DoorDash, Inc. (DASH) Q2 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

DoorDash, Inc. (DASH -2.01%)
Q2 2022 Earnings Call
Aug 04, 2022, 6:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the DoorDash Quarter 2, 2022 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions] And finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded.

Thank you. I would now like to hand over to Andy Hargreaves, vice president, finance and investor relations. Andy, please begin your call.

Andy Hargreaves -- Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, and thanks, everybody, for joining us on our second quarter 2022 earnings call. I'm pleased to be joined today by Co-Founder, Chair, and CEO Tony Xu; and CFO Prabir Adarkar. We'll be making forward-looking statements during today's call, including our expectations of our business and the Wolt business following our acquisition, the macro academic environment, financial position and operating performance, our market and local commerce opportunities, future financial results, and guidance, our strategies and investment approach.

Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described, and some risks are described in our risk factors including in our SEC filings, including Form 10-K and 10-Qs. You should not rely on our forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. During this call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures.

Information regarding our non-GAAP financial results, including a reconciliation of non-GAAP results to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, may be found in our investor letter, which is available on our IR website. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to our GAAP results and are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results Finally, this call in its entirety is being audio webcast on our IR website. An audio replay of the call will be available on our website shortly after the call ends. As in previous quarters, we'll go straight to questions.

So with that, operator, please go ahead and take the first question.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

Thank you. [Operator instructions] And your first question today comes from the line of Deepak Mathivanan from Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Deepak Mathivanan -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe one for Tony and one for Prabir. Tony, given the state of the market and kind of competition, it feels like at least some levels of incentives has come out of the system.

Maybe perhaps from smaller players in kind of niche categories. Can you talk about whether you're seeing any benefits from favorable operating environment, either on frequency or kind of customer acquisition right now? And then maybe, Prabir, I know you don't want to guide for 2023 specifically yet. But maybe how should we think conceptually about the 2023 EBITDA band? As your profit ports become larger, do you still see kind of big investment areas that would maybe keep the profit bands at these levels? Or can it gradually edge up? Thank you so much.

Tony Xu -- Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

Hey, Deepak, it's Tony. Yeah. Look, on the first question, our business has been always very competitive ever since we founded the company nine years ago. And I think that what's been very impressive to us is just how resilient our business has been, both in light of competitive activities, both recent and in the years that we've been building DoorDash, as well as just the macroenvironment as we do see some consumer spending softening, but largely, we've been not impacted by that downward pressure.

I really think that you see a lot of kind of the premise of your question reflected in our results. I mean, this is a quarter in which we beat top line, as well as in bottom line, we grew results 25% GOV year on year and we beat quite handily on the bottom line as well. And this is on top of a lot of the types of things that we're investing in. One that I will call out is that while we're not seeing any elevated pressures from certain types of incentives from competitors, what we are doing is we are taking care of our audiences.

We invested over $40 million alone in the second quarter just to make sure that the Dashers who are on the road doing the hard work, can keep the profits that they expect to keep given some of the rising cost of fuel. And so, we're not seeing any of the elevated pressures. We're seeing fairly normal activity on that side. And I think, as a result, given our industry-leading retention and order frequency, you continue to see our growth and our share gains.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. And Deepak, on your second question around 2023, we're not providing quantitative 2023 guidance today. We will provide '23 guidance when we report Q4, which is on our normal cycle, but I will provide some sort of thematic context. The first thing I'd say is going into '23, we do expect our core U.S.

restaurant business to grow and increase its contribution profit. At current course and speed, we plan to increase annual EBITDA by a modest amount. But note that this is after absorbing a full year of Wolt. So said differently, core DoorDash Wolt will expand into 2023, even though the consolidated EBITDA won't grow meaningfully.

And the only caveat we'll make to this is just a change if we identify attractive growth opportunities, we continue to remain in investment mode and look for these opportunities that benefit our retention and order frequency. But at current course of speed, we would expect annual EBITDA to grow by a modest amount.

Deepak Mathivanan -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

OK. Thanks, Tony. Thanks, Prabir.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Lloyd Walmsley from UBS. Your line is open.

Lloyd Walmsley -- UBS -- Analyst

Thanks for taking the question. Two, if I can. In the letter, you guys talked about being a logistics-led marketplace, I guess, how much room do you all see over the next few years to reduce cost per order? What are some of the key drivers to kind of get there? And like where is the lowest hanging fruit? And then second one would just be you've talked in the past about how you don't try to beat EBITDA, you really try to kind of come in, in the range. And if you beat it, it's because there just weren't attractive investment -- like was there like something changing in the marketing landscape or any reason you guys let it flow through or just a function of some of the kind of inflation coming through as a surprise and you didn't have time to reinvest it.

Anything you can share there would be great. Thanks.

Tony Xu -- Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Hey, Lloyd, it's Tony. I'll take the first question and maybe Prabir can take the second part of the question. With respect to efficiency gains from logistics.

I think this has been a hallmark of the DoorDash story and also of the Wolt story now that we've officially closed that partnership, in which if you think about the game that we're playing or the business that we're in, we're really in the game of building a minimum-efficient scale business. That's the type of business when you're talking about a hyper-local business where order density is the most important metric. And in order to achieve that, you kind of have to do two things. One of the things you talked about in your question, which is really around high-quality logistics efficiency.

And the other is high-quality retention and order behavior from customers without discounting and that sort of activity. And DoorDash has really achieved both. And on the part around gaining extra logistics efficiency, we continue to find areas of opportunity. I mean, we've certainly been leaders in our space up to this point.

But I still see massive room to keep increasing the selection on our platform and improve the logistics quality on our platform, the affordability of our service, and certainly, our customer service levels. On logistics more specifically, whether it's working on efficiency improvements at the store, as well as how we think about how we ought to assign orders, especially now that we're entering multiple categories of deliveries in addition to restaurant deliveries, I think there's a long room to go, and we're seeing that both in our numbers in the most recent quarter, as well as in the quarters leading up to this point.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

And Lloyd, on the second part of your question. First, I'll talk about Q2 and then I'll talk about sort of general philosophy. In terms of the Q2 performance and EBITDA, it was really a matter of two factors. The first is subtotals as we described in the letter as a result of consumer price inflation, our subtotals were higher because of higher item prices.

And that then translates into higher commission dollars, as well as higher service fees, both of which benefited revenue and drop through to EBITDA. So that's what drove the upside in Q2 in terms of EBITDA. In terms of general philosophy, I'd say EBITDA is a function of really two things. First, it's the margin expansion that we continue to drive in our U.S.

restaurant business. That's one. And the second is the level of investment we make which is discretionary, by the way, the level investment we make in our new verticals and in our international businesses. That level of investment varies from quarter to quarter based on the signals we see.

And you can see that volatility in our historical trends where some quarters will produce more EBITDA than others because depending on what we see in terms of retention and order frequency, we might invest more or less. And so, our EBITDA range is really meant as a guardrail, but where we land within that range is based depending on the level of investment.

Lloyd Walmsley -- UBS -- Analyst

OK. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Youssef Squali from Truist Securities. Your line is open.

Youssef Squali -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

Great. Thank you very much. Congrats on a really impressive quarter, all things considered. My question is around Wolt contribution.

Can you maybe speak to the contribution that you are baking into the 2022 top and bottom line, how do you think about growth there considering kind of what's going on in Europe? And just broadly speaking, maybe Tony, can you address the issue about how do you kind of take kind of a relatively subscale business in Europe that's across multiple geographies and kind of grow it meaningfully for it to become a big part of the business. Your position in the U.S. has been quite the opposite. You've been market leader, market dominant in the single market.

So, any help there would be great. Thank you.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Maybe I'll start and then Tony can chime in. I mean the Wolt business grew over 50% year on year, and that's in stark contrast to what we've seen with other companies that operate in the similar geographic region. And really, it all comes back down to two things. The fundamentals of the Wolt business in terms of its industry-leading retention and growing order frequency.

And what we've seen is as long as you create a product that has high retention and order frequency, ultimately translates into better growth because you're retaining your customers better, and that benefit compounds versus alternatives where you end up losing customers because of poor retention. And where we're at in terms of the investment cycle, the Wolt markets are relatively new, both in terms of merchant adoption, as well as user adoption. As an example, even in its oldest markets, adoption levels are less than 10% of the population. And that says, there's a lot of room to grow just as you grow your footprint within these countries, as well as you go to the merchant selection and grow the consumer base.

And so that's driving the investment we're making. We'll continue investing as long as we see strong signal on retention and order frequency.

Tony Xu -- Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. And on the second part of the question, I think it's important to start with maybe some historical context and go down memory lane not just a few years ago, DoorDash was certainly not the market leader. And DoorDash especially five, six years ago was quite capital constrained relative to any of its peers by a pretty far margin. And so, how was it possible that a "subscale" company was able to rise to market leadership? Well, it really was mastering the order-level execution of the business.

And again, this is a hyper-local business for order density and achieving minimum efficient scale through leading retention order frequency, which is really measured in whether or not you built a superior product of selection quality, price, and service. And then on the other end, whether or not you have the most capital-efficient logistics operations. And I think when I look at the elements that caused DoorDash to rise to market leadership, I find very similar kind of characteristics in the Wolt business, which is what excited us about the business not only today, as Prabir mentioned, far outgrowing some of their European peers. But maybe much more excited are we in their potential? Because when I compare the foundation of what they've built, and I look at the opportunity ahead of them, I mean, even in their oldest markets, Wolt is less than 10% penetrated.

On a global basis, both DoorDash and Wolt in our non-U.S. markets are less than 5% of restaurant sales and outside of restaurants, less than 1% of nonfood spend. And so when I compare the foundation that Wolt has built on one hand. And on the other hand, compared it to the opportunity ahead, it's exactly what Prabir said, which is that it's absolutely the right time to invest.

And I think you already see evidence of this as Wolt has become a market leader in many of their markets already.

Youssef Squali -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

That's great. Thank you. And Prabir, did you quantify the contribution to that $51 billion to $53 billion in GOV from Wolt?

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

We don't break out the guidance between Wolt and DoorDash, but when we do report earnings, we will split out organic versus Wolt's contribution.

Youssef Squali -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

Got it. Thank you both.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Bernie McTernan from Needham. Your line is open.

Bernie McTernan -- Needham and Company -- Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking the question. We've noticed a lot of grocers in the marketplace doing delivery and online ordering in-house in addition to being opened up to third-party marketplaces like yourself. So, they're a competitor but also a partner.

Can you talk about some of the advantages that you have for customer acquisition and retention relative to them? And then also with the 50% growth in Wolt this past quarter for GOV, 50% higher probably than some of the other European delivery operators. Can you just remind us whether it's market growth or just pure market share gains in terms of what's driving this growth?

Tony Xu -- Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Maybe I'll take the first question, and I'll let Prabir take the second question. So, I'm not sure this touches exactly the spirit of your question, but we view all merchants, including grocers as partners. I mean if you think about the mission of the company, is to, on one hand, build the largest local commerce marketplace, where we're driving incremental demand to all of these retailers, whether they be restaurants, grocers, convenience stores, other types of retail stores.

And then, on the other hand, build the largest local commerce platform where we give the tools, whether it's logistics as a service in the form of DoorDash drive or ordering of the service in the form of DoorDash Storefront all of these retailers so that they can build their own digital operations. So we really view in equal parts, our mission to help grow on one hand, which is to bring that incremental demand. And on the other hand, empower them to do it on their own. In fact, we see these customers on these different channels to be quite different.

I mean if you think about it, if a customer is quite used to and knows exactly what they want to order from a particular retailer, it probably makes quite a lot of sense for them on that occasion to actually order directly from the retailer. But on the greatest privilege that we have in this business is that people eat 20 to 25 times a week, and they shop even more times than that on top of that when you consider their nonfood spend. And so for other occasions, maybe when they're not exactly sure what it is that they're looking for, but they want to buy something from the neighborhood, that's where the DoorDash marketplace really comes in hand. And so we really view the retailer, the merchants, whether it's a grocer or other type of store as our partner, and we have two ways in which we help them.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

And Bernie, on your second question around GOV's growth, it's really driven by two things. It's MAU growth that was aided by some customer acquisition, but also by just by higher retention compared to the other players in the market. And then second, order frequency growth, as Wolt brings on more selection, both in the restaurant, as well as the non-restaurant category. We're seeing some of the same things that we saw in the U.S.

where order frequency at a cohort level has continued to grow. And both of those things, particularly in the face of some of the more extreme COVID reversion version that you saw in Europe have led to the 50% year-on-year growth that you cited.

Bernie McTernan -- Needham and Company -- Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Brian Nowak from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Brian Nowak -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Thanks for taking my questions, guys. I have two. Just the first one, the gross margins in the quarter were a little weaker than we thought, at least. Could you just sort of talk to us about some of the puts and takes on gross margins of the business? And how should we think about the gross margins of the Wolt business sort of going into the back half and maybe even longer term 2023?

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks. Hey, Brian, it's Prabir. Let me start on both of your questions. So first, our cost of sales increase that we saw on a year-on-year basis was only driven by two things: the DashMart and insurance costs.

on DashMart, as we've launched more and more DashMart, the costs associated with those orders impacts cost of sales. So roughly half of the increase in cost of sales as a percentage of GOV is driven by DashMart. The other half roughly is driven by an increase in insurance costs, which was in line with our expectations. I'll point you to our comments from last quarter where we said, we experienced an increase in insurance reserves due to the outside impact of a few large claims.

And we began to take actions to improve the safety on our platform starting last quarter. But it takes a while for these changes to reflect on our claims data. And so as we previously discussed, we expect insurance costs to increase in the near term. On the whole note, both the DashMart cost increase, as well as the insurance costs, is reflected in the guidance we've provided.

And so it's not incremental to the guidance. So it's already reflected in that. In terms of gross margin for Wolt, really Wolt a combination of, as I view it, so three distinct pieces, there's investments that are going into Japan and Germany. These are brand-new markets that we launched less than two years ago were to get the flywheel going in terms of selection and quality and price.

You've got investments in Wolt markets, which is the equivalent of our DashMart Wolt first-party distribution business. And then you've got the rest, what I call core food delivery. Core food delivery has had consistent increase in gross margin levels. And as we continue driving efficiency and order density at the local level, you start seeing the same type of efficiency in terms of Dashers' costs kick in to produce increasing levels of gross margin.

Japan and Germany and Wolt markets remain in investment mode and we continue to work on coverage selection quality and price side.

Brian Nowak -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

That's very helpful. Thanks, Prabir.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Eric Sheridan -- Gol

Thanks so much for taking the question. Maybe two, if I can. First, Tony, I know you're talking a lot in the shareholder letter about not seeing anything yet on the consumer spending behavior patterns. But I think one of the questions we all get a lot from investors is, you're seeing some large companies already say how they would run their business differently, if the consumer spending environment did change.

Is there any sense you can give us on how you're sort of game planning out different economic scenarios for the business and how you might change investment philosophies or growth philosophies for the company if you did hit a rougher patch in terms of consumer spending and went through the platform? And then maybe question on grocery and convenience at some of the new categories. Can you give us a little bit of sense of folks who use multiple products across the platform, what that might mean in terms of LTV how you're thinking about leaning in and promoting different category expansion on a per customer basis what that might do for the unit economics longer term? Thanks so much.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Eric, it's Prabir. Maybe I'll start with the first one around how we're going to manage the business and EBITDA impact of growth versions and Tony can talk about the impact from some of the new categories. So maybe the first place to start is our core U.S. restaurant business is growing and continues to generate significant cash flow.

And historically, we've taken that cash flow and invested the vast majority of it in order to grow our scale in the large and underpenetrated categories in which we operate. Again, as I said earlier, these investments are discretionary. And so that means the reason we're investing is because we continue to see strong signals of product market fit, as well as improving unit economics. Just to give you an example, if I -- on any given day, if I look at the top 10 stores on DoorDash in terms of sales, DashMart shows up there, and that's a strong signal product market fit.

To the extent that we don't see continued improvements in terms of unit economics or continued improvements in retention and order frequency, we will alter the pace of our investment. We've been very disciplined in terms of capital allocation so far and we'll continue to do so going forward.

Tony Xu -- Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. And I think if there's add a little bit in terms of just my view on the macroenvironment. And then I'll hit your second question about the multi-category customers. So obviously, we've been looking, right, in terms of how the tough macroeconomic headwinds that I think is hitting a lot of industries, how that might apply to us.

We've been searching for this for many quarters now. And I think so far, the reason why largely we've been less impacted is because, well, one, our product is dynamic. It's been constantly improving. If you look at selection, for instance, in the 12 months leading up to the end of the second quarter, we've added 80,000 net new stores onto the platform.

made improvements to many quality metrics in terms of our delivery experiences, whether it's speed or accuracy and other types of improvements. We've made many improvements to the shopping experience, so lower the friction for consumers. And so, I think that's one point. The second point is, I think we still have to remember that relative, especially to other maybe categories of commerce or e-commerce.

We are still very early in our penetration even as the market leader just take the U.S. as one example, we're less than 8% of total restaurant industry sales. If you compare that to other categories of commerce, it is much earlier in its evolution. And then the final thing I would just add is just if you study macro, as we've been looking at macroeconomics, I think there's only been a couple of years in history in which food spend has actually declined due to challenging macroeconomic pressures.

And I think that because it is less of a discretionary spend relative to other categories of spend. But that said, to Prabir's point, we're equal opportunity growth investors that are very disciplined. DoorDash historically hasn't had a lot of resources. And so we take very seriously every dollar of spend.

And as you saw in the second quarter, if we don't think that there is a great investment to be made over the same time period to generate a great return. We're not going to make that investment. And so that's true with all new projects. That's true with marketing investments.

That's true with engineering and product investments. That's true with headcount. That's really true for every line item in the P&L. All right.

So, moving on to your second question, which I think was about the impact of consumer shopping in multiple categories. Well, one, this is just part of the mission of the company is to make sure we bring everything inside the neighborhood, not just from restaurants. And two, the last disclosure we made was, I think, in the fourth quarter, where we said that about 14% of our customers are now shopping in these non-restaurant categories. And we are seeing higher retention and order frequency activity from these customers who are engaging in multiple categories.

I think this makes quite a lot of sense, as we're solving now different jobs and tasks for the customer. But that said, look, we still have to earn every inch. We have a long ways to go in terms of the product experience in each one of these categories before we'd be satisfied with that behavior.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Boone from JMP Securities. Your line is open.

Andrew Boone -- JMP Securities -- Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. I know you guys talked earlier about the logistics benefits that you guys are running through the platform, but can you double-click on the drivers of Dasher cost savings that you guys highlighted in the letter? And then we haven't talked about Drive in a while. Can you provide an update there? Is there any change that you're seeing in terms of enterprise adoption now that we're kind of beyond peak COVID? Thanks so much.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Andrew, maybe I'll start with the Dasher cost question, and then Tony can take the one on our Platform Services. So, in terms of Dasher cost, I mean, at the end of the day, right, there's multiple components of this, including as Tony alluded to earlier, how stores operations in terms of how quickly they get the Dasher in and out. So, there's opportunities to continue optimizing that there's opportunities to continue dispatching from closer and closer Dashers, which by the way, as the density of your network increases as you get more orders occurring within a certain neighborhood within a certain store, you've got the ability to not just batch, but you've got the ability to get the Dasher to the store quicker than you otherwise might have. And so there's really -- if you think about the sources of opportunities really reducing the amount of time it takes for Dasher to get to the store and reducing the amount of time that Dasher spends in the store, and we continue to work both those levers and that's what resulted in the improvement in terms of Dasher costs that we're seeing.

The second thing I'll say, which is really just to clarify, last year was anomalous in terms of Dasher cost. Because we were operating in a very expensive labor environment that's fueled by fiscal stimulus. So in some ways, Dasher cost this year just at least in my mind, normalizing back to historical levels was ending incremental. So last year was elevated this year isn't.

Tony Xu -- Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. And with respect to the second question around our platform services products such as Drive, we see continued excitement for the stores. But I mean, in many ways, our platform services business experiences similar seasonality in our marketplace business where the second and third quarters are generally more muted in activity. And that's mostly because as customers are back out, many of whom are taking advantage of the good weather, as well as perhaps lost vacations from the two years of COVID and now eating out again or visiting retail stores again that these stores have to make sure that their in-store activity is protected and taken care of and the customer service levels are exceptional before they invest aggressively in their off-premise business.

So, while there's some seasonal kinds of activity happening in that business, I think the COVID highs in terms of the excitement to invest and continue to accelerate the momentum behind e-commerce for all of these retailers across any category remain just as high as ever. And so that's something that we expect to continue to help grow our platform services business, whether they're large merchants like some of the ones you mentioned who participate with products like DoorDash Drive or smaller merchants that really need help getting online for the first time and growing their kind of same-store sales off-premise with products like DoorDash Storefront. And so, our focus right now is making sure that those products can be easier to use and that we can build products to help teach the playbooks that we've used to build a successful digital marketplace in our own right such that these businesses can do it other out.

Andrew Boone -- JMP Securities -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Ron Josey from Citi. Your line is open.

Ron Josey -- Citi -- Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe two, please. The chart in the note in the letter that talks about existing consumer order rates.

2022 is trending higher than previous years and suggesting that these users in 2022 are more engaged. I'm sure -- can you just talk about the drivers here? Is it greater repeat rates, adoption of newer verticals, impacted DashPass? I'm sure it's all of the above. And so maybe the bigger question is just are these newer users, this newer cohort of users, talk about how that compares to the prior cohorts? Are they just doing more? And then maybe Prabir as a quick as a quick follow-up. You mentioned just a strong cash flow generated from the U.S.

restaurant business. Any way to provide some guideposts or insight in terms of that profitability of that U.S. restaurant business? Thank you.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Ron, so on -- let me start with the second one first. On the U.S. restaurant profitability, we're not actually -- we haven't provided any disclosure to break that out other than to say that continues generating more contribution profit and has improved both in terms of its net revenue margins, as well as its contribution profit as a percentage of GOV on a year-on-year basis. So we're happy with the progress there.

And as we've said previously, it's a valuable funding source that we used to make investments in these new categories that we're growing. In terms of your question on the order rate chart, really, by the way, the purpose of that chart was to demonstrate the fact that the order rate trends were similar to what we've seen historically. And to make the point that increased inflation, as well as potentially weakening consumer spending has not had an adverse impact relative to old cohort. And so it's hard for us to untangle the impact of consumer spending from ordinary cohort seasonality.

But taking a step back in terms of the 2022 cohorts, we're happy with the quality so far. Remember, we run our sales and marketing to a payback period, and we've been operating within the same payback period for quite some time now. So, what's driving that is not just enhanced order frequency, which has continued growing on a year-on-year basis as a result of improvements in selection, quality, and price, as well as the new categories that we're adding, but also improvements in terms of the core margin structure of the product. And so, the core product has gotten more profitable, in part, due to subtotals, but also in part because of improvements in terms of Dasher cost the quality of our orders, which improves our customer support costs and so on.

And that, coupled with the order frequencies contributed to better LTVs and roughly the same payback.

Ron Josey -- Citi -- Analyst

Thanks, Prabir. Appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Ross Sandler from Barclays. Your line is open.

Ross Sandler -- Barclays -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Two for me. Prabir, the 30% retention stat for Wolt, is that comparable to the 48% for core DoorDash? I know they don't have a subscription business built out yet and some of their markets are a little bit younger, so could you just walk us through that? And how does that 30% compare to some of the EU competitors that they face in their home markets? And do you think the gap is as wide between that 30% and the competition as it is between the 48% and your U.S. competition? And then the second question is just you guys gave a good overview of how the consumer is holding up.

I'm just curious, is the frequency for DashPass kind of stand-alone holding up, as well as non-DashPass? I know there's a mix shift toward DashPass, which is driving up frequency. But could you just talk about those two kind of separately? Thanks.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Ross, maybe I'll start and Tony can chime in. So first, on the 30% retention, I'm not sure what the 48% is that you're referring to. The 30% is month 12 retention.

And if you actually compare that to DoorDash versus Wolt on an apples-to-apples basis, it's pretty comparable depending on some markets, it's even higher. So we feel good about the retention stats certainly compared to our data. And when you look at our data using third-party sources, we understand that our retention is better than everybody else in the category. In terms of the European competitors, there isn't an exact apples-to-apples source right that compares market to market.

But based on what we're seeing in terms of competitors in the U.K. and other markets that are covered, the 30% actually compares favorably. On the question of DashPass, DashPass frequency, as well as all the figures on our classic product, you really need to look at it on a cohort level. Yes, you've got a mix shift between as you get more DashPass subscribers, the blended order frequency grows.

But even on a cohort level, underlying order frequency has continued to grow. And what's driving that is these new categories. We're seeing people adopt new categories, Tony referred to the 14% adoption rate at the end of Q4, which has continued to grow in Q1 and Q2, and that's driving order frequency growth at the cohort level.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Jason Helfstein -- Oppenheimer and Company -- Analyst

Thanks. I just want to dig a bit more into DashPass. With the economy reopening and kind of return to work progressing in a certain direction and increased use of ridesharing. Is it making it customer acquisition of DashPass, any less efficient or more challenging? And then secondly, I think you said that you pointed out Dashers' costs are down this year versus last year, but specifically and perhaps this month and last month, are you seeing the cost to acquire new Dashers come down even further? Thank you.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Jason, so first on the DashPass front, what I should say is would not observe any impact on our DashPass signups, as a result of people going back to the office or increased ridesharing or anything like that. In fact, our DashPass subs have continued to grow both on a year-on-year basis, as well as on a quarter-on-quarter basis to a record high. So we feel good that DashPass is a key component of driving better affordability for our consumers and the growth has been consistent and reliable. So that's great.

In terms of Dasher costs, the reduction in Dasher was really driven by two things. There's the Dasher cost per order, which I mentioned earlier was really a normalization from the elevated levels last year because of increased fiscal stimulus. There also was, if you recall, last year, increased advertising costs because everyone is competing for Dashers. And that environment has gotten a little bit better, which has driven lower Dasher costs in Q2, and those Dasher costs continue to remain where they were in the last couple of months of the quarter.

Jason Helfstein -- Oppenheimer and Company -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Douglas Anmuth from J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Douglas Anmuth -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Thanks for taking the questions. I just wanted to circle back on profitability and just the EBITDA guide for the full year. Should we think about the increase at the low end there? Should we think about that as the same dynamics that you suggested in 2Q in terms of being driven mostly by inflation? And is that all coming on the Dash side of the business? Or is -- are we seeing any improvement perhaps in your outlook there for Wolt? Thanks.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Doug, can you clarify, are you talking about Q3 or Q4?

Douglas Anmuth -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

The full year outlook for EBITDA.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. The full year outlook of EBITDA, I mean, we're bringing it up because we've made progress here in the business, both in terms of overall scale has increased relative to our expectations at the beginning of the year. If you remember our guidance at the beginning of the year was -- I think it was 49 billion or 50 billion at the top end. So that's gone up.

Second, we are seeing positive benefits in terms of subtotals, which we talked about earlier, which results in more revenue and EBITDA. Third, Dasher costs are trending slightly better, and that's been driven by two things as product changes that have helped drive increased retention of our Dashers, as well as some of the macro factors such as rising cost of living and declining consumer savings that are helping increase the retention of our existing fleet. So, it's these various factors that have given us a little more confidence on EBITDA, as a result of which, we have increased the low end of our guidance. And it's really a commitment to say that we're going to stay above breakeven.

Douglas Anmuth -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Great. Thank you, Prabir.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Nikhil Devnani. Your line is open.

Nikhil Devnani -- AllianceBernstein -- Analyst

Hey, there. Thanks for taking the question. Just on the Q3 guide, if we take Wolt out, it looks like GOV is set to kind of step down sequentially for core DoorDash. Just wondering if you get there with the assumption that the July trends kind of hold roughly flattish through the quarter.

Or is there some further kind of softness embedded in that outlook? And then as a second question, just given all the macro concerns, have you seen any indications that consumers are trading down here in the types of restaurants that they order from? And any kind of color you can provide on the demographics of the customer base would be helpful. Thank you.

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Maybe I'll take a crack at that. So the first thing I'd say is our consumer metrics remain healthy. So if you look at what happened in Q2, our MAUs grew by double digits year on year, order frequency grew, our pace of consumer acquisition continued to remain healthy.

And these signals provide a solid foundation for growth in the long term. With respect to the second half specifically, we expect normal course seasonality this year. So in general, we've experienced growth in Q4 and Q1. Sequential growth in Q2 and Q3 is usually muted as a result of summer seasonality.

In fact, if you look at our Q2 to Q3 growth last year, you'll see that our GOV dipped a little bit, and we're baking that in into the guide. The second point I'll make is the macroenvironment continues to remain uncertain. And so, we haven't seen any impact from weakening consumer spend, at least so far in Q2 but we're accounting for that uncertainty because it could have an impact on normal course seasonality in the bounce back that you see in Q4. And so that's what we're baking into our guidance.

And then can you repeat the question on macro?

Nikhil Devnani -- AllianceBernstein -- Analyst

Yeah. Just any indication that consumers might be trading down in the types of restaurants they order from? And just a reminder, what your demographics look like for the customer base?

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, yeah. What I'll say on that point is at least based on the data we've seen so far, we haven't seen anything that would point to a particular income peer or people shifting from certain types of restaurants to another. In fact, I think we said in the letter, the subtotals increased because of higher item prices. But that was offset by fewer items per order as consumers responded to inflation.

So it's less that they're shifting away and adjusting their buying behavior from other restaurants. They just -- they're spending the same amount, just buying a few things. And that just goes to show you how resilient the category is. Convenience and delivery and dining in has become a stable part of people's lives and you're seeing that in the data.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Michael McGovern from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Michael McGovern -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to dig a little bit into the gas rewards program. just curious, I noticed you listed gas the program as one of the contributing factors to Dasher cost per order actually being down.

So, I was wondering, is there a potential impact on Dasher supply or Dasher cost per order when the gas rewards program ends? And then secondly, is there a chance that that could be extended beyond August 31, if there is a potential supply impact from that? And are the savings from that ending in August currently being baked into guidance for Q3 and for the full year?

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Michael, it's Prabir. Maybe I'll take a stab at your question. Yeah, we spent over $40 million on the gas savings program, and we see very positive feedback from Dashers. You know, the commentary I think you're referring to is it's not a Dasher cost per order reduced, but what ended up happening is the retention of our existing fleet improved.

And that the improvement in that retention of the existing fleet was driven by three things: It's the product changes that will need in order to help attention; it's the gas rewards program that frankly displays the increase in fuel costs for Dashers; and third, the macro factors that we talked about around declining consumer savings and rising inflation. And so, it's the combination of these three things that we believe improved the retention of our existing fleet that then resulted in us needing fewer new Dashers, and therefore, acquiring a greater portion of our Dashers organically than we otherwise would. That then translates into lower that costs. In terms of renewing the program, you know, it's too early to say right now.

We have assumed that we will -- we continue to operate the current dasher program to the end of August, and we'll make a call depending on where gas prices are high, as well as other things. At the end of the day, it might be a cheaper way to obtain Dashers, what we'll see as we need progress here in the quarter.

Michael McGovern -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

All right. Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Mark Mahaney -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

Hey. I wanted to ask about whether you're seeing any pressure from competitors in nonurban markets, either on the restaurant supply, acquisition side, or consumer incentives. And since the Amazon-Grubhub deal was sort of announced, does that show up in any of the metrics that you track? Thank you very much.

Tony Xu -- Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

I can that lead off and then feel free to chime in here, Prabir. So far, we haven't seen an impact whether it's recent competitor announcements or moves to invest in certain types of geographies versus other types of geographies in the numbers, but obviously, we're taking stock of what's happening. But I think it's important to remember, regardless of what's happening in the external environment, that our focus is making sure that we continue building the best products. I mean, at the end of the day, the customer, whether it's for our platform or someone else's, they're going to judge all of us on the combination of the selection of places we deliver from the quality of that delivery experience in terms of speed, timeliness, and accuracy, the affordability of the platform and the customer service level.

And it's that combination, I think, that so far has been evidenced or performance with leading retention and order frequency that has separated us from the pack. And we have to just keep making sure that we stay ahead on that dimension. At the end of the day, it's that combination that ultimately is going to judge us or anyone else, and even if you offer the product for free if that combination isn't where it needs to be for the customer, I'm not sure it's going to matter.

Mark Mahaney -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

OK. Thank you, Tony.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 0 minutes

Call participants:

Andy Hargreaves -- Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations

Deepak Mathivanan -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Tony Xu -- Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

Prabir Adarkar -- Chief Financial Officer

Lloyd Walmsley -- UBS -- Analyst

Youssef Squali -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

Bernie McTernan -- Needham and Company -- Analyst

Brian Nowak -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Eric Sheridan -- Gol

Andrew Boone -- JMP Securities -- Analyst

Ron Josey -- Citi -- Analyst

Ross Sandler -- Barclays -- Analyst

Jason Helfstein -- Oppenheimer and Company -- Analyst

Douglas Anmuth -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Nikhil Devnani -- AllianceBernstein -- Analyst

Michael McGovern -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Mark Mahaney -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

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