Citing continued strong demand for delivery, DoorDash Inc. on Wednesday reported records upon records: for quarterly total orders, gross order value and a high of more than 25 million active users.
“I think we’ve put to rest this question of what happens to demand when diners go back to eating in restaurants,” DoorDash Chief Executive Tony Xu said during the company’s earnings call.
DoorDash shares DASH, -6.80% soared 28% after hours, after falling nearly 7% in the regular session to close at $94.88.
Fourth-quarter gross-order value increased to $11.16 billion, exceeding analysts’ expectation of $10.64 billion, on 369 million orders, more than the 361 million orders analysts expected.
DoorDash Chief Financial Officer Prabir Adarkar said although the company’s growth has “normalized” compared to its skyrocketing growth when the pandemic began in 2020, “where we are today is still better than pre-pandemic levels.”
Though the delivery-app company handily beat analysts’ revenue forecasts, it posted bigger losses than analysts had expected for both the fourth quarter and the full year.
DoorDash revenue rose to $1.3 billion from $970 million in the year-ago quarter. The company reported a narrower fourth-quarter loss of $155 million, or 45 cents a share, compared with its net loss of $312 million, or $2.67 a share, in the year-ago period.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast a loss of $92 million, and an adjusted loss of 23 cents a share, on revenue of $1.28 billion.
For the full year, the company reported a net loss of $468 million, or $1.39 a share, on revenue of $4.9 billion. That compares with a loss of $461 million, or $7.39 a share, in the previous year. Analysts had expected a loss of $405 million, and an adjusted loss of $1.18 a share, on $4.78 billion in revenue.
Analysts asked the executives about market share and competition, in light of Uber Technologies Inc. UBER, -1.38% reporting earnings last week and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi saying that “Uber Eats became the fastest-growing delivery player in America.”
“With respect to Q4, we believe we gained share faster than our peers based on their publicly reported numbers,” Adarkar said.
DoorDash said its fourth-quarter gross-order value grew 36% year over year. For the same period, Uber reported a 33% increase in gross bookings for its delivery business.
See: Uber stock jumps as ride-hailing giant keeps getting bigger
DoorDash expects first-quarter gross-order value to range from $11.4 billion to $11.8 billion, and adjusted Ebitda of “$0 million to $50 million.” For 2022, the company expects gross-order value of $48 billion to $50 billion and adjusted Ebitda of between “$0 million and $500 million.”
The company said its outlook excludes impact from its pending purchase of Wolt, the Finland-based delivery platform it is buying for more than $8 billion in stock. It expects the deal to close in the first half of this year.
Analysts expect first-quarter gross-order value of $11.41 billion and Ebitda of $104 million, and full-year gross-order value of $49.5 billion and Ebitda of $428 million.
Shares of DoorDash are down about 36% so far this year, while the S&P 500 Index SPX, +0.09% has declined almost 7% year to date.