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DoorDash Eclipses IPO Value With Huge Jump in Trading Debut

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Shares of food delivery platform DoorDash Inc. almost doubled from their IPO price in their trading debut Wednesday, a huge pop for an unprofitable company that’s had a recent boost from pandemic-era eating habits.

The stock opened at $182 after DoorDash raised $3.37 billion in its initial public offering, pricing shares at $102 each. They climbed even higher from the opening price in early trading, hitting $187.40 at 1:25 p.m. in New York, or 85% above the listing price.

The massive first-day jump -- which if it holds could be the third biggest this year in an already white-hot IPO market -- gives DoorDash a fully diluted value of about $70.3 billion. That includes outstanding shares, employee stock options and restricted stock units detailed in its filings.


With a current market capitalization of about $59 billion -- excluding those additional shares -- DoorDash is bigger than companies including Kraft Heinz Co., Lululemon Athletica Inc. and Ford Motor Co.

DoorDash sold 33 million shares Tuesday for $102 each after marketing them for $90 to $95 each. Its IPO is the third-largest on a U.S. exchange this year, exceeded only by the $4 billion blank-check company backed by billionaire Bill Ackman and software maker Snowflake Inc.’s $3.86 billion offering including so-called greenshoe shares.

DoorDash has seized on the pandemic-fueled boom in demand for meals brought to your door, as well as investor exuberance over new stock listings as it moves ahead with its IPO. Revenue in the first nine months of the year more than tripled and its net loss narrowed from a year earlier on a surge in new customers, the company said in its filings.

Some skeptics don’t expect the increase in at-home dining to last.

“As we go from being stuck at home to wanting to venture out, people are less likely to want to go and order delivery,” said Max Gokhman, head of asset allocation at Pacific Life Fund Advisors. “They’re going to want to actually go out and go to a restaurant.”

He added that the market could also get more competitive, especially as rival Uber Technologies Inc. sees a pickup in its ride-sharing business, which could help subsidize its food delivery investment.

Restaurant Fees

While DoorDash was a sort of lifeline to many restaurants as pandemic lockdowns forced them into a takeout-only model, the fees that it charges restaurants, which can be 30% of the cost of an order, are seen as unfair by some eateries. Certain cities, including New York and Seattle, have set limits on the amount of fees delivery services can charge restaurants.

The company started by doing deliveries in Palo Alto, California, where Tony Xu and his two co-founders were students at Stanford University. They often did the deliveries themselves in the evenings after classes.

“It’s certainly surreal,” Xu said Wednesday in a Bloomberg TV interview, recalling the early days when he was “delivering hummus out of my Honda.”

Including DoorDash, companies have now raised more than $160 billion in IPOs on U.S. exchanges this year, an all-time high, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Several more are expected before the end of the year as companies that put off listing plans during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic regain the confidence to put their shares on public markets.

The next-largest of the group is home-rental platform Airbnb, which is seeking to raise as much as $3.09 billion in its IPO Wednesday. Others include video-game company Roblox Corp., installment loans provider Affirm Holdings Inc. and ContextLogic Inc., the parent of online discount retailer Wish Inc.

Before the pandemic, food-delivery companies like DoorDash and rivals Uber Eats and Grubhub Inc. struggled to make money amid fierce competition among themselves and blowback over their fees and treatment of workers. Margins in the business are razor thin, prompting a wave of consolidation that saw Grubhub agree in June to get bought by Just Eat Takeaway.com NV for $7.3 billion, and Uber acquire Postmates Inc. for $2.65 billion in an all-stock deal in July.

DoorDash’s offering is being led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., with Barclays Plc, Deutsche Bank AG, RBC Capital Markets and UBS Group AG also on the deal. DoorDash’s shares are trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DASH.
 
My youtube college financial online professor just told us to steer away from doordash. He's not investing in them. Competitors could beat them or restaurant could do their own delivery after the pandemic.
 
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