DoorDash today reported net income attributable to common stockholders of $466 million for the third quarter of 2026, up 91% from $244 million a year earlier, on revenue that rose 34% to $4.6 billion. The quarter to September 30 set records for Marketplace gross order value, revenue and net income, according to the company. Without Deliveroo, the British delivery business DoorDash bought in October 2025, revenue grew 23%. The results arrived on the same morning as DoorDash's agreement to buy Instacart, and they contain no figure for the advertising business the company has spent the past year expanding across three apps and three continents.

In Short

DoorDash, the food and grocery delivery app, earned more in July, August and September of 2026 than in any earlier three-month period, helped by more people ordering and by Deliveroo, a company it now owns. Brands that pay DoorDash to show ads to its shoppers were given no number on how large that ad business has become, even though DoorDash told investors that buying Instacart would be good for advertisers. Legal papers for the Instacart purchase, filed the same day, show DoorDash lining up a loan of up to $13 billion and agreeing to pay Instacart $1.25 billion if competition regulators stop the deal.

The quarter in numbers

DoorDash completed 993 million Total Orders in the third quarter, 28% more than a year earlier. Marketplace GOV, the total value of orders placed on its marketplaces including taxes, tips and consumer fees, rose 36% to $33.9 billion. Revenue reached $4,616 million, up 34% year over year and 4% on the second quarter.

Net income attributable to common stockholders was $466 million, or $1.06 per diluted share, against $244 million and $0.55 a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA, the measure DoorDash uses to track operating leverage, rose 41% to $1,060 million, the first time it has crossed $1 billion in any of the five quarters the company publishes side by side. "In Q3 2026, we generated new quarterly records across Marketplace GOV, revenue, and net income," according to DoorDash.

Three months ended Sept. 30, 2025 Dec. 31, 2025 Mar. 31, 2026 Jun. 30, 2026 Sept. 30, 2026
Total Orders (millions) 776 903 933 970 993
Marketplace GOV ($m) 25,015 29,683 31,604 33,078 33,941
Revenue ($m) 3,446 3,955 4,036 4,454 4,616
Net Revenue Margin 13.8% 13.3% 12.8% 13.5% 13.6%
Net income attributable to common stockholders ($m) 244 213 184 200 466
Adjusted EBITDA ($m) 754 780 754 914 1,060
Sales and marketing expense ($m) 576 707 746 821 765

Over nine months, revenue came to $13,106 million against $9,762 million in the same period of 2025, and net income to $850 million against $722 million, an increase of about 18% by PPC Land's calculation. The quarterly jump is far steeper than the nine-month change because net income in the first half of 2026, at $384 million, was below the $478 million of the first half of 2025, by PPC Land's calculation.

Two definitions matter for anyone reading the figures. Total Orders counts everything completed through DoorDash's marketplaces and its Commerce Platform, the services it sells to merchants for their own channels. Marketplace GOV counts only marketplace orders, and it includes membership fees for DashPass, Wolt+ and Deliveroo Plus. Dividing one by the other therefore does not give the average order value DoorDash refers to in its own commentary. As a rough indicator, though, Marketplace GOV per Total Order rose from $32.24 a year ago to $34.18, and revenue per order from $4.44 to $4.65, according to PPC Land's arithmetic.

How much of the growth is Deliveroo

DoorDash completed its £2.8 billion acquisition of Deliveroo on October 2, 2025, so the third quarter of 2026 is the last in which the year-earlier comparison contains no Deliveroo at all. The company strips it out for that reason. Excluding Deliveroo, Total Orders grew 17%, Marketplace GOV 23% and revenue 23%.

Deliveroo contributed $365 million of revenue in the quarter, about 7.9% of the total, and $1,110 million across the nine months. Revenue excluding Deliveroo was $4,251 million. Working back from the rounded growth rates, PPC Land estimates that Deliveroo accounted for roughly 81 million to 89 million of the quarter's orders and roughly $3.0 billion to $3.3 billion of Marketplace GOV. When the deal closed, DoorDash had estimated Deliveroo's quarterly Marketplace GOV at $2.5 billion to $2.7 billion and its quarterly revenue at $318 million to $354 million.

DoorDash said Deliveroo's Total Orders grew in the third quarter at twice the year-over-year rate they managed in the third quarter of 2025, before the acquisition. It did not give either rate. The company presents that acceleration as evidence for its approach to acquisitions, describing Deliveroo as the most recent demonstration of an "investment philosophy and approach" in which network efficiencies are reinvested into the service.

That disclosure will stop. "As a note, beginning in Q4 2026, we intend to stop disclosing quarterly results excluding Deliveroo, as this will represent the anniversary of the acquisition and our total company results will be largely comparable with the year-ago period," according to DoorDash.

Net Revenue Margin, revenue expressed as a share of Marketplace GOV, tells a parallel story. It stood at 13.8% in the third quarter of 2025, fell to 13.3% in the fourth quarter, the first to include Deliveroo, and to 12.8% in the first quarter of 2026, before recovering to 13.5% and then 13.6%. The release does not explain the movements.

Margins, costs and the jump in profit

Net income rose 133% from the second quarter. Most of that swing came from expenses outside the cost of delivering orders. General and administrative expense fell 21% quarter on quarter to $426 million. Within it, the line DoorDash labels "certain legal, tax, and regulatory settlements, reserves, and expenses" dropped to $16 million from $98 million in the second quarter and $48 million a year earlier.

DoorDash says those items consist of legal costs "primarily related to worker classification matters, and our historical Dasher pay model and pay practices," reserves and settlements for sales and other indirect taxes, and spending on policy matters including worker classification, labor law and price controls. It excludes them from adjusted figures and says it expects worker classification costs "will not be material to our results of operations over the long term as a result of increasing legislative and regulatory certainty in this area, including as a result of Proposition 22 in California and similar legislation."

Income from operations was $442 million, against $258 million a year earlier, an increase of 71%. Using the expense lines DoorDash publishes for each quarter, PPC Land calculates second-quarter operating income at about $156 million, which puts the third-quarter figure at almost three times that level. The operating margin, by the same arithmetic, rose from 7.5% to 9.6% of revenue year over year.

Further up the income statement, the improvement was steadier. Gross profit rose 37% to $2,311 million, lifting gross margin to 50.1% from 49.0%. Contribution Profit, which deducts sales and marketing from gross profit before adding back cost-of-revenue depreciation, stock-based pay and allocated overhead, reached $1,780 million, a Contribution Margin of 38.6% against 36.8% a year earlier. Cost of revenue, excluding depreciation and amortization, grew 29% to $2,171 million, and fell as a share of Marketplace GOV to 6.4% from 6.7%.

Adjusted EBITDA amounted to 3.1% of Marketplace GOV, up from 3.0% a year earlier and 2.8% in the second quarter. Per order, it worked out at about $1.07, against $0.97 a year earlier, by PPC Land's calculation.

Other lines moved against the trend. Depreciation and amortization nearly doubled to $312 million from $169 million; DoorDash expects about $450 million of its 2026 depreciation and amortization to be amortization of acquired intangible assets. Research and development expense rose 41% to $499 million, driven by personnel costs and third-party software. Net interest income nearly halved to $37 million from $71 million. Stock-based compensation and related payroll tax came to $269 million in the quarter.

Where advertising appears, and where it does not

For brands and agencies that buy DoorDash media, the most notable feature of the release is what it leaves out. It contains no advertising revenue figure, no advertiser count, no growth rate and no product news for the ad business. Advertising comes up three times: twice in the case for buying Instacart and once to explain DoorDash's own marketing spend.

DoorDash does not report advertising as a separate revenue line, so the omission is not a break with formal disclosure. It is a change of emphasis. A year ago, DoorDash listed an increasing contribution from advertising revenue among the reasons its margins improved in the third quarter of 2025. In today's release, revenue growth is attributed "primarily" to growth in Marketplace GOV, and no driver is named for the change in Net Revenue Margin. Readers cannot tell from the release whether advertising grew faster or slower than the marketplace.

Instacart, which DoorDash has agreed to buy, has reported advertising separately; its advertising revenue was $243 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, up 7% year over year.

DoorDash as a buyer of media

The one direct reference to advertising in the financial commentary concerns DoorDash as an advertiser. Sales and marketing expense rose 33% year over year to $765 million, "driven primarily by increases in advertising expenses and personnel-related compensation expenses," according to the company. Excluding stock-based pay and allocated overhead, adjusted sales and marketing expense was $724 million.

The quarterly direction was different. Sales and marketing spending fell 7% from $821 million in the second quarter, and as a share of Marketplace GOV it dropped to 2.3% from 2.5%. Measured against revenue, it was 16.6%, the lowest of the five quarters DoorDash discloses, by PPC Land's calculation. The release does not say which channels or markets absorbed the reduction. The pattern resembles the third quarter of 2025, when sales and marketing also fell quarter on quarter, by 5%, a decline PPC Land's coverage at the time linked to reduced advertising spending.

What the ad business has been doing

The silence contrasts with a busy twelve months on the product side, documented in PPC Land's coverage. In October 2025, Criteo agreed to act as an extension of DoorDash's US advertising sales team for grocery, convenience and other non-restaurant retailers, selling onsite video, display, sponsored product and sponsored brand formats alongside offsite channels. The arrangement was extended to Canada in the first quarter of 2026.

In Europe, Wolt Ads opened its in-app inventory to programmatic buyers through Koddi's supply-side platform in Germany on May 19, 2026, with Wolt's advertising lead describing commerce media as becoming a core source of revenue and growth for the platform. On June 4, DoorDash said its ad business served more than 400,000 advertisers across DoorDash, Wolt and Deliveroo. It introduced Spotlight, a homepage format it said produced click-through rates twice those of standard banners in early tests, with first-time customers accounting for more than 36% of sales for consumer goods brands using it. It also reported that media spend through Symbiosys, the offsite advertising company it bought in 2025, had nearly doubled since the acquisition, and added auto-bidding with minimum return on ad spend targets, a LiveRamp clean room and new Smart Campaigns promotion types. All of those performance figures were company-reported.

The rest of the summer extended the plumbing. On June 30, CommerceIQ connected its platform, used by more than 2,200 brands, to the DoorDash Ads API, citing YipitData research that ranked DoorDash as the leading third-party marketplace by US grocery and retail order volume in 2025. On July 14, DoorDash opened a Shopify sales channel for US retailers with physical stores, citing 42 million monthly active users. On July 27, Deliveroo began selling its Order Tracker page programmatically in the UK, France, Italy and the UAE, through Programmatic Guaranteed deals in Google Ad Manager, and cut local rate cards by 20% for campaigns booked between July and September for media agencies and non-endemic advertisers. That discount window coincided exactly with the quarter reported today. And on September 30, DoorDash presented DashOS, which links SevenRooms reservations, loyalty and marketplace data for restaurants and is due to reach more than 80,000 restaurants on third-party point-of-sale systems from 2027.

None of these launches is mentioned in today's release. Whether they moved revenue in the third quarter cannot be determined from it.

Competitors have been building in parallel. On June 22, Uber introduced a single interface for buying ads across its rides and Uber Eats apps, combining behavioural data from both services for targeting.

Advertisers in the case for Instacart

Advertisers do appear in the section of the release that explains the Instacart agreement. DoorDash says combining the two companies' reach "will enable the best possible logistics and software infrastructure to produce the best possible grocery delivery experience for grocers, consumers, Shoppers, and advertising partners," and that it expects this "to be true on Day 1 (after close)." The final argument in that section is about media buyers alone: "Finally, the combined reach and cross selling opportunities across different categories will be a win for advertisers who are always seeking scaled platforms to earn the best return on ad spend."

The release sets out a financial target for the combination without dividing it by business line. DoorDash sees "a multi-year path to $500 million or more of annual synergies, net of investments." It expects to reinvest more than 100% of total synergies in the first year after closing, with positive net synergies from year two. How much of that figure would come from advertising, as against fulfillment, memberships or technology, is not stated.

What the merger agreement adds

The merger agreement, signed on October 28 and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission alongside the results, fills in several numbers the deal announcement left out.

Break fees and the long stop

Instacart must pay DoorDash a termination fee of $650 million in cash in specified circumstances, including if it walks away to accept a superior proposal, if its board changes its recommendation, or if it agrees to another takeover within 12 months of a terminated deal after a rival bid became public. If Instacart shareholders vote the deal down, Instacart must reimburse up to $25 million of DoorDash's expenses, credited against any later fee.

The fee running the other way is almost twice as large. DoorDash must pay Instacart $1.25 billion in cash if the deal fails on antitrust grounds: either because the merger has not closed by the outside date while antitrust conditions remain unmet and everything else is in place, or because of a final, non-appealable legal restraint under antitrust law. Against the deal's equity value of about $17 billion, the two fees amount to roughly 3.8% and 7.4%, by PPC Land's calculation.

The outside date is 12 months after signing, which PPC Land calculates as October 28, 2027. It extends automatically by three months, up to four times, if only the antitrust conditions are outstanding. That allows the deal to run to October 28, 2028, by the same arithmetic, longer than the end-2027 or first-half-2028 closing the companies expect. DoorDash and Instacart must file their Hart-Scott-Rodino notification with the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice within 20 business days of signing, unless they agree to a longer period. DoorDash controls the timing and strategy of the regulatory process, including when to offer remedies, and may withdraw and refile the notification if it judges that would improve the chances of clearance.

Voting agreements signed alongside the merger commit holders of about 19% of Instacart's voting power to support the deal and oppose any rival takeover proposal. Instacart shares for which no election is made will receive cash.

Financing

The deal announcement said DoorDash had a bridge loan commitment from JPMorgan Chase Bank but gave no size. The filing does: a 364-day senior unsecured bridge term loan facility of up to $13.0 billion, which may be used for the cash consideration and for fees and expenses. DoorDash expects to replace it before closing "with a combination of cash on hand and permanent financing, which may include the issuance of senior debt securities and/or the borrowing of senior term loans and/or revolving loans."

For scale, DoorDash ended September with $5,053 million in cash and cash equivalents and $929 million in short-term investments, about $6.0 billion in total, plus $805 million of long-term investments. The only borrowing on its balance sheet is $2,728 million of convertible notes.

What DoorDash would give up to win clearance

The agreement obliges DoorDash to use reasonable best efforts to obtain clearance, including by agreeing to divestitures, hold-separate orders, operational restrictions and changes to contracts. The obligation stops at a "Regulatory Material Adverse Effect," and the yardstick for that is narrow. Instead of measuring a remedy against DoorDash as a whole, the agreement measures it against a hypothetical company the size of Instacart plus DoorDash's US and Canadian grocery business, with that grocery business's revenue deemed to be 150% of its actual level.

The agreement defines that grocery business as transactions between consumers and grocers on the DoorDash marketplace, together with DoorDash's white-label fulfillment service, DoorDash Drive, and its white-label online ordering service, DoorDash Storefront, in each case for grocers in the United States or Canada. Grocers are defined by two US industry classification codes, 445110 and 455211, which cover supermarkets and other grocery retailers, and warehouse clubs and supercenters.

Two carve-outs protect DoorDash's side. It is never required to divest "Parent's grocery marketplace technology platform," described as "the people, process and technology that enables the consumer, merchant and 'Dasher' experience and related fulfillment, such as 'DoorDash Drive'." Nor is it required to take any action that applies predominantly to businesses unrelated to its grocery business, which the agreement says includes DoorDash's operations outside the United States and Canada and its restaurant business.

Advertising is not named in either the definition of the grocery business or the protected platform. No provision names Instacart's own businesses, such as Instacart Ads or its Enterprise technology, among the assets DoorDash cannot be required to sell. DoorDash has also committed to undertake a set of "Specified Commitments" listed in a disclosure letter that is not public, and those commitments do not count toward the threshold. Whether they correspond to the post-close pledges on grocery exclusivity and Shoppers that the companies published today is not stated.

Until closing, DoorDash may not make acquisitions or enter into non-ordinary course relationships such as joint ventures or minority investments that would be expected to delay the deal or raise the risk of a blocking order. Deals with no substantive connection to the United States or Canada, or that do not compete with Instacart, are exempt.

Advertisers, ad intermediaries and AI providers

Instacart's representations in the agreement give a view of what DoorDash considered worth checking. Instacart had to list its top ten advertisers, "including brand partners," ranked by advertising or brand partnership revenue received "through Instacart Ads or otherwise" in the twelve months ended June 30, 2026, and to confirm that none had given written notice since January 1, 2026 of an intention to terminate or not renew, other than as would not cause a material adverse effect. It did the same for its top ten retailers.

Among the contracts Instacart had to disclose are "each Contract with a third party that facilitates or directs advertising demand to 'Instacart Ads' on behalf of advertisers or agencies that is material" to the business. The agreement does not name those intermediaries. A separate category covers contracts under which Instacart gives a third-party AI provider data access "via API or machine-callable interface to enable such provider to respond to third-party user queries relating to the Company," where the provider may use Instacart's confidential information or personal data to train or improve its systems for others. Any contract that produced more than $100 million of revenue in 2025 also had to be listed.

The lists themselves sit in the confidential disclosure letter. During the pendency of the deal, Instacart must use reasonable best efforts to preserve its existing relationships with, among others, merchants, grocers, Shoppers and advertisers.

A second class of DoorDash stock

The filing also reveals an option the announcement did not mention. Before the earlier of March 31, 2027 and three months before closing, DoorDash may elect to pay the stock portion of the consideration in a new Class C common stock instead of Class A shares. To do so it must list Class C on Nasdaq at least three months before closing and distribute at least 0.5 Class C shares as a dividend on every existing Class A and Class B share. If Class C trades at a discount to Class A, the exchange ratios rise to compensate. The agreement does not describe the voting rights attached to Class C.

Restaurants, grocery and reservations

In the US restaurant category, year-over-year growth in Marketplace GOV "accelerated slightly" from the second quarter, according to DoorDash, despite a strong comparison with the third quarter of 2025. Measured quarter on quarter, US restaurant Marketplace GOV grew faster than in any third quarter since 2020. The company attributes this to rising order rates among mature cohorts, defined as the 99 monthly groups of consumers who joined between January 2017 and March 2025, and to accelerating growth in new consumers.

DashPass, the US subscription, continued to grow strongly, according to the company, which credits it with helping cut transaction fees per order in the US restaurant category by 9% over two years. The release gives no membership count.

Grocery and retail grew faster still. Year-over-year Marketplace GOV growth in those US categories was more than double that of the US restaurant category, according to DoorDash, with double-digit growth in order rates "for nearly all mature cohorts" and growth in new consumers consistent with the first half of the year.

Reservations, a newer service in some cities, grew more than 340% quarter on quarter in existing geographies, and more than 10% of third-quarter reservations came from consumers new to DoorDash in the quarter. DoorDash gave no absolute number. For marketers, the figure matters because reservations extend DoorDash's view of a diner beyond delivery into the restaurant itself, which is the premise of DashOS.

"We view the relatively consistent growth in our U.S. marketplace in Q3 2026, and over the last four years, as a positive signal of underlying demand trends," the company said.

The grocery problem

The section of the release on grocery is unusually blunt about DoorDash's own product. "Grocery delivery is still early in its adoption. We've made meaningful progress over the past five years at DoorDash, significantly improving logistics quality for grocery delivery, but as we've said many times, the product still isn't there. Consumers are still asked to pay a premium for imperfect delivery," according to the company.

DoorDash's answer is to hold inventory on behalf of grocers. Through DashMart, it now manages "thousands of high-quality products from Giant Eagle, Albertsons, and others." DashMart orders achieved fulfillment accuracy above 99% in the third quarter, the company says, and in US areas with an active DashMart store they were delivered more than 10 minutes faster on average than other grocery orders.

The economics explain the Instacart bid. "Managing inventory inside a warehouse is a fixed cost business. Scale is a necessary (though insufficient) input into helping lower costs. This is one of the reasons we're attracted to Instacart, as it adds scale that is unique to our network," according to DoorDash. The release adds that Instacart's scale "will help amortize the fixed cost of managing inventory on behalf of grocers."

International

Outside the United States, Marketplace GOV growth accelerated year over year, measured in constant currency, excluding countries DoorDash has exited and treating Deliveroo as owned in all periods. Total Orders accelerated at each international brand. The contribution of international markets to total profitability "exceeded our expectations entering the quarter," according to the company, which attributes part of the improvement to spreading operating practices and product features across its brands.

The outlook carries a warning that rises with that exposure. "Our increasing international exposure heightens risks associated with operating in foreign markets, including geopolitical and currency risks," the company said.

Atoms, bits and AI agents

DoorDash frames its strategy as a choice between two contests that opened when ChatGPT launched four years ago: becoming the leading digital personal assistant, or becoming the leading physical network that fulfills tasks in the real world. It has picked the second. "As AI personal agents are now starting to become more mainstream, our strategy today remains focused on winning the battle for atoms," according to the company.

That does not mean staying out of software. DoorDash lists three AI agents it has shipped: Ask DoorDash, which recommends restaurants similar to a consumer's usual orders and builds grocery baskets; Text DoorDash, which takes orders by text message outside the app; and a Model Context Protocol connection that "interfaces with external AI agents, including those used at companies for easier corporate ordering." The last is a route by which orders could reach DoorDash without passing through its app, or its ad placements. DoorDash was already among the food delivery partners named when Google extended its Universal Commerce Protocol to food delivery in May 2026.

The capital, however, is going into physical assets. DoorDash says it is "investing substantial sums" in warehousing and autonomous delivery, and in helping merchants with "unique demand and the best products," a category in which it places the Instacart agreement. The release gives no figure for autonomous delivery spending. DoorDash's third quarter 2025 results described Dot, an autonomous delivery robot built for roads, sidewalks and bike lanes, and the company said then that it would invest several hundred million dollars more in new initiatives and platform development in 2026 than in 2025.

Outlook and cash

For the fourth quarter of 2026, DoorDash expects Marketplace GOV of $35.4 billion to $36.4 billion and Adjusted EBITDA of $900 million to $1,100 million. Because the fourth quarter of 2025 already included Deliveroo, these ranges are close to like-for-like comparisons. Against the $29,683 million of Marketplace GOV recorded a year earlier, the range implies growth of about 19% to 23%; the Adjusted EBITDA range implies growth of about 15% to 41% on $780 million, PPC Land calculates. The midpoint of $1.0 billion would sit below the $1,060 million just reported.

The company expects 2026 stock-based compensation of about $1.2 billion and depreciation and amortization of about $1.2 billion. It also warned that the timing of merchant payments at the end of 2026, compared with the end of 2025, will reduce reported 2026 Free Cash Flow by $700 million to $800 million. The outlook assumes stable consumer demand and exchange rates, and "significant levels of ongoing investment in new categories, international markets, and in our system capacity." DoorDash does not provide a GAAP net income forecast.

Operating cash flow in the third quarter was $994 million and Free Cash Flow $787 million, up from $871 million and $723 million a year earlier. Over nine months, Free Cash Flow came to about $1.95 billion against about $1.57 billion, by PPC Land's calculation, and over the trailing twelve months to $2,203 million.

DoorDash has repurchased 6.8 million Class A shares for $1.0 billion so far this year, through October 28, under a $5.0 billion authorization approved in February 2025, leaving about $4.0 billion. That is an average of roughly $147 a share, by PPC Land's arithmetic. The exchange ratios in the Instacart agreement imply, by PPC Land's calculation, a DoorDash reference price of about $192.76.

Why this matters for marketers

DoorDash now handles close to a billion orders a quarter, about 10.8 million a day on PPC Land's arithmetic, across restaurants, grocery, retail and, increasingly, reservations. That transaction volume is what its ad business sells, and the company has spent the year building ways to sell it: through Criteo and CommerceIQ, through Koddi and Google Ad Manager in Europe, through offsite channels via Symbiosys, and through clean room measurement with LiveRamp. Today's release offers buyers nothing with which to size that business or judge its growth. The only advertising number in it is what DoorDash itself spent.

The merger agreement shifts attention to where regulatory pressure could fall. DoorDash has ring-fenced its own grocery marketplace platform, its restaurant business and everything outside North America, and has measured its remedy obligations against a grocery-sized company rather than the whole group. Instacart's assets, including Instacart Ads and the Enterprise technology that runs grocers' own retail media networks, are not named among the protected assets. Brands buying on both platforms, and the intermediaries that route demand to them, have no basis yet to know what a cleared deal would look like.

Timing affects budgets. With an outside date that can stretch to October 2028, advertisers will plan at least one full annual cycle, and possibly two, with DoorDash Ads and Instacart Ads under separate ownership. During that period Instacart must use reasonable best efforts to preserve its advertiser relationships, and DoorDash is barred from acquisitions and similar arrangements that would be expected to delay the merger.

DoorDash's sales and marketing expense, meanwhile, $765 million in the third quarter and driven primarily by advertising, makes it a sizeable buyer of media in its own right, and one whose spending fell between the second and third quarters.

Timeline

Summary

Who: DoorDash, Inc. (NASDAQ: DASH), the delivery company that operates the DoorDash, Deliveroo, Wolt and SevenRooms brands, and Maplebear Inc., which trades as Instacart and which DoorDash has agreed to buy. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. provides the committed bridge financing.

What: Third quarter 2026 results showing 993 million Total Orders (up 28%), Marketplace GOV of $33.9 billion (up 36%), revenue of $4.6 billion (up 34%, or 23% excluding Deliveroo), net income of $466 million (up 91%) and Adjusted EBITDA of $1,060 million (up 41%). The release gives no advertising revenue figure. The merger agreement filed the same day sets a $650 million fee payable by Instacart, a $1.25 billion antitrust fee payable by DoorDash, a bridge loan of up to $13.0 billion, and remedy terms that shield DoorDash's grocery marketplace platform but not Instacart's ad or Enterprise businesses.

When: Results reported today, October 29, 2026, for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. The merger agreement was signed on October 28, 2026. Fourth quarter guidance covers the three months to December 31, 2026, and the merger's outside date can run to October 28, 2028.

Where: DoorDash is based in San Francisco and operates in the United States and internationally. The Instacart deal needs clearance in the United States, Canada and Israel, and its remedy provisions centre on grocery in the United States and Canada.

Why: The quarter shows a business growing about 23% before acquisitions, with margins widening and legal charges falling away. For the marketing community, it shows a company arguing that the Instacart purchase will benefit advertisers while publishing nothing on its own ad revenue, and a merger agreement that indicates where regulators could look for concessions.