Earnings Call Transcript - DASH Q3 2021

Operator, Moderator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the DoorDash Q3 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Andy Hargreaves, please go ahead.

Andy Hargreaves, Moderator

Thank you. Hello everyone, and thanks for joining us for our Third Quarter 2021 earnings call. I'm pleased to be joined today by co-founder, Chair and CEO Tony Xu and CFO Prabir Adarkar. I'm also pleased to be joined by a special guest, co-founder and CEO of Wolt. I would like to remind everyone we'll be making forward-looking statements during this call, including statements regarding the recently announced acquisition, market opportunity, expected benefits of the transaction, accretion, time to close, strategies with Wolt, and benefits to customers in the markets in which we operate. Our expectations of our business, future financial results, guidance, and strategies, forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in our forward-looking statements. Some such risks are described in our SEC filings, including our Form 10-K. Please do not rely on our forward-looking statements as predictions of future performance, and we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. During this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures, information regarding our non-GAAP financial results, including a reconciliation of such non-GAAP results to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures may be found in our Investor letter, which is available on our Investor Relations website. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to our GAAP results and are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results. Finally, this call in its entirety is being audio webcast on our website, and a replay of the call will be available on our website shortly after the call ends. We'll typically go straight into questions, but given the transaction announcement, we'll have Tony and Miki give some brief comments before we go into the Q&A session. For the Q&A, please note that Miki is happy to answer questions about his approach to the industry and his rationale for the combination. Please don't ask questions about Wolt's financials, outlook, or future integration plans. Our businesses will remain independent until the deal closes, so we won't be answering those questions at this point. I will now pass it on to Tony.

Tony Xu, CEO

Great. Thanks, Andy. Hey, everyone, thanks for joining us today. At DoorDash, our mission is to grow and empower local economies. We started in food delivery logistics, and our vision was always to build a platform that supports all of local commerce, and to do it on a global basis. To date, we have executed against this primarily on an organic basis. That's not because we believe that it must be done organically, but because our framework for M&A sets a high bar. For those who haven't heard it before, our M&A framework is comprised of three core standards. First, it must be talent accretive. We look for teams of superbly talented people that share our vision as well as our approach to execution. Second, we must unlock product categories and/or new geographies. This means that we look for opportunities that expand our total addressable market, either in a way that we couldn't do so on our own or in a way that is much more efficient than we could do so ourselves. And third, it must increase our long-term profit potential and add to shareholder value. Wolt handling meets all three criteria. We believe Wolt brings extraordinary talent, a world-class product, and operational expertise that will accelerate our progress. We've gotten to know Miki and the Wolt team well over the last few months, in fact, years, and believe that they are truly exceptional. They share our ambition to build a global platform for all of global commerce. And they've established a culture based on innovation, intense operational rigor, and a bias for action. These characteristics match our own, and we believe our strategic and cultural alignment make them the best team in the world to lead our international efforts. From a market perspective, Wolt operates in 23 markets, of which 22 are new markets for DoorDash. By themselves, we believe these markets provide an opportunity to grow our international business to multiples of what it is today. This should allow us to invest and expand more efficiently than we could have done on our own and on a faster timeline. Finally, Wolt's product scales to multiple categories. In certain markets, the company has already established a strong presence in categories ranging from cosmetics to electronics. As we look to grow our non-restaurant categories globally, we expect their product vision and expertise will improve our execution. From a financial perspective, the opportunity in local commerce is enormous. We believe that the potential in our combined markets creates a substantial opportunity to grow gross order value to multiples of its current level. We expect to invest aggressively behind the Wolt team and believe their capabilities will improve our efficiency internationally while allowing us to increase our focus in the United States. Building a large and profitable local commerce platform is difficult to do in any market. Doing so across many markets simultaneously is exponentially harder. But attacking hard problems is what we like to do at DoorDash. And we know that the same is true for Wolt. We couldn't be happier to be teaming up with Miki and the extraordinary team at Wolt to execute against our shared vision. With that, let me hand it over to Miki.

Miki Kuusi, CEO of Wolt

Thanks, Tony. Hi, everyone. I'm Miki, co-founder and CEO of Wolt. So my co-founders and I founded Wolt back in 2014 with the ambition to build a new layer of infrastructure that connects restaurants and retailers, couriers, and consumers in a way that made cities better and people happier. We wanted to build the digital version of a shopping mall, but with the convenience that a modern logistics engine can enable. We did our first delivery in Helsinki, Finland, back in 2015. When we started, we knew a few things would have to be true if we were going to build a scale of a business we envisioned. First of all, we were going to have to expand beyond Finland. In Finland, we have fewer than 6 million people. So to build a large business, we were going to have to be international from day one. We built everything about the service from product logistics to customer service with the idea of being easily exportable, which allowed us to launch in 22 new countries in the 5 years from 2016 to 2020. Secondly, we were going to have to be efficient. In the Nordics, we have a challenging combination of small cities, low population density, higher labor costs, and a whole different culture that means we have to build the business to operate at incredible levels of logistical efficiency in order to generate room for profitability. Thirdly, we had to build a product that consumers love. There was no room in our margin structure or our bank account to take on poor quality products with a huge customer acquisition spend. We had to make our marketing spend work by using our product to retain consumers at higher levels than what we saw at competitors. We've been on an incredible journey so far, but we believe we are only getting started. We have one chance to build a leading global platform for local commerce; by joining forces with the team at DoorDash, we expect to put our combined company on a path to accelerate our efforts and bring greater levels of value to consumers, merchants, and couriers around the world.

Andy Hargreaves, Moderator

Thank you, Micky and Tony. We will now operate the questions.

Operator, Moderator

Please standby. We'll be compiling a roster. First question comes from the line of Ross Sandler from Barclays. You're now live.

Ross Sandler, Analyst

Hey guys, I guess we knew this day was going to come eventually with the European competition heating up. But I guess Tony, the first question is, it looks like Wolt is doing about the same drops per hour as some of their competitors over there, and our understanding is they are number 2 in most of their markets. So I guess, what are you guys bringing to the table, and how might the combination change that and advance them to the top of the league table? Thanks a lot.

Tony Xu, CEO

Yeah. Hey, Ross, I'll start and let others here follow. I would say there are three big things that we saw about Wolt that are just really incredible. First and foremost, this is a team that executes in a very similar way to DoorDash. I cannot understate how important that is when we're talking about an execution-oriented business, which is what we find ourselves in. They really competed by building a winning product, by focusing on removing every basis point of inefficiency, finding every penny of savings and building the business that has compounded its efforts in delighting the customer and doing so in a very capital-efficient way. The second thing I would say is they built a remarkable business. I mean, as you saw in the Investor Relations deck that we uploaded, the business has grown to $2.5 billion in annualized gross order value and is growing triple digits. It's done so while also growing its bottom line at the same time. And so it's become very, very efficient not only in its drops per hour, which includes idle time, by the way, but also just in how it's thought about everything from the consumer experience to conversion to customer support, and localization and so forth. They built an incredible business when you look at this capital efficiency combined with just how early their markets are; as a standalone business, they just have very large scale to grow into. The final thing I would say is it really represents an accelerated timeline and speed for DoorDash because of where they started in their home country of Finland, a relatively smaller country. They knew from day one in order to achieve the scale of their ambition, they needed to expand into a lot of geographies, and they've now grown to 23 markets, of which 22 will be new to DoorDash. So the combined team will be able to serve over 700 million people. Not only does it grow our total addressable market, but it allows DoorDash to have a single-threaded focus here in accelerating our ability to compete on a bigger global stage.

Prabir Adarkar, CFO

Hey, Ross, just to add to Tony's point, deliveries per hour is obviously an important metric, but there are other aspects of the P&L. We were actually amazed by what we saw in terms of capital efficiency. The retention is also supportive, and what I'm trying to say with that is learning from Wolt helps increase the efficiency of our own international investments. The second thing is Wolt has 4,000 people. If you think about what that does to our international organic ability to expand internationally, it raises our level of focus outside the U.S. And third, it preserves our existing management bandwidth to go after the large opportunity that exists in the U.S. while allowing us to sharpen that focus among the restaurant category in the U.S. but also in terms of new categories like convenience.

Ross Sandler, Analyst

Great, thanks, guys.

Operator, Moderator

Next question comes from the line of Deepak Mathivanan from Wolfe Research. Your line's open.

Deepak Mathivanan, Analyst

Great. Congrats on the acquisition. Thanks for taking the questions. One for Tony and one for Miki. Tony, I wanted to ask about the driver supply and utilization here in the U.S. It seems like the driver acquisition trends are still pretty healthy, but with various categories on the platform scaling with different on-demand needs for now. Curious on your thoughts on whether it would make sense to deploy a dual model with part-time, full-time models together with the on-demand workforce? What are the things that you are watching, potentially to explore this model? And then, maybe as a follow-up to Ross's question on Wolt, I wanted to ask about your thoughts on the broader European markets. Where do you see kind of near to medium-term opportunities to expand next, given that the competitive intensity in some of the Western European markets is very different.

Tony Xu, CEO

Hey Deepak, I'll start on the Dasher question and I think there's actually a couple of questions in there. The first part is, if you look at Dashers, they're actually no different from consumers in the sense that they all value choice. One of the things that we've seen is with over 3 million Dashers, who dashed in the quarter earning over $2.8 billion, I think really goes to show is that when we offer flexible opportunities on the platform, it really can be complementary to the traditional labor market. And that's why I think you'd see healthy levels of Dasher supply in the marketplace that has drawn to meet the demand. And as we've gotten into other categories, this is even offering Dashers even more choice and more flexible opportunities, whether it's doing grocery deliveries, convenience deliveries, etc. The second part of your question really is around Dasher preference, and at the end of the day, we're a platform that has always built what Dashers wanted. Starting from that basis of offering and what we hear time and again, not just in the U.S., but really in all of our markets is how much they value the flexibility to earn. Starting from that basis, and then working backwards with local regulators, elected officials, and anyone else really who wants to create different frameworks that meet the modern-day realities of what it is that workers want, that's what we stand for. Go ahead, Miki.

Miki Kuusi, CEO of Wolt

Yeah. On competition in Europe, a lot of people say that it's very intense. From where I'm sitting, it doesn't feel as intense, I guess. It's because when you're sitting in the pressure kettle for seven years, you get used to the pressure. Competition has always been intense in our industry, and I expect it always will be. This is an industry that is ultimately about how you're able to balance efficiency with customer experience. The easiest thing in the world is to spend money to have an amazing customer experience, but that's not a long-term sustainable business. When it comes to competition, our focus is not on competition; our focus is on the customer and providing value to them, building an amazing service for the customer while doing it in an efficient, profitable manner, which allows us to continue investing for a very long time into bringing more customers onto the platform. If I look at Europe, it's still very early in most of the markets. Yes, there is competition; there will always be competition, but ultimately it's a game of execution and how you deliver value to the consumer.

Deepak Mathivanan, Analyst

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator, Moderator

Next on our queue is Eric Sheridan from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Eric Sheridan, Analyst

Thanks so much for taking the question. Just one really, when you think about what you framed as the potential for EBITDA, looking out to 2022 and how Wolt fits into that broader framework. Can you talk to us a little bit about your biggest priorities, including executing the acquisition and what would push you to the upper or lower band with some of those profitability outcomes as you look out over the next 12 to 18 months? Thanks.

Prabir Adarkar, CFO

Hi, it's for me and thanks for the question. We're not offering 2022 guidance at this time. Really the purpose of the $0 to $500 million EBITDA range was to signal that even post-acquisition, which by the way, has to go through regulatory review and complete, assuming the deal completes, we expect the combined company to have adjusted EBITDA that would loosely correlate to what DoorDash will do on a standalone basis for 2022. And so despite the combination, it doesn't change our priorities. Our priorities still remain: First, to build the number one food app in the U.S.; Second, to continue adding multiple categories beyond food and expanding into convenience, grocery, packed food retail, and so on; Third, to continue building the platform side of our business with DoorDash driving storefronts; and then fourth, to continue building a global company, where the Wolt conversation that we're having today is a huge part of that.

Operator, Moderator

All right. Next one on the queue is Douglas Anmuth from JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Douglas Anmuth, Analyst

Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to ask about DashPass. You talked about the 9 million-plus members. Could you share a little bit more just on their characteristics in terms of frequency, order size, and perhaps around new vertical adoption relative to non-DashPass members? And then you mentioned Canada and Australia share gains but obviously early in some of the international markets, just curious if you expect the offering to work the same way as you expand more internationally going forward. Thanks.

Prabir Adarkar, CFO

Hey, Doug, thanks for the question. Yes, we're excited about DashPass; it's our primary affordability play to think about it, because we offer zero delivery fees as well as reduced service fees for DashPass members. The interesting thing about DashPass is that it actually helps with overall retention; DashPass members have higher retention compared to those that aren't DashPass members, and engagement levels are significantly higher. We haven't disclosed exactly how much we increased those numbers, but we do see DashPass members have a greater tendency to adopt across not just multiple types of products, but also across multiple categories. I view DashPass membership as an important leading indicator in terms of future growth. As we think about the size of the membership base at 9 million, there are millions of other monthly active users that currently use DoorDash but aren't DashPass members. And we've got work to do in order to convert them to DashPass members. Beyond that, there are millions of other people that don't use DoorDash at all. So for us, as we continue making advances in terms of selection, both on the restaurant side as well as in other categories, improving the quality of the delivery experience, and working on affordability, we're hoping that the membership base grows and guides future growth. On the question regarding Canada and Australia, we look at it the same way as we did in the U.S. It comes down to the same three vectors of selection, quality, and affordability. There's no secret sauce, and we'll continue to make progress, improving in all key dimensions, which is leading to retention gains and category savings.

Douglas Anmuth, Analyst

Great. Thank you, Prabir.

Operator, Moderator

Next one on the queue is Michael McGovern from Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Michael McGovern, Analyst

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Just a couple on Wolt. I was wondering, pretty surprising to see such high growth this year in 2021 when we're more post-pandemic and there should be higher mobility, presumably resulting in some deceleration on growth. So can you talk about what's driving the outsized growth for Wolt? And it doesn't look like geographic expansion, so is there maybe non-restaurant expansion or category expansion that Wolt has achieved that's contributing to higher growth?

Prabir Adarkar, CFO

Thanks for the question. It's a variety of things that's going on. I don't want to go into a lot of detail there until the deal closes, but it's not simply adding new countries; it's because of strong retention, it's because of customer acquisition strength, it's due to category expansion beyond food delivery. We are excited by the continued strength we've observed despite being two years after the pandemic began. All those data points are things that we saw we were excited by and are a testament to the great product experience that Mickey and his team have built.

Miki Kuusi, CEO of Wolt

Yeah, and I mean, people rate 80 to 100 times a month. If you're talking about an average market with a frequency of 3 and 4, the reality is that we're still a very small part of our customers' lives. If you look at the broader population, most people have never even tried a service like ours. So we're only getting started when you look at the market we operate in, expanding into new cities, bringing new merchants onto the platform, and increasingly being much more than a restaurant delivery service, now expanding to retail and other categories. Ultimately, it's an execution game. If you're the best possible provider for the customer, you will have customers using you more frequently, and more often; that's what we're focused on.

Michael McGovern, Analyst

Got it. Thanks so much.

Operator, Moderator

Next one on the queue is Youssef Squali from Truist Securities. Your line is now open.

Youssef Squali, Analyst

Great. Thank you very much. Two questions from me, please. First, on the acquisition, can you maybe just speak to the low level of integration needed for you guys to deliver on the vision? Just trying to understand what are low-hanging fruits versus things that may take longer to execute on, just considering the large footprint of the acquired company? And second, maybe you can comment on the Albertsons partnership that you've announced last quarter? Any learnings from that for grocery delivery? I think you had initially talked about a couple of thousand stores and do you anticipate any more partnerships by year-end? Thank you.

Tony Xu, CEO

Sure. I'll take both of those. On the first question, this partnership is really about acceleration and expansion to play for a bigger prize on an even larger global stage. I think both Wolt and DoorDash have done a remarkable job in building the best product possible in their respective markets. And really, when I think about the combination now serving over 700 million people once the deal is closed from the first half of next year, we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to keep delighting our customers and offering the best combination of selection, quality, price, and service. And that's true in the restaurant category; that's also true beyond restaurants. So there's a lot of work to do. And in that vein, we could really use all the talented teammates possible. This partnership is not about cost synergies; it's about acceleration and expansion, and we're very excited for the long runway ahead. Your second question I think was regarding Albertsons. It's been a fantastic partnership with Albertsons, you're right, we have now launched across their entire footprint of over 2,000 stores. We continue to see other partners added into this category. In fact, in the third quarter, we announced over 40,000 non-restaurant stores, including recent additions of Total Wine & More, Weis Markets, and Cardenas Markets in the grocery category, and also Bed Bath and Beyond. So beyond food and liquor. As we discussed, there are four big areas of work right now at DoorDash: we're building the number one food app; we're getting into new categories such as convenience and grocery. Those are relatively new categories where, I know we're the leading platform in the U.S. for convenience deliveries, but we have a long, long way to go there. We're continuing to invest in services to help merchants build their own digital business with products like DoorDash Drive and Storefront. And obviously, we're making a big announcement today on our international business. Again, the theme even in both of your questions is how do we make sure we have single-threaded leadership in order to have both speed and quality of execution across all of these priority areas.

Youssef Squali, Analyst

All right. Thanks, Tony.

Operator, Moderator

Next one on the queue is Bernie McTernan from Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Bernie McTernan, Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Just two for me. Tony, as you think about the next 12 to 24 months and isolating the U.S., what do you see is the greater near-term opportunity for you that is increasing the frequency of usage from the base, and as a result, driving more DashPass members? Or just continuing to expand the total number of customers on the platform? And then just a follow-up on DashPass. The 9 million customers is certainly more than we were expecting, and it's been a while since you provided an update; I think it was last year when you provided 5 million. Can you talk about the cadence of getting from the 5 million to the 9 million?

Tony Xu, CEO

Yeah, I'll take the first one and maybe I'll let Prabir follow on the second one. So on the first one, with respect to just the opportunity in the U.S., we're still pretty early. I know that obviously DashPass was a big accelerator into the business. In fact, you've seen a lot of the resilience of that consumer behavior stay even though in-store dining has returned to effectively all-time highs according to the latest Census Bureau stats that I saw in Q3. So there’s just a lot of work still to do in the restaurants category alone. Yes, we're seeing consumer engagement higher than pre-COVID levels. As Prabir mentioned, there are a lot of customers that have never used DoorDash, and certainly our customers that use DoorDash, there are many who are not part of DashPass; that's certainly an opportunity. Another big opportunity I would cite is our work into other categories. We are quickly marching into these other categories; in the first quarter, we announced single-digit percentages of our monthly active users shopping in a non-restaurant category, that number is now up to 12% in the third quarter. But again, these categories of convenience, grocery, and alcohol, they’re very, very young. We think there is a massive runway ahead and a lot of work to do in order to continue bringing these categories online.

Prabir Adarkar, CFO

Good morning. On your question regarding the membership growth, I'm not sure exactly which area you're looking for in terms of speed; we've had quarter-on-quarter growth in the national membership program every single quarter since we launched the program.

Bernie McTernan, Analyst

Understood. Thank you.

Operator, Moderator

Next one in the queue is Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer Company. Your line is now open.

Andy Hargreaves, Moderator

Good morning. Regarding your question about membership growth, I'm not sure which specific area you're referring to in terms of speed; we've experienced quarter-on-quarter growth in the national membership program every single quarter since its launch.

Operator, Moderator

All right. So for the next question, we do have Brad Erickson from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Brad Erickson, Analyst

Thanks. Just a couple, I guess. One, how should we think about the brands going forward here? Do you go with multiple brands across the markets that are in, or just DoorDash? Maybe eventually take over in certain countries? And then second, when you look at the priorities here, once the deal does close, is it really to focus on the existing countries where we're both operating, or will we also look to expand into new countries with either of the brands? Thanks.

Tony Xu, CEO

I'll take that one. Hey Brad, I guess crawl, walk, run like we say a lot internally, and first we have to wait for the deal to close, which we expect to happen in the first half of '22. The second point around, I think your question was around brands. Well, these are hyper-local businesses and at the same time, all these share a global commonality that people, regardless of where they live, eat three times a day, shop in this category over 100 times a month, and are always seeking more and more convenience. Brands tend to be hyper-local, and so we're going to optimize for how we serve customers, merchants, and couriers in the best possible way in their hyper-local area. In fact, nothing is going to change in terms of the quality of service certainly day one; we only expect that to increase over time. With respect to adding to the second part of your question around the existing footprint versus adding footprint, we have a lot of work on our plate. There are 700 million people that post-deal close that we are going to have to continuously delight. While we have the benefit and privilege of living in a high-frequency category, we do recognize that we also have to earn every single order and each next order before we can earn the privilege of serving our customers the next time. So not much more to say than that right now, besides that we're super excited about the announcement today with a great team that shares our vision as well as the way we operate. We have a lot of work ahead of us.

Brad Erickson, Analyst

That's great. Thanks.

Operator, Moderator

Next one on the queue is Steven Fox from Fox Advisors LLC. Your line is now open.

Steven Fox, Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon. Two questions, if I could. Just on the acquisition, it sounds like there's areas where you both have different kinds of efficiency improvements versus the other. I was wondering how you envision sort of getting best practices out of the two platforms? And then secondly, can you just talk a little bit about the ads growth? I understand you said in the letter you're reinvesting profits from ads, but can you give us some sense for how it's growing and how successful it's been in the last quarter? Thank you.

Tony Xu, CEO

Sure. I'll take it first and let Prabir follow up on the ads question. With respect to the first question on efficiency, there are no silver bullets in this business. That's what I've learned. There is literally efficiency everywhere from the consumer shopping experience itself to merchant operations, customer support, to drive efficiency, which I think sometimes gets quite a lot of attention. But there is a systemic equation in which you have to look at every component part, break it down into its inputs from first principles, build the best possible combination of selection, quality, price, and service for customers. And you're absolutely right, the Wolt team has done an amazing job with that, the DoorDash team has as well and post-deal close we will certainly share best practices, but there are no silver bullets here. It's an execution-oriented business where you really have to understand how the inputs translate into the outcomes. You have to work every single variable.

Prabir Adarkar, CFO

Hi Steven. On the question about ads, we aren't disclosing ad revenue at this point. What I would say is we're being careful about how we build it. It's really a merchant service, and it's not an EBITDA play. What I mean by that is we're taking our time to ensure that we have a strong relationship with advertisers while ensuring that the customer experience is utilized. Ideally, it's related to customer experience. As we make more progress, those profit dollars will get invested back into growth initiatives as I've made the point on doing an EBITDA play from our perspective.

Steven Fox, Analyst

Great, that's all very helpful. Thank you.

Operator, Moderator

Next one on the line is James Lee from Mizuho. Your line is now open.

James Lee, Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I was hoping to get an update on DashMart and what are the key learnings that you guys are seeing so far. What do you need to see for this business to expand? Should we think about this business as a complementary business, or can it scale to a point into a main product? Thanks.

Prabir Adarkar, CFO

Thanks for the question James. The way I view our convenience business consists of first-party and third-party offerings. And to defend it from a customer's perspective, all they care about is that they get the selection that they need, the right quality, and affordable prices. So to us, it's a hybrid strategy that involves both first-party and third-party partnerships in order to ensure that the selections available are the best quality at the best price. On the latter part of your question, at the end of the day, it serves as a form of selection just like anything else and allows us, because it's first-party, to include not just food but also grocery and potentially other items that the customer wants. It's a core component of our strategy; we're investing in it, which is part of the second priority I mentioned earlier in the conversation, and you can expect more updates as we make progress, but we're not prepared to disclose today.

James Lee, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Moderator

Next one on the queue is Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer and Co. Your line is now open.

Jason Helfstein, Analyst

Thanks. I saw you guys just filed the prospectus, but maybe I'll ask this scenario question: How did you think about the valuation there? I don't know if there's something you want to share as far as like trailing 12 months revenue or gross profits. So just any thoughts on how you thought about valuation? And then in the first quarter, you mentioned 7% of the business is from non-restaurant orders; just any update there? Thanks.

Operator, Moderator

Okay. Next on the queue is Brian Fitzgerald from Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Brian Fitzgerald, Analyst

Thanks, guys. Maybe just a follow-up on both. Can you talk about the level of batching that you've done there historically if you track that, how it has progressed? And then on DoorDash, wanted to know if we could get an update on the reception and the adoption levels of the more recent 15, 25, 30 commission levels, how that's progressing if you're seeing people move out of one bucket into another? Thanks.

Prabir Adarkar, CFO

On the question about batching, as I said, the company is operating independently today; we're not going to provide an update on Wolt's batching levels at this time. Regarding the adoption of the pricing tiers, we said last quarter that the majority of restaurants are choosing either the premium or plus tiers; I don't have a real update on those metrics. Other than to say that the premium mix outperformed our expectations. The question was also regarding unit revenue levels, and we think this is a smaller factor compared to other movements, and given our investments that have hit in our data rate.

Brian Fitzgerald, Analyst

Thanks.

Operator, Moderator

Your next question comes from Mark Mahaney from ISI. Your line is now open.

Mark Mahaney, Analyst

Thanks. The presentation describes Finland as having one of the most difficult markets for last-mile local logistics. Could you explain why? What's particularly difficult about that market? And I ask that because the follow-up question is, when you think about the attractiveness of the European markets, Eastern and Northern European markets where this acquisition, if it's successful, will take you. Is there something about those markets that are more or less attractive than what you currently face in terms of regulation, income requirements, and classification of workers, etc.? So is there something about those markets that makes them more or less attractive than the current markets that you're in? Thank you.

Miki Kuusi, CEO of Wolt

I can maybe start. If you look at our top of the business, ultimately it's the marriage of efficiency and customer experience. Why it's been difficult: Nordic countries have the lowest income disparity in the world. It means that our blended hourly cost is going to be surprisingly close to our average order value. So we need to make the model work by way of efficiency. There's not really a tipping culture; so you have to survive on relatively low delivery fees and commissions. There's not a very strong pre-existing delivery culture; hence we have to educate consumers to use delivery. Cities are not very high density and they're not very large. You need to be able to succeed in environments where order density is not going to be very high for a very long time, if ever. On top of that, we have very harsh winters, which is a hit for most of the year, and so forth. It's just a difficult way to do what we do. The funny thing is that as we came out of Finland into the Nordics, we just realized that every other country we saw was a lot easier for us to operate in. I guess we had to get every single ounce of the model to work out a little bit more efficiently to be able to operate.

Tony Xu, CEO

Yeah, and Mark, what I would say or what I'd add to that is I think that what the Wolt team has really proven is, regardless of market, people eat three times a day and they are always seeking convenience options. What's been really attractive about frankly their markets or even larger markets is just how early the runway is, both in the food category as well as beyond.

Mark Mahaney, Analyst

Okay, thanks a lot.

Operator, Moderator

Next question comes from the line of Ralph Schackart from William Blair. Your line is now open.

Ralph Schackart, Analyst

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Just on that driver supply. I was curious about the trends that you're seeing now that some of the government subsidies are starting to weigh in. You talked about the average active dasher increasing by about 9% or so. Just curious more on the supply, if you sort of attract and retain drivers in this current environment?

Tony Xu, CEO

Yeah. I can start on dasher supply. I think it's been very, very healthy in the second and third quarters. Again, over 90% of these Dashers work fewer than 10 hours a week. The average Dasher is under 5 hours a week. If you think about just the nature of that work, it truly is very different and frankly very complementary to a traditional job. As a result of which, that's why we saw over 3 million Dashers in the quarter that earned over $2.8 billion, and Dasher pay has actually increased by over 30% per active hour. It's been very healthy; but again, we’re in a dynamic business. Heading into Q4 with seasonality, we are going to have to make certain preparations and changes. We also saw influences in Q1 with some of the stimulus money driving up demand, but in general, because of the nature of the work and how flexible it is, Dasher supply has been relatively healthy.

Ralph Schackart, Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks, Joe.

Operator, Moderator

Next question comes from the line of Alex Potter from Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Alexander Potter, Analyst

Great. Thanks very much. I was hoping you could give an update on Drive. I know historically you haven't wanted to disclose specifics there, but maybe just qualitatively. How is Drive been going? And then a follow-up question also related to Drive: Is there an analogous white-label service with Wolt? I know that historically the European markets may have been more mom-and-pop, less sort of large franchises; I'm just curious about the extent to which you'd consider a white-label offering in Europe as well. Thanks.

Tony Xu, CEO

Sure. I'll start. On Drive, you're absolutely right; it started as a service to help restaurants build around their digital business for on-demand delivery, but since it’s really grown into a last-mile logistics system for all retailers. We’re seeing significant growth across every category, whether it be grocery, health and beauty, or general merchandise. Drive has really diversified, and we believe there is a long way to go in building a platform services business in which we not only want to create the largest local commerce marketplace, we also want to build the largest local commerce platform. We have to help these businesses not just with logistics—that's one component, but everything from customer acquisition to customer service are things that a business owner will have to do to build their business. We have quite a long way to go on the platform services roadmap; Drive is a huge part of it, and we're excited to bring it to most places.

Alexander Potter, Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks.

Operator, Moderator

If you would like to ask a question, please go ahead. The next speaker is Robert Mallings from Gordon Haskett Research. Your line is now open.

Robert Mallings, Analyst

Thank you. Tony, when you look at heavy users that aren't DashPass members, what are some of the reasons those consumers haven't signed up, and what levers can you pull to change that?

Tony Xu, CEO

Yeah, it's a great question. Customers are evaluating us across four dimensions: the selection of stores, the quality of the delivery experience as measured by speed, timing, and accuracy, affordability of the program which you're referencing with DashPass, and customer support. So those are all of the elements we need to get right to be valuable enough to earn DashPass members. We’re doing work across all of these areas. There's not a single thing we can do to drive membership; it's really about working on all of the inputs. A significant part of selection in addition to adding more and more restaurants and different ways to interact with those restaurants. Not only are we the leading platform for delivery in the U.S., but also the leading platform for pickup, for example, in the U.S. In other categories, you can see the progress we’re making; from low single digits or single-digit percentages in Q1 of our active user base trying non-restaurant categories, that number is now up to 12% in the third quarter. That's showing some of that progression. But we have a long way to go there. The quality is something we're constantly trying to obsess over, constantly trying to shave seconds and minutes off inefficiencies in the system. We are also trying to improve our accuracy while also making it easier for deliveries to be completed on our platform. With respect to service and affordability, we're always trying to deliver more value to consumers, merchants, and Dashers. So a lot of work remains, and there is no single silver bullet, but it’s about working the inputs to offer the best combination so we can earn the privilege of having more members into DashPass.

Robert Mallings, Analyst

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator, Moderator

That was our last question. I will now turn the call over to Andy Hargreaves.

Andy Hargreaves, Moderator

Thank you everybody for joining us, and thank you Tony, Miki, and Prabir. We will talk to you all soon. Have a great evening.

Operator, Moderator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.