Revenue, Adjusted EBITDA and Net Income All Set Records - Then Came a $17 Billion Commitment to Instacart
Over these 12 quarters: share price $99 to $184 (+86%); operating income -89 to 442 US$ million; operating income margin -3.9% to 9.6%. One graph in actual numbers: bars are the quarter's operating income, over them the share price at quarter-end (left axis) and the operating income margin (right axis); each line is fitted to its own range, so read the timing, not the heights. Prices are adjusted for splits.
DoorDash posted record revenue, Adjusted EBITDA and net income for the third quarter of 2026, and in the same press release announced a definitive agreement to acquire Instacart (Maplebear Inc.) for roughly $17 billion. Each of the quarter's three profit measures improved on its own recent trend: income from operations nearly tripled from the prior quarter, net income rose 91% year-over-year, and Adjusted EBITDA rose 41% year-over-year to $1,060 million. None of that is really what the quarter is about. The real event is the Instacart commitment - DoorDash's largest acquisition by a wide margin, funded mostly by cash and debt rather than stock, with a close management says could take until the first half of 2028. The numbers show a company that can afford the bet; they say nothing about whether it pays off.
Operating Income Nearly Tripled From Last Quarter, Mostly on Falling Opex
Income from operations jumped from $156 million in Q2 2026 to $442 million in Q3 2026 - a sequential increase of 183% - even though revenue grew only 4% over the same period. DoorDash's own quarter-over-quarter figures show why: sales and marketing expense fell 7% to $765 million, research and development fell 7% to $499 million, and general and administrative expense fell 21% to $426 million, a combined $204 million decline in dollar terms. Added to $162 million of revenue growth, that is $366 million of favorable swing - more than the operating income actually gained, because two items moved the other way: cost of revenue (excluding depreciation and amortization) rose $64 million quarter over quarter, from $2,107 million to $2,171 million, and depreciation and amortization rose $17 million, from $295 million to $312 million (DoorDash does not print a standalone quarterly depreciation-and-amortization trend table in this release; this figure comes from the add-back line in its Adjusted EBITDA reconciliation). A $1 million drop in restructuring charges partly offset both. Add it up - +$162 million revenue, -$64 million cost of revenue, +$56 million sales and marketing, +$36 million research and development, +$112 million general and administrative, -$17 million depreciation and amortization, +$1 million restructuring - and the bridge reaches exactly $286 million, the actual increase in operating income from $156 million to $442 million. Year-over-year, income from operations was up 71% from $258 million, and the operating margin (income from operations divided by revenue) expanded to roughly 9.6% of revenue from roughly 7.5% a year earlier.
The Instacart Deal Is Built on Cash and Debt, Not DoorDash Stock
DoorDash structured its $65.00-per-share offer for Instacart so that cash makes up at least 75% of the total consideration, financed by a new 364-day senior unsecured bridge loan from JPMorgan Chase rather than by issuing DoorDash shares. The $65.00 price is a 26% premium to Instacart's close on October 22, 2026, the last trading day before media reports of a possible deal, and values Instacart at an equity value of approximately $17 billion. Instacart shareholders can elect to receive $65.00 in cash, 0.3372 DoorDash shares, or a mix of $48.75 in cash plus 0.0843 DoorDash shares, subject to a cap limiting total stock consideration to 25% of the deal and proration if that option is oversubscribed. Both the all-stock and mixed elections imply the same reference price for DoorDash stock: $65.00 ÷ 0.3372 shares, and separately ($65.00 - $48.75) ÷ 0.0843 shares, both work out to roughly $192.76 - well above where DoorDash actually closed the quarter (see "Stock Price" below). DoorDash is not subject to a financing condition and says it is targeting investment-grade credit ratings; about 19% of Instacart's shares are already committed to vote in favor. The deal needs Instacart shareholder approval and antitrust clearance in the US, Canada and Israel, and DoorDash's own release puts the expected close at "the end of 2027 or the first half of 2028" - more than a year away.
The Buyback Went Quiet Again, Right as the Stock Hit Its Highest Price Since October 2025
DoorDash's cash-flow statement shows it spent nothing repurchasing its own stock between July 1 and October 28, 2026, after spending $887 million in the second quarter - and the quiet stretch coincided with the stock's highest close in over a year. The nine-month 2026 cash-flow statement shows $1,049 million spent on share repurchases, the identical figure (and identical 6.8 million shares) already disclosed as the cumulative total through June 30 (Q1's $162 million plus Q2's $887 million) and again as the "year to date through October 28" total in this release - meaning Q3 and the first four weeks of Q4 saw zero repurchase activity. That pause fell across the same window in which DoorDash's stock touched $231.74 at the August close, its highest month-end price since October 2025's $254.37, before falling back to $183.55 by quarter-end. It is the same pattern flagged in the Q1 2026 post: the buyback has repeatedly run when the stock was cheap (Q1's $146.93 average price, Q2's $156.88 average) and gone quiet when it was not, without DoorDash ever stating this as a deliberate policy.
The Prescription
DoorDash should keep building its own warehouse-based grocery fulfillment capability (DashMart) on its own timeline rather than treating the Instacart deal as the fix for a problem it says, in its own words, still exists: "the product still isn’t there," and "consumers are still asked to pay a premium for imperfect delivery." That line, buried in the middle of a press release otherwise built around record numbers, is a genuinely candid admission about the state of grocery delivery as a category - DoorDash's own included - and the Instacart deal won't close for over a year, if it closes at all once three antitrust regulators have weighed in. Scale from Instacart is a real argument for better unit economics in warehouse-based fulfillment, but it is not a reason to slow the five-year DashMart build that DoorDash itself credits with 99%+ fulfillment accuracy and delivery times more than 10 minutes faster than ordinary grocery orders.
What it should stop doing: treating "other income (expense), net" as a line too small to explain. It swung from a $(81) million loss in Q3 2025 to a $5 million gain in Q3 2026 - an $86 million improvement that, on its own, accounts for more than a third of this quarter's entire pre-tax income gain - with the filing still offering only a generic description (foreign currency effects) and no breakdown by magnitude or driver (see Beyond the Usual below). This is the same disclosure gap flagged in the Q2 2026 post; it is now a two-quarter pattern, not a one-off.
Key Financial Metrics
US$ billion; margin is operating income as a percent of net revenue, per quarter. Values are standalone quarters; 3 derived from annual, half-year or nine-month figures (Q4 2023, Q4 2024, Q4 2025).
Q3 2026 vs. Q3 2025 - consolidated, reported in USD (DoorDash reports natively in USD, no FX conversion needed)
| Metric | Q3 2026 | Q3 2025 | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $4,616M | $3,446M | +34% |
| Adjusted EBITDA» | $1,060M | $754M | +41% |
| Income from Operations | $442M | $258M | +71% |
| Net Income attributable to common stockholders | $466M | $244M | +91% |
| Free Cash Flow» | $787M | $723M | +9% |
Balance sheet: DoorDash's financial statements compare quarter-end to the prior fiscal year-end, not the year-ago quarter, so the columns below are Sept 2026 vs. Dec 2025
| Balance sheet metric | Sep 2026 | Dec 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Assets | $20,580M | $19,659M | +5% |
| Total Liabilities | $9,853M | $9,613M | +2% |
| Total Stockholders' Equity | $10,717M | $10,033M | +7% |
No Form 10-Q has been filed yet for this quarter - DoorDash's Form 8-K exhibit press release is the only source available, and it does carry the full Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets, Statements of Operations and Statements of Cash Flows, so the usual quarter-end figures are all sourced from the company's own filed financial statements rather than the earnings deck. Net cash provided by operating activities was $994 million for the quarter (+14% YoY, +5% quarter over quarter), and trailing-twelve-month Free Cash Flow - which DoorDash itself discloses as a rolling series - rose to $2,203 million from $1,992 million a year earlier (+11%). Total cash and investments (cash and cash equivalents of $5,053 million plus short-term investments of $929 million and long-term investments of $805 million, excluding $660 million of funds held at payment processors and $445 million of combined restricted cash) stood at $6,787 million as of September 30, 2026, up from $6,343 million at year-end 2025. For Q4 2026, DoorDash guided to Marketplace GOV of $35.4-$36.4 billion and Adjusted EBITDA of $900-$1,100 million - a midpoint below this quarter's actual $1,060 million - and separately flagged that year-end merchant-payment timing is expected to reduce full-year 2026 Free Cash Flow by $700-$800 million versus 2025, a headwind not yet visible in this quarter's own cash flow.
Where Q3 2026's Revenue Went
Net revenue, and how much of it was left as operating profit and net income, in one view. Figures are the same standalone-quarter figures as the metrics table.
US$ billion, Q3 2026. Operating costs are net revenue less operating income; non-operating gains (net income above operating income) are shown as a green input.
Key Operational Metrics
Q3 2026 vs. Q3 2025. Arrow = the way the number moved year-over-year; green = good for the business, red = bad, grey = flat.
| Metric | Q3 2026 | Q3 2025 | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Orders | 993M | 776M | +28% |
| Marketplace GOV» | $33,941M | $25,015M | +36% |
| Contribution Profit» | $1,780M | $1,268M | +40% |
| Contribution Profit as a % of Marketplace GOV | 5.2% | 5.1% | +0.1pp |
| Net Revenue Margin (Revenue ÷ Marketplace GOV) | 13.6% | 13.8% | -0.2pp |
| GAAP Gross Profit | $2,311M | $1,689M | +37% |
Excluding the Deliveroo acquisition, growth was still strong but meaningfully lower across the board: Total Orders grew 17% year-over-year rather than 28%, Marketplace GOV grew 23% rather than 36%, and revenue grew 23% rather than 34%. DoorDash says it will stop disclosing results excluding Deliveroo starting in Q4 2026, once the acquisition's first anniversary (closed October 2, 2025) makes the comparison largely moot. Growth in the U.S. restaurant category accelerated slightly from Q2 2026, and U.S. grocery and retail categories grew at more than double that pace, continuing a gap DoorDash has now flagged for more than one quarter. Net Revenue Margin ticked up to 13.6% from Q2 2026's 13.5%, but it is still slightly below the 13.8% of a year ago - the third quarter in the last five that margin has come in below its year-ago level, consistent with the Deliveroo mix effect this project flagged in its Q1 2026 post rather than with pricing pressure in DoorDash's legacy business.
Beyond the Usual
The underlying document is a press release, not a 10-Q or 10-K, so it carries only the methodology endnotes and non-GAAP reconciliation tables rather than the related-party, lease, purchase-commitment and contingent-liability footnotes a filed quarterly or annual report would have. The findings below come from reading the disclosed non-GAAP reconciliation tables and the deal terms line by line rather than from a genuine footnotes section, which this document does not have.
The Instacart Stock Election Implies a ~$192.76 Reference Price for DoorDash Shares
DoorDash's three Instacart consideration options are internally consistent with each other at a single implied DoorDash share price. The all-stock option (0.3372 DoorDash shares per Instacart share) and the mixed option ($48.75 cash plus 0.0843 DoorDash shares) both reduce to the same number: $65.00 ÷ 0.3372 = $192.76, and ($65.00 - $48.75) ÷ 0.0843 = $192.76. The mixed option is also exactly structured to the deal's own 75%/25% cash-stock cap on a per-share basis ($48.75 is 75% of $65.00; $16.25 is 25%). DoorDash's own month-end closes for the quarter - $196.16 in July, $231.74 in August, $183.55 in September - bracket the $192.76 figure without any of them landing on it, so the $192.76 reference price looks like a negotiated or averaged figure from the deal-negotiation period rather than a price tied to the quarter-end close.
"Other Income (Expense), Net" Swung Again, Still With No Breakdown
This line moved from a $(81) million loss in Q3 2025 to a $5 million gain in Q3 2026 - an $86 million swing that, by itself, explains roughly 36% of the quarter's entire $236 million improvement in income before taxes ($484 million versus $248 million a year earlier). DoorDash's own description of the line is unchanged from last quarter: it says only that the line consists "primarily" of foreign currency remeasurement effects, with no dollar breakdown of what moved or by how much. This is the same disclosure gap flagged in the Q2 2026 post, where the same line swung 73% the other direction. Two consecutive quarters of large, unexplained swings in a line this size is a pattern, not noise.
Most of G&A's Quarter-Over-Quarter Drop Was One Legal and Regulatory Line
GAAP general and administrative expense fell $112 million quarter over quarter, from $538 million in Q2 2026 to $426 million in Q3 2026. Of that $112 million, $82 million - 73% of the total - came from a single line in DoorDash's own Adjusted EBITDA reconciliation table: "certain legal, tax, and regulatory settlements, reserves, and expenses," which fell from $98 million in Q2 2026 to $16 million in Q3 2026. This line has bounced between $16 million and $98 million across the five quarters DoorDash discloses it (Q3 2025: $48M; Q4 2025: $29M; Q1 2026: $45M; Q2 2026: $98M; Q3 2026: $16M), with no individual matter ever itemized beyond DoorDash's standing description (worker-classification litigation, tax/indirect-tax settlements, and policy-related expenses). The swing is excluded from Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted G&A every quarter, so it never shows up in either non-GAAP headline number, only in the GAAP line it affects.
DoorDash Will Stop Reporting Figures Excluding Deliveroo After This Year
DoorDash disclosed that, beginning with Q4 2026 results, it intends to stop reporting Total Orders, Marketplace GOV and revenue growth excluding Deliveroo, since Q4 2026 is the one-year anniversary of the October 2, 2025 close and the two periods will "largely" be comparable without the adjustment. This quarter was therefore the last one with a full ex-Deliveroo breakdown (see Key Operational Metrics above); comparisons against Deliveroo-era quarters in future posts will need to rely on the consolidated figures alone.
Stock Price Since Last Quarter
DoorDash's stock was little changed over the quarter on a close-to-close basis - $184.53 at the end of Q2 2026 versus $183.55 at the end of Q3 2026, a decline of less than 1% - but that masks a sharp move within the quarter. The stock rose to a month-end close of $231.74 in August 2026, its highest month-end price since October 2025's $254.37, before giving back all of that gain and then some to close September at $183.55, a 21% drop in a single month and a touch below where the quarter began. DoorDash's own filings disclose no reason for either move. Over the trailing two years, the stock's month-end closes ranged from the $271.99 September 2025 high to a $150.15 low in March 2026 - a peak-to-trough decline of roughly 45% - and the quarter-end price of $183.55 sits about 32% below that peak and about 22% above that trough (no stock split falls within this window, so these are actual nominal prices, not split-adjusted).
Target Valuation Range
Cheaper on trailing fundamentals than last quarter, despite three records. DoorDash closed Q3 2026 at $183.55, little changed from Q2 2026's $184.53, while trailing-twelve-month revenue and Adjusted EBITDA both grew - so EV/Revenue» eased to roughly 4.5x (from ~4.8x) and EV/Adjusted EBITDA» to roughly 21.9x (from ~24x). On revenue, DoorDash still trades richer than Uber's 3.3x and Grab's ~2.7x, each measured against that company's own Q2 2026 close - neither has reported Q3 2026 yet, and each builds its enterprise value differently, so the comparison is directional, not exact.
In plain words: enterprise value (EV) is what the market says the whole business is worth - the value of all the shares, adjusted for net debt or net cash - and EV/Revenue divides it by a year of sales so companies of different sizes can be compared; EV/Adjusted EBITDA does the same against a year of the profit measure DoorDash itself reports. The takeaway: DoorDash got modestly cheaper on both multiples even though its underlying numbers improved, because the stock gave back its August rally by quarter-end.
No Form 10-Q has been filed for this quarter, so there is no cover-page point-in-time share count available; this section uses the weighted-average diluted share count DoorDash discloses for Q3 2026 (440.3 million) in place of the 433.30 million point-in-time count the Q2 2026 post used from that quarter's 10-Q cover page - a different basis, named here so the two aren't compared as if they were the same thing.
| Market cap → enterprise value | Q3 2026 (period-end) |
|---|---|
| Share price (period-end, Sept 30, 2026 close) | $183.55 |
| Shares outstanding (weighted-average diluted) | 440.31 million |
| Market capitalization | ~$80.82 billion |
| Less: cash and investments | $6.79 billion |
| Plus: convertible notes, net | $2.73 billion |
| Enterprise value | ~$76.76 billion |
| Peer-multiple sanity check (TTM basis) | Q2 2026 (TTM) | Q3 2026 (TTM) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| TTM Revenue | $15,891M | $17,061M | up |
| TTM Adjusted EBITDA | $3,202M | $3,508M | up |
| Enterprise value | ~$76.47 billion | ~$76.76 billion | up slightly |
| EV/Revenue | ~4.8x | ~4.5x | down |
| EV/Adjusted EBITDA | ~24x | ~21.9x | down |
TTM Revenue is Q2 2026's own TTM figure ($15,891M) minus Q3 2025's $3,446M plus Q3 2026's $4,616M = $17,061M; TTM Adjusted EBITDA the same way ($3,202M - $754M + $1,060M = $3,508M). Enterprise value grew only slightly (market capitalization rose with the weighted-average share count even as the stock price itself was nearly flat), while both TTM figures grew faster - 7% for revenue, 10% for Adjusted EBITDA - so both multiples compressed.
| Company (latest post) | Period and basis | EV/Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| DoorDash (this post) | Q3 2026, Sept 30, 2026 close; EV = market cap less cash and investments plus convertible notes, net; TTM revenue | ~4.5x |
| Uber | Q2 2026, June 30, 2026 close; EV = market cap plus total liabilities less cash; TTM revenue | 3.3x |
| Grab | Q2 2026, June 30, 2026 close; EV = market cap less net cash liquidity; trailing four quarters of revenue | ~2.7x |
The comparison is not exact: Uber adds total liabilities and DoorDash adds back only its convertible notes, Grab nets cash differently again, and neither Uber nor Grab has reported a Q3 2026 quarter yet. Grab's post also prints an EV/Adjusted EBITDA of roughly 13.7x against its FY2026 guidance midpoint, a different basis from DoorDash's trailing-twelve-month figure above; Uber's post prints no EV/EBITDA multiple at all. On the comparable revenue basis, DoorDash is priced richer than both peers, consistent with its stronger revenue growth rate (34% year-over-year this quarter against Grab's 22% and Uber's 12% in each company's own most recent quarter).
DoorDash, Inc.'s Q3 2026 earnings press release (Exhibit 99.1 to its Form 8-K), filed with the SEC on October 29, 2026. No Form 10-Q has yet been filed for this quarter.