Investment Case Update: June 9, 2026

Price: $42.24 (6/9/26)
Market Capitalization: $9.9B
Enterprise Value:$9.5B

What the Company Does

Maplebear, which conducts business as Instacart, is the leading pure-play online grocery shopping and delivery company in the United States, with >2,200 retailer partnerships, allowing it to reach over 98% of households in North America. Instacart’s platform allows its end consumers to shop at any of its retail grocer partners’ stores while offering customization options for delivery (same-day, next-day, priority, no rush, and pickup) with eventual fulfillment completed by one of the company’s 600K available “shoppers” (think “courier”). The company generates revenue via transaction and service fees on these online grocery orders, Instacart+ subscriptions, and advertisements/promotions for various consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands sold at its retail partners’ stores.

Why We Own It

CART is the leading service provider in a fragmented market ripe for a long pathway of disruption, while trading at a compelling valuation. With only ~13% of the $1.2T North America grocery market occurring online, management thinks it can potentially reach 35% over the long term. CART is the digital-first leader in online big-basket orders (order value of $75+) and is more effective than peers at converting small baskets into big baskets, a key advantage given that ~75% of online grocery orders since 2020 have been big baskets. CART’s focus on larger orders (average order value of ~$110 in FY25) also drives superior unit economics relative to convenience-focused peers, as CART can spread fixed fulfillment costs over more items, boosting gross profit per order, while the inherently longer shopping sessions enable strong engagement opportunities for its higher-margin ad business. However, CART’s value proposition is increasingly extending beyond its core marketplace business. Recent off-platform partnerships with partners such as TikTok and Pinterest broaden the reach of its fast-scaling ads business, now generating >$1B in annual revenue across 9,000 brands. At the same time, CART’s Enterprise Platform, which provides the white-label technology that powers the ecommerce sites for 380+ retailers, embeds CART deeper into its partners’ tech stacks, allowing CART to capture demand and monetization across retailers’ full digital ecosystems, limiting the impact of non-exclusive retailers that work with other third-party delivery providers.

CART’s fundamentals remain strong, with management guiding for 12% Y/Y growth in 2Q26 Gross Transaction Value (GTV), or aggregate order volume on CART’s platform, which would mark ten consecutive quarters of at least 9% growth. Meanwhile, CART continues to gain operating leverage, as Adjusted EBITDA margins expanded another 280bps in FY25 following 510bps of expansion in FY24, as management progresses towards its long-term target of Adjusted EBITDA representing 4.5% of GTV (vs. 2.9% in FY25). Despite CART’s superior unit economics and strong growth outlook, shares trade at a forward (FY26) EV/EBITDA multiple of ~7.5x, a more than 45% discount to both UBER and DASH.

How Management Allocates Capital

Management’s top priority is to invest in R&D, AI solutions, and marketing to fuel organic growth. However, with a pristine balance sheet, management has significant flexibility to pursue accretive M&A and opportunistically tap into its $1.3B of remaining share buyback authorization (13.3% of market cap), while also meeting its required reinvestments into the business, even after buying back $3.1B worth of shares since the beginning of 2024 (31.6% of market cap).

We originally posted our investment case for CART on May 6, 2024.