DoorDash agrees to buy Instacart for ~$17B at $65/share cash-and-stock deal, moving hard into U.S. grocery delivery (Oct 29)
What happened
DoorDash announced Thursday morning it will acquire grocery-delivery rival Instacart in a ~$17 billion deal — its largest ever — at $65 a share, an 11% premium to Wednesday's close and 26% above Instacart's price before sale talks emerged Oct. 22. At least 75% of the consideration is cash, funded from cash on hand plus debt (JPMorgan has committed a bridge loan), with DoorDash targeting an investment-grade capital structure; close expected late 2027 to early 2028 pending regulatory and shareholder approvals. Instacart's board unanimously approved the deal. DoorDash will keep the Instacart brand, app, and enterprise tech, and says customers could save ~$100M/year from not needing both DashPass and Instacart+ memberships. DoorDash also reported Q3 EPS of $1.06 (vs $0.81 expected) on revenue of $4.62 billion (+34%), and had moved its earnings release up from next week to Thursday morning — telegraphing the deal.
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Start your free 14-day trialWho’s affected
- DoorDash (DASH): +6-10% premarket to ~$180-186 on Q3 beat plus deal. Instacart/Maplebear (CART): +~5% premarket to ~$61.25, trading halted; deal value $65/share is a 26% premium to the Oct. 22 close ($51.68) and 11% to Wednesday's $58.42 close. Uber (UBER) +0.4% (had been seen as a rival bidder). Amazon and Walmart are the strategic losers: the combined DoorDash-Instacart is positioned to challenge their grocery-delivery dominance.