DoorDash shares suffer April relapse

Shares in DoorDash were down 12 per cent to $106.42 in the week ending April 8; shares in Just Eat Takeaway were down 3.2 per cent to 2,682p; and shares in Dada Nexus were down 12.6 per cent to $8.86.

Shares in DoorDash were down 12 per cent to $106.42 in the week ending April 8, according to the Future Food Finance FoodTech Index.

The drop in share price at the US food delivery firm came in the week when a media report said that its top executives plan to address its share price woes and issues around employee compensation in an in-house meeting with staff.

According to the report in Business Insider, DoorDash is set to hand out extra equity to some employees to make up for a poor share price performance which has lost more than 50 per cent since its peak in November.

On November 8 last year, its shares were priced at $245.97, compared to $106.42 on April 8 this year.

According to an internal email, seen by Business Insider, senior executives at the US firm said they would be giving out an equity “top up” to many staff hired in 2021, to make up for its faltering share price.

"Going forward, we are designing a compensation program to ensure that performance is what drives differences in pay—even in the face of stock 
volatility" the executives wrote, the email said.

Despite its April lapse, DoorDash enjoyed a stronger March, when its shares jumped from $102.43 on March 1 to $117.17 at the end of March.

Furthermore, DoorDash grew revenues by around 34 per cent in Q4 2021, indicating solid sales growth.

And while DoorDash has been aided by lockdowns during the pandemic, it posted upbeat guidance for the coming year and doesn't expect momentum to slow down.

Elsewhere in the index, shares in Just Eat Takeaway were down 3.2 per cent to 2,682p in the week.

Its shares have plummeted more than 70 per cent since October 2020, a point that has troubled its activist shareholders, which include Cat Rock Capital, Tiger Global and Baupost.

Cat Rock Capital has been particularly vocal in its criticism of Just Eat Takeaway’s performance and has publicly called for CEO Jitse Groen to spin off its Grubhub business in the US.

Its activist shareholders are likely to have been further inflamed by the news that hundreds of Just Eat Takeaway staff recently decamped to Arosa in Switzerland for Snow Festan all-expenses-paid skiing and team-building junket.

And finally, shares in Dada Nexus, the Chinese delivery platform, were down 12.6 per cent to $8.86.