DoorDash reported higher-than-expected orders and revenue in the third quarter but warned investors that it will be spending significantly more on product development next year.
The San Francisco delivery company's shares fell by double-digits on that news in after-hours trading.
DoorDash said Wednesday its total orders rose 21% to 776 million in the July-September period. That beat Wall Street’s forecast of 770 million, according to analysts polled by FactSet.
DoorDash's revenue jumped 27% to $3.45 billion. That also beat analysts’ forecasts of $3.35 billion. The company cited strong growth in monthly active users and DashPass members as well as growing delivery demand in surprising categories like home improvement and beauty.
But growth is coming with higher expenses. DoorDash said Wednesday it has more product development underway than at any point in its history. In the third quarter alone, research and development costs grew 23% to $355 million.
In late September, DoorDash announced it was adding restaurant reservations to its app. It also introduced an autonomous robot, Dot, which will soon be providing deliveries in the greater Phoenix area. The company is adding tools to improve service and logistics, including a new mapping platform and a smart scale which will help retailers know if an order is missing something before a DoorDash driver picks it up.
All that is taking a bite out of profits. DoorDash’s net income rose 51% to $244 million, or 55 cents per share. That was lower than the 68-cent profit Wall Street was expecting, according to analysts polled by FactSet.
DoorDash said those investments will be accelerating in 2026, and it expects to spend several hundred million dollars more on new initiatives and product development than it did in 2025.
“We wish there was a way to grow a baby into an adult without investment, or to see the baby grow into an adult overnight, but we do not believe this is how life or business works,” DoorDash said in a statement.
In a conference call with investors Wednesday, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said the investments will pay off down the road. For example, he said, DoorDash needs to build a single global tech platform so it can roll out features and improvements to its newer delivery businesses — Wolt, which it acquired in 2022, and Deliveroo, which it acquired this year — at the same time it rolls them out to DoorDash.
“I do actually think that at the tail end of this work ... we’ll actually be more efficient and we’ll have freed up engineering capacity to do a lot more work,” Xu said. “That will allow us to not only have a better cost structure, but really, just be able to do a better job in solving the next problem for customers.”
FILE - A DoorDash sign is posted on the door of a Dunkin' Donuts franchise, Feb. 27, 2023, in Methuen, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
A blast of arctic air is plunging south from Canada and spreading into parts of the northern U.S., while residents of the Pacific Northwest brace for possible mudslides and levee failures from floodwaters that are expected to be slow to recede.
The catastrophic flooding has forced thousands of people to evacuate, including Eddie Wicks and his wife, who live amid sunflowers and Christmas trees on a Washington state farm next to the Snoqualmie River. As they moved their two donkeys to higher ground and their eight goats to their outdoor kitchen, the water began to rise much quicker than anything they’d experienced before.
As the water engulfed their home Thursday afternoon, deputies from the King County Sheriff’s Office marine rescue dive unit were able to rescue them and their dog, taking them on a boat the half-mile (800 meters) across their field, which had been transformed into a lake.
As the Pacific Northwest begins to recover from the deluge, a separate weather system is already bringing dangerous wind chill values — the combination of cold air temperatures and wind — to parts of the Upper Midwest.
Shortly before noon Saturday, it was minus 12 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 24 degrees Celsius) in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where the wind chill value meant that it felt like minus 33 F (minus 36 C), the National Weather Service said.
For big cities like Minneapolis and Chicago, the coldest temperatures were expected late Saturday night into Sunday morning. In the Minneapolis area, low temperatures were expected to drop to around minus 15 F (minus 26 C), by early Sunday morning. Lows in the Chicago area are projected to be around 1 F(minus 17 C) by early Sunday, the weather service said.
The Arctic air mass was expected to continue pushing south and east over the weekend, expanding into Southern states by Sunday.
The National Weather Service on Saturday issued cold weather advisories that stretched as far south as the Alabama state capital city of Montgomery, where temperatures late Sunday night into Monday morning were expected to plummet to around 22 F (minus 6 C). To the east, lows in Savannah, Georgia, were expected to drop to around 24 F (minus 4 C) during the same time period.
The cold weather freezing much of the country comes as residents in the Pacific Northwest endure more misery after several days of flooding. Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate towns in the region as an unusually strong atmospheric river dumped a foot (30 centimeters) or more of rain in parts of western and central Washington over several days and swelled rivers, inundating communities and prompting dramatic rescues from rooftops and vehicles.
The record floodwaters were expected to continue to slowly recede Saturday, but authorities warn that waters will remain high for days, and that there is still danger from potential levee failures or mudslides. There is also the threat of more rain forecast for Sunday. Officials have conducted dozens of water rescues as debris and mudslides have closed highways and raging torrents have washed out roads and bridges.
A man pushes a truck through a neigbhorhood flooded by the Skagit River on Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, in Burlington. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)
An aerial view shows homes surrounded by floodwaters in Snohomish, Wash., Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)
Emergency crews, including National Guard soldiers, wort in a neighborhood flooded by the Skagit River on Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, in Burlington, Wash. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)
