$DASH · Joseph Carlson After Hours · 2026-10-29

and Dor Dash, which announced its earnings and said it will try to buy Instacart.

but other companies such as Texas Roadhouse, Moody's, DoorDash, and Uber have risen slightly.

Now, we also have DoorDash, a smaller investment of mine that has also announced its earnings, and I know that many of you, indeed all of you , are very responsible. You would never ask "Dur Dash".

You will never waste your money on those fees. Well, a lot of people do that. "Dore Dash" is hugely popular , and outside the bubble of very frugal investors , many people are asking for everything.

They order things from restaurants, they order drinks, and they even order supplies from the grocery store. It's a very large business. In fact, their order volume grew by 28%.

Now , part of this growth is due to acquisitions, but they have now reached 993 million orders in the last quarter alone. This is not within the last twelve months. This is within a period of only 90 days . Therefore, it is incredibly popular.

DoorDash continues to grow at a high rate of speed, and now the company has officially announced its intention to buy Instacart. This is a clear move by "Dash Door" to enter the retail category.

Currently, DoorDash is the largest food delivery company in the United States. Therefore, they completely dominated the restaurant sector. They are very strong in the restaurant sector, and are trying to expand to say: "Hello, we are not limited to restaurants, we are present in everything local as well."

We want all retailers to join us. So that our customers have many more choices when they shop. The idea is that when they open the DoorDash app, they can shop from any local place around them.

Therefore, this would be a huge acquisition deal. They will pay around $17 billion for it. They will pay a very good premium for Instacart, but that is the price required to gain market share.

Either you buy the stake through acquisition, as Dur-Dash is trying to do, or you pay a premium by attracting customers, spending on advertising, launching massive campaigns , and running an unprofitable business for a long time until you gain market share.

This is simply a faster way to do it. Currently, I agree with Dur- Dash shareholders that this is a positive thing. Now, the stock has risen by 4% because investors are excited about it, but it is still largely unknown .

It is not entirely clear whether this will gain regulatory approval because Dash's role is already huge. Buying Instacart will make them bigger, and it really depends on how you define the market.

If the market is just delivery services like DoorDash, Instacart , and Uber, then DoorDash is clearly too big to buy Instacart. But, if you start saying that Amazon delivery is part of the market, and Walmart delivery is part of the market, it becomes easier to justify that Dash should be able to buy Instacart.

Those are the arguments that all the lawyers will present to try to push this deal through.

But I hope the deal goes through as an investor in Dash. I believe expansion is necessary. Although it comes at a high price , this will give them a lasting advantage and a growth trajectory for many years to come.