Instacart reports Q3 EPS ($20.86), consensus ($12.97)

Reports Q3 revenue $764M, consensus $736.88M. CEO Fidji Simo stated, “In Q3, we grew GTV to $7,494M , up 6% year-over-year, and orders to 66.2 million, up 4% year-over-year, representing continued improvement compared to year-over-year growth in Q2 and Q1. We also delivered a higher-quality mix of GTV growth…Our continued focus on driving fulfillment efficiencies and strong advertising performance in the quarter helped deliver total revenue and GAAP gross profit year-over-year growth of 14% and 16%, respectively. This, combined with ongoing financial discipline, drove solid bottom line results. While we had a GAAP net loss of $2.0B, primarily driven by $2.6B of stock-based compensation expense that was significantly elevated in the period of our initial public offering, we generated adjusted EBITDA of $163M, up 120% year-over-year. We have approximately $2.2B of cash, and we established a new $500M share repurchase program to opportunistically buy back shares. We are the clear leader among digital-first platforms in online grocery…We are confident in our position, even as several macroeconomic factors work against the online grocery industry: COVID is no longer a tailwind, consumers are receiving less government aid, interest rates remain high, and inflation persists. Given our substantially larger scale, these headwinds impact us more than smaller, new entrants. While we expect these and other factors to continue to dampen our current and near-term growth, they do not change our long-term view on online grocery adoption or our competitive advantages”.