very strong engineering team that's on top of these tech breakthroughs. Can you talk about some of the ways how Dash is planning to use these larger AI models to, both improve user experience and also find additional pockets of operational efficiencies, maybe, say, in the next six to twelve months? And then, the second question, maybe for Ravi, you know, with all the supply growth and value prop improvements that you've done with new verticals, how meaningfully is new verticals now contributing to, kind of new customer growth to the platform? And also, maybe talk a little bit about the cross platform benefits for The U. S.

[Deepak Mathivanan, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald]

Restaurant business from new customers acquired through grocery and perhaps convenience? Thank you.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Sure. Hey, Deepak. You know, on the first question on AI, I'll I'll start. Whenever you see a, you know, revolutionary technology, that seems to be improving by the hour, you kinda have to rethink your entire business. And, you know, I think this is a thought that dawned on me probably four years ago, when you started seeing kind of the beginnings of what, you know, these things can do.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Because I I I I think that in in in many ways, it's not just a new technology. It's also a new way of how you attack different problems. So there are a few areas in in in in which, you know, we found a a lot of fruit in in terms of how we thought about applying it. So, you know, the first is thinking about, you know, what should the what should the consumer product actually look like in a world where, to your point, there there's a different way of doing everything from search to personalization to ranking? And and and I would say that there's a lot of, different iterations that, you know, I I think, you you'll see us take in terms of shipping a a a a version of the product that will really, I think, marry the best of what the technology brings in a way that actually brings pragmatic benefits to different use cases to the consumer.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

The second area is, you know, a lot of our business happens in the physical world. It's not just the deliveries, whether it's the creation of inventory lists or, menus from restaurants or all the work that we do to onboard different merchants and retailers and advertisers. There is a lot of, physical activity or or repetitive activity, that happens. All of those processes, you know, can be and are being rethought right now at DoorDash in terms of how we can do that in much more efficient ways with higher quality and fidelity. And the final way is, and we see this most notably in our engineering teams, is really how do we become a more productive organization if you if we were to start this company, you know, from scratch in 2025 versus, you know, getting our start back in 2013.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

We see this a lot in coding, certainly, where, obviously, probably not a surprise when you're talking about large language models, when you're talking about domains where there are correct answers and, easy ways to produce evaluations that can tell you whether you're on the right track or wrong track. Coding has been a natural use of productivity for DoorDash now for a few years in a row, and I think that's only gonna increase. And so that should also be true, though, in other functions. If you're starting know, I were building DoorDash from scratch today, we would have a very different approach, given all of the tools available. But this is kinda like when DoorDash started twelve years ago where you had, you know, the, the the real acceleration of cloud computing services where DoorDash no longer needed to manage data centers.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

We can kind of, you know, get easy access to AWS instances, and kinda get up and running. This is kind of true today, but just at the functional level instead of just the compute level where, you know, across every discipline inside the company, I think you can, from first principles, rederive how you would build a company from scratch, and that's what we're thinking about.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Hey, Deepak. It's Ravi. I'll talk about new verticals. Right? I know your question was around new CX, but let me take a, you know, step back and give you how we're thinking about overall new verticals and the performance of the business.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

I mean, look. New verticals had a really strong quarter. They're growing really fast, growing much faster than our core restaurants business. In fact, you know, we grew share. And I think, you know, like we said last time, our expectation is that we'll be volume share leaders within the next year.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

And you actually break that apart, we are seeing strength both from new as well as existing cohorts. On the new cohorts, today, the size of new cohorts ordering from new verticals is higher than same time last year. The engagement levels of mature cohorts, think of them as existing cohorts. The size of those cohorts is also larger than what we saw last year.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

At the same time, these cohorts are engaging with us more, which means order frequency is continuing to increase. When you look at the underlying cohort performance, it's very strong. Both users are growing. Order frequency is growing. We've hit all time highs across both of those metrics.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

The other question is what's actually driving that growth. Right? If you look at the performance of the business, we've increased the selection on the platform quite considerably. The quality of the product has continued to get better. We've made the product more affordable.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

More DashPass users are ordering from more categories. Look. In q four, you know, we talked about the fact that roughly about a quarter of our users order from new verticals. That number has continued to increase. All of these are signs pointing to cohort getting value, consumers getting value from the product.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

And for us, the focus continues to be to improve the underlying value proposition. And as long as we continue to do that, we are confident that, you know, it's gonna be a large business for us over time.

[Deepak Mathivanan, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald]

Awesome. Thank you so much.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Ron Josey with Citi. Ron, please go ahead.

[Ron Josey, Managing Director at Citi]

Great. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask a little bit more of the letter or the press release talks quite a bit about cohort trends, particularly within DASH PASS members as you still continue to have record. So talk to us a little bit more about how DASH PASS cohorts have been trending here, maybe on the newer cohorts in the last year or two, where it's it's listing similar results. And then as we think about sort of just the, you know, maybe bigger picture, I know we're still yet to close Deliveroo, any updated thoughts on the integration there? Thank you.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Yeah, Ron. I think the first one on DashPass and, Tony, feel free to chime in. Look. I mean, DashPass, Ron, had a very, very solid quarter. Look. I mean, we've been investing in DashPass for years. Right? Ultimately, the thing that is driving growth for DashPass for us is the underlying product continuing to get better.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

We're focused on adding more selection. We're focused on driving higher quality. We're making the product continue to be more affordable. There's more, you know, features and services available as a part of DashPass. Ultimately, all of this is driving the user journey.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

What we see is we're acquiring more new consumers than ever before. Those consumers are joining the platform. They're habituating more. They continue to graduate to DashPass. And DashPass, when they continue to graduate, the order frequency is higher.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

One of the things that we're seeing from a cohort perspective, Ron, in DashPass, even the older cohorts cohorts, even as old as five, six years ago, those cohorts continue to engage with us at higher levels. All of this is pointing to the underlying strength that we're seeing in this business. Mean, look, it's not, you know, anything that we've done over the last, you know, couple of quarters. Right? We've been investing in the product for several years now.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

The underlying product is getting better. That's what's driving the strength both in DashPass as well as the underlying cohorts.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

And, Ron, it's Tony. I I think your second question is about Deliveroo. You know, probably, obviously, there's not much I can say about it besides the fact that we we anticipate closing on, you know, the time line we had communicated, which is at some point in q four. It's obviously still subject to regulatory review. But look, with any acquisition, I mean, we're gonna run the the the company should it should it close in a way that we run anything at DoorDash, which is, you know, first and foremost, we have to build and invest in the best, product experience.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

And if we can do that and improve, you know, the order rates as well as improve the unity comics where we see efficiency gaps, those are the, you know, tools in which we can use to reinvest back into each one of the audience. You know, again, our investment philosophy has always been one of maximizing long term margin dollars, not, you know, short term unit margins. And that will continue to be the focus that we take, you know, to deliver a project should it close and any other project at DoorDash.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Nikhil Devnani with Bernstein. Nikhil, please go ahead.

[Nikhil Devnani, Senior Analyst at Bernstein]

Hey, thank you for taking the question. Tony, are you surprised by the ongoing strength and the size of new customer cohorts in The U. S? I mean, would seem like your audience in The U. S.

[Nikhil Devnani, Senior Analyst at Bernstein]

Is pretty large already in the high tens of millions of people, which is a big number relative to U. S. Households, but that doesn't seem to be affecting the funnel for new customer acquisition at all. So when you step back and take a multi year view, I mean, durable do you think this trend is? And are you able to also break down how much growth this business gets from new customers versus preexisting cohorts in a given year? Thank you.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Yeah. Hey, Nikhil. No. I'm not surprised is the short answer. And and, you know, I think I may have said this in in a few different calls before, whether when we're discussing this during, you know, COVID, peak inflation in '21, the normalization of COVID or or COVID reopenings in '22, where if if, you know, food is the most resilient, category and most sought after category for convenient consumption.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

If you just think about the fact that it is the, activity in which we engage with, you know, three times a day, 20 to 25 times a week, and more than a 100 times a month. And then now you include all of the shopping categories and use cases outside of food that DoorDash has been pursuing for the last five years, I think, you know, you you get the setup for, you know, some of the, you know, markets and the market expansion that you've seen. But look, I mean, a lot of the credit also goes to the fact that we're always trying to make our products better. Right? So our product today in '25, is better than our product, you know, yesterday in '24, and our product next year will be better than our product this year.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

So you have, you know, this big market out there where we're single digit percentage of that, when you look at the number of occasions that we actually, you know, capture today, we still lose the vast majority of those occasions to, you know, the pantry or a different form of consumption. And so it tells me that we actually have a very large runway ahead so long as we can keep improving the product. And I think one of the things that tends to get underestimated is how much you can actually keep improving the product. And my take on this is that there's a lot of room. You know, I I've said this before about, you know, our products into other categories, but even our product in the restaurant category, I believe, while it's best in class, I think in the eyes of the consumer, it still has a lot of gaps in terms of, where we can improve.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

And that's what we're working on, you know, every single day. And that's why, you know, perhaps they don't necessarily yield material benefits in the current quarter or even the next quarter. But I do know that if we keep working on this, the compounding does have that effect, you know, in the years to come. And so sure. You know, perhaps we've, we we've been fortunate to to serve, lots of customers today.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

But when I look at the actual, you know, occasions that we capture today, whether it's, you know, food consumption, retail consumption, and then when I look at this on a global basis, and then when I also include, you know, shopping inside stores, not just ordering, you know, to the home or to the office, I think we still are very, very, very small and early. And we can't underestimate just how much work we still have left to do to satisfy increasing customer expectations.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Hey, Nick. It's, Ravi. Look. I mean, I think the second part of your question was around, like, hey. What's driving the growth?

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Look. Everything is important. Right? Size of new cohorts is important. Size of existing cohorts is important.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Obviously, mathematically, the size of the existing cohorts is larger than new cohorts. What we're seeing is the size of new cohorts is larger today than last year. Size of existing cohorts today is larger than last year, which points to two things. Right? One is people are coming back more often, which means retention is increasing.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

All of that is being driven by the underlying improvements that we're making in the product. The second dimension you should think about is order frequency. Again, order frequency hit an all time high, but, again, we're a small fraction of the total number of usable moments just across restaurants. If you add other categories, there's still a lot of opportunity for us to grow. So if you're thinking about it from a model perspective, Nikhil, I would say growth is being driven by both users as well as order frequency.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

On the user side, both new as well as existing are higher than before.

[Nikhil Devnani, Senior Analyst at Bernstein]

Thanks for that. And Ravi, if I could just follow-up with a with a separate question. Sure. The net revenue margin expanded as as promised. How are you thinking about that for the back half of the year?

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Thanks for staying as promised, Nikhil. I mean, look, I mean, you know, talked about the fact that, you know, take rate was going to be higher in Q2. It was in line with our expectation. I mean, look, our business, there's, you know, factors that drive, you know, the take rates. Specifically in q two, Dasher cost is seasonal for us.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Right? Again, I'll reiterate. We've talked about this before. Dasher costs are higher for us in q one. Dasher costs are higher in q four.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

So you're thinking about the model nickel in q four. Dasher costs are gonna be higher. They're more reasonable in q two and q three. So as we came into q two, we saw benefit from Dasher costs. Two, we are driving improvements in the underlying product, especially quality, which gave us benefit in terms of credits and refunds.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

The third factor was ads is becoming a larger portion. So if you put all that together, that's what drove the increase in take rate in q two. Now if you're thinking about the rest of the year, right, Nikhil, I would think that h two, the second half take rate is gonna be higher than the first half take rate. We're just taking a step back. I mean, look.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

We are not optimizing the business towards a specific take rate, let alone a specific take rate within a specific quarter. Our goal has been to focus on overall profit dollars. Our goal is to invest flexibly up and down the p and l. That's actually what's driving the strength that you're seeing in the business. Right?

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

We have the ability. We have the opportunity. When we see opportunities to invest, we double down. That's what's driving strength both in the top line as well as the bottom line.

[Nikhil Devnani, Senior Analyst at Bernstein]

Thank you both.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Michael Martin with MoffettNathanson. Michael, please go ahead.

[Michael Morton, Senior Research Analyst, Internet (E-commerce & Marketplaces) at Moffettnathanson LLC]

Hi. Thank you for the question. I think this is probably for Ravi. I wanted to ask some of the operating expenses. You typically refer to them as fixed operating expenses.

[Michael Morton, Senior Research Analyst, Internet (E-commerce & Marketplaces) at Moffettnathanson LLC]

They're running maybe a little bit hotter than some of us might have expected, not that you should manage the business to our expectations. But we're living in a very interesting time where you hear a lot of the tech leaders talk about no headcount growth utilizing AI within their corporate structure. So I was curious to how you think we should think about your needs for headcount growth going forward. And then maybe it just could be helpful with kind of the fixed cost line item in the model. Thanks, Ravi.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Yes. Hey, Mike. You know, I'll give you the model part first and then talk about the philosophy. Look. You're just trying to model, I would say, OpEx.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Roughly, you should think about it as 2% of GOV in that range, which we've talked about for the past couple of quarters. Over long term, like, look I mean, we think of that as, you know, any other part of the p and l. The goal is to drive leverage. Goal is to drive efficiency. So the topic I mean, here's how I think about it. Right? Like, Mike, look, we are investing in the business. We're still finding great pockets to continue to drive investment in the business. We're being very disciplined.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

We've added people both on the product and the engineering side in specific areas where the return on investment continues to be great. When you look at the output, I mean, the output is showing up in terms of retention. Output is showing up in terms of order frequency, the output is showing up in terms of improvement in unit economics. Right? For us, all of that is being driven by the underlying improvements we are making in the product.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

We still think there is a lot of opportunity for us to continue to invest. But look, I mean, longer term, goal is to drive leverage on this. We are driving a lot of automation inside the business across the board. In general, the way I think about this is the real cost of operating the business, and goal is to generate leverage, you know, just like any other part of the p and l.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Really appreciate it. The only thing I'd add to what Ravi said is you gotta think of DoorDash as a, you know, growing set of businesses. Right? So it it it it DoorDash, five years ago, was largely one product and, you know, operating in one country, restaurant delivery inside The United States in terms of what contributed to our financial results. Today, you know, we have five businesses.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

We have a business outside of The US. We have a business outside of US restaurant delivery in all of our category expansion. We have a business with our commerce platform. We have an ad business, and we're working on new businesses. And so, you know, I think one of the ways in which we've thought about this is, you know, where do we actually deploy our best people, and are they actually working on the right problems?

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

And do we have the right number of people doing that? And, you know, a lot of our, you know, ad account growth is really geared towards working on new problems that we see that we can solve for local commerce versus some of the existing ones. So it's maybe a bit hard to see in the averages, but that's a bit more what's happening under the hood.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Andrew Boone with Citizens. Andrew, please go ahead.

[Andrew Boone, Managing Director at Citizens JMP]

Thanks so much for taking the questions. It sounded like WOLT had a pretty good quarter in terms of frequency as well as unit economics. Can you guys just help unpack what are the improvements you guys are making in that business? And then I wanted to go back to frequency. Frequency continues to improve in terms of The U.

[Andrew Boone, Managing Director at Citizens JMP]

S. And was at all time highs. Can you guys unpack that? Is that new verticals? Is that wider cohorts that you guys talked about maybe a year ago of people that order once a quarter, now ordering once a month.

[Andrew Boone, Managing Director at Citizens JMP]

Is there anything else you guys can shed in terms of light on why frequency continues to just hit new highs? Thanks so much.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Yeah. Hey, Andrew. It's Ravi. I'll take the first one on international. Look.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

I mean, international business, really strong quarter. When I think about it from a growth perspective, growth continues to be quite strong coming from both growth end users as well as order frequency. When I look at the MAUs just for the international business, they have hit an all time high. A lot of that is being driven by look. I mean, the underlying improvements we're making in the product.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Right? We've added more selection. We've added more categories. We have a new vertical business in international that's also growing quite nicely. Vault plus has been a good addition to our overall portfolio.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

That's a subscription program internationally. We've launched that about two years ago. That continues to do quite well. And when I look at the slope of the Vault Plus curve, actually, it's growing faster than DashPass at the same time. At the same time, you know, the improvements in both quality as well as affordability that's driving people to come back to us and order more.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

So order frequency has also hit an all time high. So when I put all of that together, right, international business, not only is it growing, but we're gaining share across most of the countries that we operate in, Really proud of the progress that the team has made. And on the second point I would make is when I look at the unit economics, I mean, I mentioned that gross profit positive for overall international. That continues to be the case. And even on a unit economic basis year over year, we've seen a good amount of improvement.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

So net net, mean, business is strong both on the top as well as the bottom line for our overall international portfolio.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Yeah. Andrew, I'll I'll I'll take the Tony, I'll take the second question on frequency. You know, the way I've always thought about this is, you know, how do we solve more and more customer problems? And so that there's more than one way to win, so to speak, where we can actually, you know, engage customers, you know, that makes the most sense for them in terms of actually increasing their frequency. Like, no no customer, and to put it different way, thinks about DoorDash's order frequency as a metric that they care about.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

And, you know, the short answer is it is different for different customer groups. I I you know, there is obviously the introduction of new categories and new use cases. There is the introduction of DashPass and the growing benefits from DashPass. There is also improvements within each one of the use cases, whether it's restaurants. And within restaurants, there's different, you know, occasions within meal times, for example.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

There's different categories, obviously, outside of restaurants. Within each one of those categories, there's various different things beneath that too so that, you know, you can actually improve each one of these things. So there's no one thing or two or three things that drives the growth frequency. And and and this is in general how we set up a lot of our product teams so that, you know, a, it's actually, you know, solving for that specific unique customer what it is that actually, you know, solves a problem for them so that we can grow a metric we care about. And then, you know, finding more than one way, ideally, several dozen ways to win so that the growth is not only enduring but also geometric.

[Andrew Boone, Managing Director at Citizens JMP]

Thank you.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Youssef Squali with Truist. Youssef, please go ahead.

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

Great. Thank you so much. So two quick questions. One, on Seven Rooms, I think that acquisition closed in early or maybe mid June. I'm assuming, Ravi, that the contribution was de minimis.

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

But maybe just talk about, Tony, how how does it unlock new opportunity for you if you had to dream the dream with kind of building a SaaS model around seven rooms? Can you maybe just share how you kinda see that evolving for you? And then in terms of profitability for new verticals, can you maybe I e, non restaurant, can you just provide an update on how has it progressed as your growth is accelerated? Does it continue to improve on the margin, or or are you holding the profitability relatively flat to maximize top line growth? Thank you.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Yeah. Hey, Yosef. On on the first question on on on seven rooms, I'll I'll take that one. I mean, look. We we started our commerce platform business in '20, in the 1636 and and in earnest in the 2017 where we shipped DoorDash drive.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

And, you know, the the the dual mission of the company has always been on the one side, we wanna help you grow and bring you incremental sales. That's the job of our marketplace. And on the other side, we wanna empower you to do it on your own. So every physical business, small, medium, and large inside cities can win in the digital economy. And, you know, we we we now have built or shipped two of the most successful, you know, b two b products in our category with DoorDash drive and storefront serving you know, each serving hundreds of thousands of businesses.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

And, but it but it still is a very small, or solves a very small fraction of all the problems that a business needs to solve. Or even compared to the DoorDash marketplace, it's still a very small fraction of the product portfolio of what we've built for ourselves. And, you know, what products like SevenRoom, you know, bring is really it brings a marketing component and, a data analytics component to understand, you know, all of the different customers that engage with each one of these merchants in a omnichannel three sixty way. And, obviously, if you can marry, you know, the best in class product, which we believe SevenRoom has built, with the know how as well as the datasets that DoorDash has access to, I think we can build something very remarkable as, you know, a third, b to b product that will be very, successful to, you know, many, many merchants both in restaurants and beyond. And so I you know, this is less thinking about, you know, the business model.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Although you're right, this this is a very different type of business or b to b, commerce platform, which, you know, contributes to, you know, metrics like revenue but not not GOV. But but really the way I think about it is what are the what are all the different problems we can solve? Because if you can solve all the different problems for these physical businesses, I think you're gonna grow the GDP of the cities in which these businesses reside. And if you can grow the GDP of the cities, then I think that's a win for everybody. And so that that continues to be, you know, how we we've always thought about this, and it's, it's why we're really, really excited about, you know, closing the acquisition of Seven Rooms.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Hey, Youssef. On Seven Rooms, you're right. I mean, we are investing in the product, but, from a bottom line perspective, you're not gonna notice the impact in the second half compared to the rest of the portfolio. To your second point around new verticals, I mean, look, you know, tactically speaking. Right?

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

When you purely think about it from a unit economics perspective, yes, unit economics improved in our unit your new vertical business year over year. The thing that you have to remember is, like, look, we have a structural advantage. We have consumers existing on the platform. We have dashers existing on the platform. So when you're thinking about it from, you know, modeling perspective, right, like, the flow through from gross profit to contribution is gonna be very high whenever we stand up, you know, newer categories.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

I feel very good about where we are on unit economics. What we are focused on is driving scale in the business. Look. Ultimately, what we're trying to do is the same playbook. Right?

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

We're trying to improve the unit economics. Take that. We invest that back in the business to drive retention as well as our frequency because that ultimately drives scale scale drives efficiency in the business. And you're seeing that come through in the business. Right?

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

When I talk about q two to Deepak's question earlier, look. Mean, cohort sizes are increasing, both new as well as existing for new verticals, order frequency is growing, at the same time, the unit economics are improving. We feel really good about the performance. We feel business is scaling, we're gonna continue to scale that business. Awesome. Thank you both.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Jason Esteyn with Oppenheimer. Jason, please go ahead.

[Jason Helfstein, MD & Head - Internet at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Thanks. I wanted to ask a bit more about DashPass. Approve the I appreciate disclosing the quarter. So, you know, what has been basically the the kind of most effective method for growing DashPass users? Does it differ by country?

[Jason Helfstein, MD & Head - Internet at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

And then talk about how some of the co marketing partners have played into the DashPass expansion. Thanks.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Yeah. Hey, Jason. It's Tony. I'll take this one. I I don't know which earnings call.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

I may have said this before. But look, when it when it comes to DashPass, you know, the 80 and the 8020 of DashPass has always been, first and foremost, make the product more use. Make DoorDash make Volt more useful. And the more useful we can make it, the more likely that a product like Volt Plus or DashPass will actually get used. We don't want any leakage in the system.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

We want a product that, you know, people see, you know, a large multiple in terms of the benefits they receive versus the amount they have to pay for the subscriptions. That's the 80. That continues to be the 80. There's no one thing that contributes to the 80. And so it's mostly an obsession over focusing on every product detail and in in increasing the the the number of benefits.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

The 20, though, to your point, in my opinion, gets earned after you achieve the 80, which is if you can achieve the 80 and build the best in class products or the most useful ones and I can't think of any other program, you know, that can connect or or get get used as often if you can maximize the number of connections between consumers and businesses. Then you can achieve the 20, which is to build a successful partner ecosystem. We've been very lucky in that where, you know, starting in in 2018, 2019, we partnered with Chase. And we we haven't done that many of these, but we tend to go deep and partner with a few like minded partners. You know, more recently, we had we partnered with T Mobile, where, we get to go super deep in ways that benefit, you know, both audiences, from both companies.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

But, you know, that that really is the 20, and it can only happen if we've actually built the most useful products to start with. And so that continues to be what the focus for both DashPass and Vault Plus are.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Michael McGovern with Bank of America. Michael, please go ahead.

[Michael Mcgovern, VP & Senior Financial Advisor at Bank of America Merrill Lynch]

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I have two, maybe one for Tony and one for Ravi. I'm curious on the CocoRobotics partnership for Sidewalk robots that I think occurred in April. Any insight into how that launch has gone in LA and Chicago or any other new thoughts on robotic delivery methods?

[Michael Mcgovern, VP & Senior Financial Advisor at Bank of America Merrill Lynch]

And then second, it looks like the AOV or basket size has continued to see this uptick in growth for a couple quarters in a row now. Anything to call out there in terms of or just normal kind of growth in food costs? Thank you.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Yeah. Hey, Michael. I'll take the first question on on, robotics. You know, our our our work in robotics started in 2017, when we're really trying to understand how autonomous delivery, you know, can actually be shaped and and and built and and ultimately commercialized. And, you know, I think the biggest thing that we've learned there is that doing autonomous delivery is actually very different from doing, autonomous passenger driving or robotaxis. And that's because, obviously, in a a passenger context, the passenger can walk in and walk out of the car even if the drop off or pickup locations aren't perfect. But in the case of delivery, that's obviously not true. And and in order to, you know, make sure that you can make, autonomous delivery happen and achieve, its full potential, you kinda have to solve for the end to end system. And that's kind of, you know, probably the single biggest learning we've had.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

And so, you know, we, we've made a few partnerships, noted in your question. Those those have gone great. You know, we we definitely see, you know, great potential in in in building that out. But but we've also, you know, done our own work as well. And so, you know, we don't have any announcements to make at the time, but it's something that, you know, we've been studying and and working on for for several years now, and it's something we're very excited about.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

Hey, Mike. On the second point, I think you're probably looking at the OV for the overall business. I mean, look, largely a reason of result of mix shift, we are seeing new verticals become a larger portion of the business. Even within new verticals, what we are seeing is an increase in basket sizes as users, you know, try to use us for more use cases. A lot of that is being driven by the underlying improvements we've made in the product.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

It'll be a more selection than ever before. The underlying product continues to get better and more easier to use. That's what's driving the higher baskets in new verticals. But the overall, you know, AOV at the total company level is largely a mix shift to new verticals.

[Michael Mcgovern, VP & Senior Financial Advisor at Bank of America Merrill Lynch]

Got it. Thanks so much.

[Ravi Inukonda, CFO at DoorDash]

No problem.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Lee Horowitz with Deutsche Bank. Lee, please go ahead.

[Lee Horowitz, Co-Head - Internet Equity Research at Deutsche Bank]

Great. Thanks so much for the time. While we appreciate grocery seems to be a big priority today, can you maybe update us on the state of your retail business and the indications on the pace of growth here, how the unit economics are trending and how you may be thinking about investing a bit more aggressively in this vertical? And then maybe an update on drone delivery, if you could. Some regulatory news in The U.

[Lee Horowitz, Co-Head - Internet Equity Research at Deutsche Bank]

S. Making it easier. You guys have been running some tests in Europe as it relates to drone delivery. I guess, how do you see that product perhaps changing the unit economics of your business over time, and how do you think about maybe leveraging partners versus building yourself?

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Yeah. Hey, Lee. It's Tony. Maybe I'll take both, feel free to add, Ravi. You know, the first question on retail.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

I mean, retail is a really exciting business for us. I mean, it's kind of it reminds me a bit of, you know, where it is today, kind of where grocery was for us maybe in 2021, something like that. We've, put a different way, we're just at the beginning, and we're just scratching the surface. You know, I think the biggest, you know, learning that we've had on retail is that it is just very, different buying something that is nonperishable, and also very different based on each category in terms of, you know, the the SKU depth or the item coverage that you need to build a product that actually addresses real customer problems, as well as, you know, everything from redoing the entire shopping experience to, you know, the post checkout experience and all of that. And so all of this to say that it's, you know, it's a sizable business growing for us today, growing super fast, but it is so early in terms of where it is as a product.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

And so, you know, back to one of the comments I made earlier in this call, you know, I I think it tends to get underestimated the the the number of things you can do to improve a product or the amount of time it takes to actually do it. And then once you do it, you know, the customer says thank you, and then they say what's next. And and so those expectations always go up. And so we got a long, long, long ways to go in retail. We may be a leader or perhaps even the leader in third party today in that category.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

But I would say, you know, as a product, it is, it is a baby, in terms of, where we are. You know, the second question I think was about drones. You're right. We're first excited very excited about some of the recent, work, that we and others have done with, the administration in, you know, hopefully green lighting drone delivery in The US. As as you kinda noted in your question, you know, other parts of the world actually have kinda come to this development, even before The US.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

And, you know, we've done a lot of that with partners like Google Wing, for example. We've announced, you know, other partnerships as well in other parts of the world, and we're very excited about those partnerships. I I I the way I think about how this plays out and, you know, we'll have more to share later, But it's that you you kinda have to think about all the different use cases, and you gotta solve for the end to end system. Because it's not just the vehicle itself, in this case, whether you're talking about a drone or in the case earlier of the previous question about, you know, a land vehicle, those products in themselves, as complicated as they are, actually only addresses maybe 20% of the complexity to actually deliver something that I think could be scalable, economically viable, and most importantly, actually solve customer problems in a way that, you know, human drivers cannot. And so a lot of work needs to be done.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

We certainly have very strong points of view given that we've been working on this for about eight years at this point, and we look forward to sharing at some point in the future.

[Lee Horowitz, Co-Head - Internet Equity Research at Deutsche Bank]

Helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Brian Nowak with Morgan Stanley. Brian, please go ahead.

[Brian Nowak, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley]

Thanks for taking my question. Tony, you've made so many impressive improvements to the platform and we can see it in the results. Let me ask you a little bit of a tricky one. Can you talk to us about the areas where you've had more challenges than you expected in sort of improving the product, improving the customer experience, improving the merchant service? What are those areas that are proving to be harder that we should sort of look for the next unlocks to come from long term on the platform?

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Thanks. Yeah. Hey, Brian. I wish you get to, you know, have a peek into my inbox because I get several 100 emails a week, you know, from all of our audiences, whether it's consumers, dashers, or merchants. And I don't know if they think that our improvements are very impressive.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Those emails tend to, perhaps suggest the opposite, which is a daily reminder given that I I've done customer support now daily for each day for the last twelve years that, we seem to be falling short, actually. So I'm not so sure that I agree with the premise of the question. It's not tricky at all, the question, because I actually think we're pretty, far behind in in in each one of the areas that from, you know, from the perspective of the customer, not the perspective of what our business metrics suggest or our competitive position. And so, look. I mean, this is true.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

Maybe we can take an example this morning. I I received an email about how we showed up at the wrong parking lot inside a apartment complex. And and and and and, you know, that that caused both a delay in delivery as well as, you know, a fear that perhaps the driver wasn't even gonna show up. And and and so whether it's very small things like that, that sounds very small, but when you compound them to the billions of orders that we do, to, you know, understanding how do we play now in new geographies or new categories or, how ought how might the product ought to change, you you know, given where the world is going with AI or, how business models, you know, might be adding complexity to our own business. We talked, you know, a bit about SaaS earlier.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

I would say there are many areas, Brian, in which we're we're struggling. And every day, I think, is a daily struggle where the job is to try to make an improvement for that day. And one of the things I've learned is over the last twelve years of doing this is if you can actually do that, you'd you'd be surprised at both how, how much progress you can make over a year, but also, how systemically you can actually create an environment, a team that actually knows how to repeat this in any new domain, which I think is the most important skill in a world where, you know, things are changing ever so fast and, frankly, increasingly faster every hour of the day. And and and and that's kind of what I keep, you know, stressing to the teams. It's we kinda make the next improvement.

[Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair at DoorDash]

So is there one area that I feel like, oh, there's been it it's been harder to crack than another? The answer is no. Because I I literally, you know, talk to our customers every single day, and it seems like we got opportunities everywhere.

[Brian Nowak, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley]

That's very helpful. Thanks, Tony.

[Operator]

There's no further question at this time. That concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Weston Twigg, Finance and Investor Relations
• Tony Xu, Co-Founder, CEO & Chair
• Ravi Inukonda, CFO

Analysts

• Shweta Khajuria, MD - Global Internet at Wolfe Research LLC
• Deepak Mathivanan, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald
• Ron Josey, Managing Director at Citi
• Nikhil Devnani, Senior Analyst at Bernstein
• Michael Morton, Senior Research Analyst, Internet (E-commerce & Marketplaces) at Moffettnathanson LLC
• Andrew Boone, Managing Director at Citizens JMP
• Youssef Squali, MD & Head of Internet and Digital Media Research Group at Truist Securities
• Jason Helfstein, MD & Head - Internet at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.
• Michael Mcgovern, VP & Senior Financial Advisor at Bank of America Merrill Lynch
• Lee Horowitz, Co-Head - Internet Equity Research at Deutsche Bank
• Brian Nowak, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley