Instacart has disappointed the market falling from the IPO price of $42 per share in September to a low of $23 in early January. Analysts have raised ratings recently to ‘outperform’ based on speculation that the company could be acquired by Uber Eats.
Informed observers placed the Instacart share of the U.S. third-party grocery delivery market at close to 75 percent compared to UberEats at below 10 percent, similar in volume to DoorDash. Effectively, food and grocery deliveries services are less competing with each other than they are with Walmart, Amazon and Target.
For the 3rd quarter of FY 2023 ending September 30th Instacart lost $(1,999 million) on revenue of $764 million with a negative EPS of $(20.86) Quarterly operating loss was $(2,457 million) due in part to an eye watering expenditure of $1,850 million on R & D!