DoorDash Inc Earnings - Q4 2025 Analysis & Highlights
DoorDash Q4 2025 earnings call focused on strong operational performance across core and new business segments, significant platform modernization investments, international expansion through Deliveroo, and strategic positioning in autonomous delivery and merchant services to build a comprehensive local commerce operating system.
Key Financial Results
Q4 2025 performance: The US restaurant business continued to demonstrate strength with contribution margin improving year-over-year in Q4.
Record subscriber growth: DashPass achieved record subscriber additions in both Q4 and full year 2025.
All-time high monthly active users (MAUs): The company hit an all-time high in terms of MAUs.
Strong order frequency: Order frequency continues to be quite strong across the business.
New verticals performance: New verticals had a really strong quarter as well as the year, with the company being the fastest growing in the US as it relates to third-party peers.
Business Segment Results
US restaurant business: The US restaurant business grew faster at a larger scale in 2025 compared to 2024, with continued margin improvements expected in 2026.
Grocery and retail expansion: Approximately 30% of customers are ordering outside of the restaurant category, with the company becoming the leading third-party transaction platform in the US for grocery and retail.
Deliveroo acquisition performance: Deliveroo is growing much faster at the same profit contribution that was expected before the acquisition, with the company gaining share in its largest markets.
International business: The business outside of the US is experiencing faster growth than the US, which itself had two of the fastest growing quarters in 2025 in the last four years.
New verticals unit economics: The team has made really good progress in unit economics year-over-year, with the entire retail and grocery business expected to be unit economic positive in the second half of the year.
Capital Allocation
Global tech stack investment: The company is making a major investment in building a unified global tech stack to improve velocity and efficiency across its three operating platforms (DoorDash, Wolt, and Deliveroo).
Autonomous vehicle development: Significant investments are being made in autonomous delivery platforms, including DoorDash Dot and drone projects, to enable cost-effective delivery across diverse geographies.
Merchant services expansion: The company is investing in merchant services including Storefront software, SevenRooms CRM integration, and DashMart Fulfillment Services.
Investment quantum: The quantum of investment dollars for 2026 is very similar to what was expected at the time of the last call.
2026 EBITDA expectations: Full year EBITDA expectations for 2026 have not changed since the last call, with 2026 EBITDA margin expected to be up slightly compared to 2025 excluding Deliveroo, and Deliveroo expected to produce about $200 million of EBITDA.
Industry Trends and Dynamics
Grocery and retail growth: The company continued very high growth rates in the grocery sector in Q4 and throughout 2025, with no impact observed from increased competition.
Consumer preference for choice: Customers prefer choice in grocery shopping, with the average customer buying from multiple places for different types of groceries (meat, produce, pantry items, specialty items).
Subscription adoption: Subscription continues to be a big driver of growth, with more consumers habituating and graduating towards DashPass as the product continues to improve.
New consumer engagement: The number of new consumers that join and start their journey with new verticals is improving on a year-over-year basis.
Competitive Landscape
Europe market position: The company feels really great about its position in Europe, being the leading player in many countries on the continent.
Competitive advantages in delivery: DoorDash is well-positioned to solve the end-to-end job for customers, which includes mapping the physical world, executing operations excellently, and collecting metadata for personalization.
Amazon competition in grocery: The company has not seen an impact on its growth from Amazon doubling down on grocery and perishables categories.
Agentic commerce positioning: DoorDash views AI assistants and agentic commerce platforms as channel partners similar to how Facebook and Google served as channels in the past.
Macroeconomic Environment
Winter storm impact: There was an impact from winter storms in January of approximately $20 million on Q1 EBITDA.
Seasonal business patterns: The company's business exhibits natural seasonality, with second half EBITDA historically higher than first half due to volume growth and unit economics improvements throughout the year.
Growth Opportunities and Strategies
Operating system for local commerce: The company is building an operating system for local commerce that includes software for businesses, warehousing and physical infrastructure, lowest-cost delivery at highest quality, and amazing software capabilities.
Longer distance and higher effort deliveries: The company is investing to support growth in longer distance and higher effort deliveries, particularly in grocery and retail categories.
DashMart Fulfillment Services: The company announced DashMart Fulfillment Services to partner with companies like Kroger and CVS to offer same hour, same day delivery at the lowest cost with perfect inventory accuracy.
Autonomous delivery platform: The autonomous delivery platform is viewed as the most valuable part of what the company is building, with a fleet of different vehicles by land and air, some built internally and others through partnerships.
Dasher experience enhancement: The company is investing directly into Dashers to ensure pay models and app experiences reflect the greater complexity of grocery and retail orders, and to partner with Dashers on cataloging physical information.
Merchant software and services: The company is building software for every small, medium and large physical business, including B2B products for delivery through merchants' own channels and e-commerce solutions.
In-store traffic generation: The company announced an in-store business in 2025 to drive traffic inside restaurants using its 56 million MAUs and over 100 million annual customers.
DashPass ecosystem expansion: The company sees a long runway for DashPass with opportunities to add more benefits, including discounted delivery for complicated deliveries and value discounts on key items.
Storefront and SevenRooms integration: SevenRooms has been adding venues 50% faster post-acquisition than before, with the integration proving the thesis that combining best-in-class CRM software with the largest demand generator platform creates value for restaurateurs.
Advertising business growth: The ads business is growing really fast, with Symbiosys doubling the number of advertisers and tripling spend from those advertisers.
Smart Campaigns product: The company shipped a Smart Campaigns product that helps restaurants buy ROI-positive ad campaigns, which has been one of the fastest growing products on the restaurant front.
Financial Guidance and Outlook
2026 EBITDA margin: 2026 EBITDA margin is expected to be up slightly compared to 2025 excluding Deliveroo, with Deliveroo expected to produce about $200 million of EBITDA.
Q1 2026 headwinds: Q1 EBITDA from Deliveroo is expected to be about $25 million lower than Q4, but the full year number remains $200 million.
Dasher cost trends: Dasher costs as a percentage of gross order value (GOV) generated leverage in Q4 on a year-over-year basis, with continued leverage expected in Q1 as a percentage of GOV on a year-over-year basis.
US restaurant margin improvement: The company expects to continue to improve margins in the US restaurant business in 2026, albeit at a lower pace compared to prior years.
New verticals profitability: The entire retail and grocery business is expected to be unit economic positive in the second half of 2026.
International expansion: International business excluding Deliveroo is expected to be contribution profit positive in the second half of 2026.
Operating expense guidance: Operating expense is expected to be roughly about 2% of GOV in 2026.
Tech stack completion: The majority of the global tech stack work is expected to be completed in 2026.
Platform modernization benefits: Benefits from the global tech stack work are already being seen through shipping features from one market that are working into different markets.
GOV growth outlook: Growth in the business continues to be quite strong from both existing and new consumers, with MAU growth and order frequency remaining strong.
Technology and Platform Development
Three-platform challenge: The company currently operates on three tech platforms for very similar businesses, which slows down feature shipping as each feature must be shipped three times in slightly different ways.
Redundant costs: There are components of tech stack spend that are redundant, especially as the company runs both tech stacks in parallel, with the majority of that spend expected in 2026 and some in 2027.
Coding agent adoption: The company is seeing 90-plus-percent daily active usage of coding agents across all engineers, which has made them more productive.
Feature velocity improvement: The company expects to improve the velocity in which it ships features and clear out inefficiencies as a result of building the unified tech platform.