Key insights
- Morgan Stanley highlights strong demand in the gig economy, particularly in rideshare, food delivery, and grocery/retail delivery, with subscription programs driving higher spending. DoorDash and Uber are rapidly gaining market share in online grocery/retail against Instacart. The note also mentions improvements in GenAI-enabled tools and Amazon's increasing competition. MS maintains overweight ratings on DASH and UBER.
Investing.com -- Morgan Stanley identified five thematic trends across the gig economy following simultaneous earnings from DoorDash Inc (NASDAQ:DASH), Uber Technologies Inc (NYSE:UBER) and Instacart (NASDAQ:CART), while raising its Snap price target 8% to $7.
Demand remained strong across rideshare, food delivery and grocery and retail delivery, with both user growth and order frequency contributing.
Subscription programs DashPass and Uber One continued scaling, with subscribers spending approximately three times more than non-subscribers.
DoorDash’s U.S. DashPass membership accelerated in the first quarter through better gross additions and lower churn.
On the competitive landscape, Morgan Stanley estimated DoorDash’s online grocery and retail gross order value reached $4.1 billion in Q126, growing 32% year-over-year, while Uber’s stood at $3.5 billion, up 40%.
Instacart’s GOV of $10.3 billion dwarfed both rivals but grew only 13%, with DoorDash and Uber expanding at roughly three times the rate.
"We estimate DASH/UBER’s online grocery/retail business is now ~40%/~35% the size of CART’s GOV, but DASH/UBER are growing ~3X the rate and gaining share," the note said.
Both DoorDash and Instacart flagged improvements in GenAI-enabled merchant and inventory onboarding tools, which Morgan Stanley said could drive further offline-to-online volume growth.
Amazon was cited as the key competitor to monitor, given its expanding "Amazon Now" offering and push into agentic and robotics capabilities.
Morgan Stanley maintained its “overweight” rating on DoorDash with a $275 price target, implying 48% upside from its then-current price of $167.97, based on a 25x multiple on 2027 adjusted EBITDA of $4.806 billion. Revenue is estimated at $17.65 billion in 2026 and $21.26 billion in 2027.
Uber retained its “overweight” rating and $100 price target, implying 26% upside from $79.17, based on a 14x 2027 adjusted EBITDA multiple of $14.188 billion.
Total gross bookings are forecast at $234.29 billion in 2026 and $275.3 billion in 2027. Morgan Stanley raised its 2027 adjusted EBITDA and EPS estimates by 2% each following a first-quarter Mobility beat.
Instacart was maintained at “equal-weight” with a $48 price target. First-quarter orders of 91 million came in 2.7% below the 94 million estimate, with adjusted EBITDA of $300 million in line with the $303 million estimate. 2026 adjusted EBITDA is forecast at $1.286 billion.
Snap’s price target was raised to $7 from $6.50 after a Q1 adjusted EBITDA beat of $233.3 million against an estimate of $186.1 million.
The increase was partially offset by the removal of an anticipated Perplexity partnership that had been expected to generate up to $400 million in high-margin revenue in 2027, alongside declining North America users of 2 million quarter-over-quarter.
Morgan Stanley cut its 2026 and 2027 revenue estimates by 1.2% and 2.9% respectively but raised 2026 EBITDA estimates by 13.5%.