DoorDash beat Q3 revenue estimates and posted $244 million in net income. The stock dropped 17%—worst single-day decline in company history.

Revenue hit $3.45 billion, up 27% year-over-year and above Wall Street's $3.36 billion estimate. Orders grew 21% to 776 million. Net income of 55 cents per share beat last year's 38 cents. Those are solid numbers.

Then CEO Tony Xu announced DoorDash plans to spend "several hundred million dollars" in 2026 on autonomous delivery infrastructure, a new global tech stack, and international expansion. The stock tanked immediately.

Investors wanted DoorDash to optimize for profitability and return cash to shareholders. DoorDash wants to reinvest profits into growth. That's the disconnect.

From Wall Street's view, DoorDash already won. They crushed GrubHub—starting back in 2021 when they began gaining serious market share even as Amazon took a stake in Grubhub in 2022 to try defending them—until GrubHub sold to Wonder for $650 million, a 91% loss from its 2020 valuation. DoorDash dominates U.S. market share and joined the S&P 500 earlier this year. The war's over. Now milk the position.

Tony Xu doesn't see it that way. On the earnings call he said: "We are running the business as we always have—to solve problems for customers in the highest quality ways." Translation: we're prioritizing long-term customer value over short-term investor returns.

Wall Street hated that.

Why I Think DoorDash Is Right

DoorDash has a 2-3 year window to expand internationally before local competitors build defensible positions. Uber Eats is already global. If DoorDash waits, they're locked into the U.S. permanently.

The $3.9 billion Deliveroo acquisition gives them instant presence in the UK, Europe, Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. That's worth spending on now while they have momentum and capital access. They also bought restaurant booking platform SevenRooms for $1.2 billion, expanding beyond delivery into the full restaurant tech stack.

On autonomous delivery: labor costs are the biggest variable expense in the model. If human couriers cost $8-15 per delivery and autonomous robots cost $2-4 per delivery, the economics completely change. DoorDash is investing in delivery robots with Serve Robotics, building their own Dot robot, and partnering with Waymo on autonomous delivery in Phoenix.

They watched what happened in ride-hailing. Uber fought for years to reach profitability before they could afford to invest hundreds of millions in AV partnerships. Lyft's partnering with Waymo and others but focusing on free cash flow optimization. The platforms that figure out autonomous economics first win the next decade.

DoorDash doesn't want to get disrupted by an autonomous delivery startup the way Uber and Lyft are being disrupted by Waymo. So they're building that capability now.

The risk is whether "several hundred million dollars" becomes $500 million, then $700 million, then $1 billion in runaway spending with no clear ROI. DoorDash has a history of aggressive spending during competitive battles. If they're not disciplined about autonomous delivery R&D or international market entry costs, this spirals.

But if they execute—if international revenue hits 20%+ of total by late 2026 and autonomous delivery is live in 10+ markets with proven cost savings—investors will change their tune. The spending will look smart in hindsight.

Tony Xu's basically saying: "We could milk U.S. delivery margins for 3-5 years and make investors happy. Or we could build a global delivery infrastructure company that lasts decades. We're choosing the latter."

I respect that. It's the right call. DoorDash is profitable now—they're reinvesting profits, not burning cash to chase growth. That's fundamentally different from the 2020-2021 period when they were losing money to compete with Uber Eats and GrubHub.

Compare this to Lyft's Q3, where they hit $1 billion in free cash flow and the stock went up despite missing EPS. Lyft's optimizing for cash generation. DoorDash is optimizing for growth. Both strategies work—they're just playing different games.

The market will come around once the strategy pays off. It always does. The next 12 months determine whether this was visionary or reckless. I'm betting on visionary.

Source: DoorDash Q3 2025 Earnings Results
Source: DoorDash Stock Reaction