door dash get instacart The companies announced Thursday that they are combining the two shipping giants under one roof for about $17 billion.
DoorDash will pay $65 per share in cash and stock, an 11% premium to Instacart’s Wednesday closing price and about a 26% premium to Instacart’s closing price on Oct. 22, the last trading day before news of a potential sale was announced.
DoorDash stock rose more than 8% in premarket trading on news of the deal, while Instacart traded mostly flat.
The companies said the deal is expected to close in late 2027 or early 2028. DoorDash plans to retain Instacart’s brand, enterprise technology products and apps after the deal closes.
DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said in a statement that groceries are “one of the most difficult things to get online correctly.” He pointed to the difficulty of selecting the right inventory and delivering fresh produce to customers’ doorsteps without getting damaged along the way.
“While Instacart has spent years learning how to do it well for grocery stores, DoorDash has built the delivery network and technology that local stores rely on every day,” Xu said. “Together, we can bring more of these tools to stores of all sizes and unlock the potential of grocery delivery.”
DoorDash also reported third-quarter financial results at the same time as announcing the deal. LSEG said adjusted earnings per share were $1.06, beating analysts’ average estimate of 84 cents per share. Revenue was $4.62 billion, exceeding LSEG’s forecast of $4.56 billion.
Marketplace gross order value, which tracks the total value of orders on the platform, rose 36% year over year to $33.9 billion, beating the consensus estimate of $33.6 billion. The total number of orders reached 993 million, an increase of 28% year-on-year.
Acquisition speculation has been swirling since last week, when The Information reported that Instacart was considering a sale and was in talks with the following companies: Uber And DoorDash. On Monday, multiple news outlets reported that DoorDash is in talks to acquire Instacart, a deal that could value Instacart at about $17 billion.
Sources told CNBC on Wednesday that a deal could be announced as early as Thursday morning.
Acquiring Instacart would further strengthen DoorDash’s presence in online grocery delivery. DoorDash started with food delivery and has since expanded to Sephora, Macy’sStaples and Anthropology. The company has recently made grocery a bigger priority, adding more local grocery stores to its stable after announcing a partnership with. kroger last year.
Instacart, which went public in 2023, was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the surge in grocery delivery services during the pandemic, but it has struggled to maintain momentum. In December, Instacart agreed to pay $60 million to resolve Federal Trade Commission allegations that it misled users with false advertising and engaged in “unlawful subscription registration” practices.
Instacart (Maplebear) and Doordash stock charts.
The service also faces increasing competition from companies such as: Amazon and walmart. After slowing its brick-and-mortar grocery efforts, Amazon has doubled down on its online grocery business, leveraging its vast fulfillment footprint to speed up the delivery of household goods, groceries and fresh produce.
Both Amazon and Walmart are pushing further into same-day and next-day shipping, which poses a threat to Instacart and DoorDash’s on-demand delivery models.
Analysts note that a potential merger between Instacart and DoorDash could come under antitrust scrutiny, given the companies’ overlapping markets.
“While third-party delivery platforms remain a minority of total grocery spending, carving out the online market more narrowly or from a grocery store perspective could make it more difficult to approve business customers,” Wedbush analysts said in a research note on Monday.
— CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos contributed to this report.
