On-demand food delivery service DoorDash (NYSE: DASH) missed Wall Street’s revenue expectations in Q4 CY2025, but sales rose 37.7% year on year to $3.96 billion. Its GAAP profit of $0.48 per share was 17.7% below analysts’ consensus estimates.
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DoorDash (DASH) Q4 CY2025 Highlights:
- Revenue: $3.96 billion vs analyst estimates of $4.00 billion (37.7% year-on-year growth, 1.1% miss)
- EPS (GAAP): $0.48 vs analyst expectations of $0.58 (17.7% miss)
- Adjusted EBITDA: $780 million vs analyst estimates of $773.6 million (19.7% margin, 0.8% beat)
- EBITDA guidance for Q1 CY2026 is $725 million at the midpoint, below analyst estimates of $800.3 million
- Operating Margin: 3.7%, in line with the same quarter last year
- Free Cash Flow Margin: 6.4%, down from 21% in the previous quarter
- Orders: 903 million, up 218 million year on year
- Market Capitalization: $69.97 billion
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--DoorDash, Inc. (NASDAQ: DASH) announced today that Milan Kovac, former Vice President of Optimus Robotics and Autopilot at Tesla, has been appointed to the company’s Board of Directors, effective January 16, 2026. Tony Xu, co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, Inc., said, “Milan has spent his career building and scaling ambitious engineering programs at the intersection of AI, autonomy, and robotics. He brings a rare combination of technical depth and operational leade...
Company Overview
Founded by Stanford students with the intent to build “the local, on-demand FedEx", DoorDash (NYSE: DASH) operates an on-demand food delivery platform.
Revenue Growth
Examining a company’s long-term performance can provide clues about its quality. Even a bad business can shine for one or two quarters, but a top-tier one grows for years. Over the last three years, DoorDash grew its sales at an exceptional 27.7% compounded annual growth rate. Its growth surpassed the average consumer internet company and shows its offerings resonate with customers, a great starting point for our analysis.
This quarter, DoorDash pulled off a wonderful 37.7% year-on-year revenue growth rate, but its $3.96 billion of revenue fell short of Wall Street’s rosy estimates.
Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 31.2% over the next 12 months, an acceleration versus the last three years. This projection is eye-popping for a company of its scale and indicates its newer products and services will fuel better top-line performance.
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Orders
Request Growth
As a gig economy marketplace, DoorDash generates revenue growth by expanding the number of services on its platform (e.g. rides, deliveries, freelance jobs) and raising the commission fee from each service provided.
Over the last two years, DoorDash’s orders, a key performance metric for the company, increased by 22% annually to 903 million in the latest quarter. This growth rate is among the fastest of any consumer internet business and indicates its offerings have significant traction. 
In Q4, DoorDash added 218 million orders, leading to 31.8% year-on-year growth. The quarterly print was higher than its two-year result, suggesting its new initiatives are accelerating request growth.
Revenue Per Request
Average revenue per request (ARPR) is a critical metric to track because it measures how much the company earns in transaction fees from each request. This number also informs us about DoorDash’s take rate, which represents its pricing leverage over the ecosystem, or "cut" from each transaction.
DoorDash’s ARPR growth has been mediocre over the last two years, averaging 4.2%. This isn’t great, but the increase in orders is more relevant for assessing long-term business potential. We’ll monitor the situation closely; if DoorDash tries boosting ARPR by taking a more aggressive approach to monetization, it’s unclear whether requests can continue growing at the current pace. 
This quarter, DoorDash’s ARPR clocked in at $4.38. It grew by 4.4% year on year, slower than its request growth.
Key Takeaways from DoorDash’s Q4 Results
We were very impressed by DoorDash’s number of requests this quarter. We were also happy its EBITDA narrowly outperformed Wall Street’s estimates. On the other hand, its revenue slightly missed and its EBITDA guidance for next quarter fell short of Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, this was a weaker quarter. The stock traded down 2.1% to $170.26 immediately following the results.
DoorDash underperformed this quarter, but does that create an opportunity to invest right now? What happened in the latest quarter matters, but not as much as longer-term business quality and valuation, when deciding whether to invest in this stock. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).
