DoorDash CEO discusses earnings 2022.05.06

🎥 May 05, 2022 📺 Nomad Investors ⏱ 8m 👁 1005 views

DoorDash CEO discusses earnings 2022.05.06 Facebook: / nomadinvestors #DoorDash #Uber #Stocks #CathieWood #Facebook #TikTok #Microsoft #Tesla #Dogecoin Source: CNBC

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About Tony Xu

Tony Xu, co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, participated in the company's Q1 2026 earnings call on April 29, 2026, and a subsequent podcast interview published on April 21, 2026. During the earnings call, Xu stated that the company is seeing productivity gains from AI, noting that "well north of half of our code... probably closer to 2/3 of our code is written by AI today." He said the company expects to offer agentic ordering experiences that reduce friction for customers, but added that he does not believe "the ideal agentic shopping experience is just going to be a chat assistant." Xu also said that DoorDash is seeing accelerated subscription growth and gaining market share, and that "majority of the MAU growth in the industry... is being driven by DoorDash." On grocery delivery, he said the company has created a lower cost structure that allows it to be profitable, but that it "is just not good enough yet" from the customer perspective, citing a need for greater accuracy and better price points. In the podcast interview, Xu discussed DoorDash's early history, including an anecdote about issuing refunds that amounted to roughly 40% of the company's remaining cash runway early on. He said DoorDash was "the only company to cut commissions by 50%" during the pandemic, an expense he described as over $100 million, and that the company spent millions on national TV campaigns urging people to order from restaurants regardless of platform. Xu also discussed the company's autonomous delivery robot, Dot, and expressed support for permitting reform to make it easier for restaurants to open additional locations.

Source: AI-verified profile updated from Tony Xu's recent appearances. Browse all interviews →

Transcript (14 segments)

✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution

Reporter0:00

Does that get pulled back if the economy softens this year given the macroeconomic backdrop?

Tony Xu0:06

Yeah, well, I appreciate the question. I mean, we're trying to build the largest local commerce company in the world, so there's a lot to do. We're trying to bring everything inside the neighborhood to you and bring incremental demand to all these physical businesses. On the other hand, we're trying to convert all these physical businesses and give them the tools to become digital powerhouses. What we've seen so far is we've been very resilient and fortunate as a business to have a very profitable core US restaurants business that has given us the fuel and positive cash flows to be able to reinvest to go beyond restaurants, beyond the United States, and beyond just our marketplace, but also build the platform for local commerce globally.

Reporter0:44

Yeah, so I know that your free cash flow being positive is a key point here, but it feels like what investors are saying right now amid this macroeconomic backdrop is they don't want company CEOs to build; they want them almost to preserve cash, preserve profits, get closer to it on a net income level, not just adjusted EBITDA. So does that make you reconsider your plans if we're heading into a year where that desire from investors could be even more pronounced?

Tony Xu1:09

Well, the goal for DoorDash is to maximize total profit dollars over the long run. We think that's not only great for the interest of all of our audiences but also the best for shareholders. And while that may take some resilience and patience through this period of volatility and a lot of external factors, what we see internally and in the fundamentals is all-time highs in our user base, all-time highs in our DashPass subscriber program, as well as order frequency across all cohorts, and increasing profitability in an already profitable business, which is our US restaurants business. So when I combine these factors, right now is the time to invest for the future at DoorDash.

Reporter1:47

So what I'm hearing is that your strategy will not change given the macroeconomic backdrop, but in the long term you're still hoping and looking for that to pay off. In terms of your driver supply, it's curious to me why you guys have not had the same issues as Uber and Lyft. I'm not just talking about this year but post-pandemic last year, when the ride-sharing companies were spending so much money to get drivers onto their platform. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said again this week that cross-selling on its platform between Eats and rides has been a big boost in terms of that metric of active drivers. Is that true? Do you guys need a ride-sharing business?

Tony Xu2:23

Well, we actually don't see any connection between delivering goods and delivering people. Structurally, we have seen that we have a much larger pool of workers who are interested in delivering goods. In fact, we have more Dashers — these folks who are doing the deliveries — than even folks in ride-sharing with drivers. And as a result, that's really because of structural differences. People who don't want to have people inside the same vehicle, people who really care about their safety, people who don't see it as a full-time opportunity. Again, 90% of the Dashers on DoorDash do fewer than 10 hours of work. The average dash is a week; the average Dasher does four hours a week. So when you think about it from that perspective, we represent hundreds of industries — people who can be everything from US Olympians to retail workers to students. They're all dashing. As a result, we just have a structurally fundamental advantage over any other form of part-time work.

Reporter3:21

John's got a question for you. Hey Tony, good morning. I'll mention that as we're talking, DoorDash stock is kind of tipping into the green a bit. I want to ask you about inflation through the lens of DoorDash on a couple of areas in particular. One is DashPass, because you've got some subscription providers like Netflix and others leading more into advertising because they believe that consumers might be subscription sensitive. I wonder how that plays out with DashPass. And then your retooled pricing for restaurants, which you did during the pandemic, where now it's a little more a la carte — restaurants can choose how much they want you for marketing versus how much for delivery. How is all that playing out? Are you finding that more DoorDash customers are using you to order from restaurants and go pick it up themselves, and how does that affect your growth, your margins, your profitability?

Tony Xu4:14

Yeah, well, inflation is certainly a very real issue that we take very seriously. We've been looking at it many years ago, kind of seeing some of the uptick in consumer prices rising. For us, it's always been about making sure all of our audiences are taken care of, and that really starts with the Dashers — making sure they get 10% cash back on fuel expenses, that Dashers who are driving longer distances actually get bonuses for that work. For merchants, to your point, I'm giving them a suite of tools to pick and choose: is this a time to invest to offset some of the rising costs and challenges, or for others who maybe are seeing some labor pressures and other forms of struggle on the supply front? It is an opportunity to do things like pick up or other forms of business, just giving them the tools to choose between the spectrum of growth and profitability. And all of this is on the backdrop of the fact that we've seen very strong resilience from consumer demand even in the face of some of this inflationary pressure. I think that's because we have the greatest privilege of serving a business where people eat three times a day, that's 90 times a month. When you have that many shots on goal and when you think about where consumers are going to spend even in spite of inflationary pressures, food consumption is certainly at the top of the list.

Reporter5:39

Tony, can you give me a little bit of data on the degree to which DoorDash is enabling transformation in restaurant business models? You and I have talked in the past about restaurants trialing different concepts out of the same kitchen and thus being able to grow that way. You guys have started doing more distance delivery, letting people order from a great barbecue place in Memphis and have the frozen food shipped to them. To what degree is that working? To what degree is that profitable for the businesses involved? And do you view that as a driver going forward?

Tony Xu6:14

We want to be the first place where a restaurant or any physical business — we want to be their first phone call as their business partner. That's why we're inventing so many products to allow them to find ways to grow and reach new customers and new ordering occasions. You highlighted a couple of them. During the pandemic, we saw restaurants get very inventive and creative, selling different types of food from the same kitchen — a Chinese restaurant selling now Mexican food, and many versions of this. In fact, we've seen tens of thousands of these types of opportunities, these virtual brands and stores, rise on the platform literally from zero just a couple of years ago. We also saw new innovation where restaurants are now shipping some of their foods, whether it's frozen foods from places like Lou Malnati's and their great delicious deep-dish pizza in Chicago, to Carlos' Bakery and their amazingly delicious cookies. Other restaurants are now recognizing they're not just a place that sells food but a place that sells merchandise. So they're selling their cookbooks, they're selling their stores, they're selling cooking classes. All of these things are part of the new suite in building a digital business.

Reporter7:29

Hey Tony, retail gasoline up 22 cents in three weeks, diesel at an all-time high of $5.50. I just wonder how you think about fuel surcharges and how broadly you're deploying them if at all, and what the line is to pull them back if we in fact do get some relief down the road.

Tony Xu7:50

Yeah, it's a great question. Looking at the rising cost of fuel is something we've been studying literally for the past four to six quarters now. That's why we introduced the gas rewards program to Dashers to make sure that their earnings wouldn't be impacted by this rising cost of fuel. We've extended that program through the end of August now. We weren't seeing — actually, we didn't even, prior to the increases in fuel costs that you've been describing, we actually didn't see any challenges in getting Dashers on the road. In fact, we had record highs in terms of Dashers on the platform. But it's the right thing to do. We wanted to make sure that the earnings weren't impacted, and we're fortunate as a business to have those profits to be able to reinvest back into the drivers without passing on the cost to consumers.

Reporter8:35

Tony, I wish we had more time, but that's all we got. I didn't even get to ask you about DashMart. We'll do that next time. Thank you so much for being with us.

Tony Xu8:41

Thanks so much, Deidre.