DoorDash IPO Filing Shows Surge In Pandemic Related Revenue, First Ever Quarterly Profit

DoorDash on Friday filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. DoorDash will trade under the symbol DASH.

DoorDash said in the filing that it saw an explosion of business in 2020 and shrinking losses during the pandemic. In the first nine months of this year, it generated a $149 million loss on revenue of $1.9 billion, compared with a $533 million loss on $587 million in revenue the year before, CNBC reported.

In the third quarter of this year, DoorDash saw 236 million total orders, compared with 70 million the year before.

The surge in food-delivery orders led DoorDash to post a surprise $23 million profit in the second quarter of 2020, Yahoo Finance reported.

The company's filing said it connects "over 390,000 merchants, over 18 million consumers, and over 1 million Dashers." Edison Trends reported that DoorDash is dominating the online food industry. DoorDash makes up 45% of the delivery based purchases in the food industry.

DoorDash raised $400 million in equity capital in June, scoring a valuation of $16 billion, CNBC reported.

The recent passage of Proposition 22 in California puts DoorDash in an optimal position. The company lobbied to support the ballot measure, which keeps food-delivery drivers classified as independent contractors, meaning they do not qualify for benefits such as minimum wage, healthcare, or paid time off.

In a letter on Friday, Tony Xu, DoorDash's co-founder, and CEO portrayed DoorDash as a crucial partner for small businesses and independent restaurants in the COVID-19 era.

"Helping brick-and-mortar businesses compete, succeed, and flourish in these rapidly changing times is the core problem we are trying to solve," Xu wrote.

DoorDash's IPO is among the most highly anticipated of 2020 and adds to a record year for public listings. Special-purpose acquisition companies have so far raised roughly $65 billion across 178 IPOs, according to SPACInsider.com.

Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are leading DoorDash's IPO, along with Barclays, Deutsche Bank Securities, RBC Capital Markets, and UBS Investment Bank.