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By Ananya Mariam Rajesh

(Reuters) -Food delivery co*pany DoorDash Inc said orders surged to a record high in the third quarter as people stuck to their pandemic-era habits despite rising inflation and steeper prices, helping it beat Wall Street targets for revenue.   

Shares of the largest U.S. food delivery firm surged 15% in extended trading.

Even though dining out has resumed in force, people are still ordering food online from the co*fort of their homes like they did during lockdowns.

DoorDash recorded 439 million orders in the quarter and a 30% rise in gross order value – the total value of all app orders and subscription fees – to $13.53 billion.

It forecast fourth-quarter gross order value of between $13.9 billion and $14.2 billion, and reiterated full-year expectations for the key industry metric.

DoorDash has, however, started to see a bit of item-level impact from decades-high inflation and the threat of a recession prompting people to buy fewer items each time they order, a co*pany spokesperson said.

Labor shortages have also weighed on many U.S. delivery co*panies. But UberEats owner Uber Technologies Inc said on Tuesday active drivers were back to levels seen before the pandemic in September 2019.

DoorDash said it has not been affected by driver shortages since 2020, when the U.S. government first issued stimulus checks to help people cope with the pandemic.

The co*pany’s revenue rose 33% to $1.70 billion in the third quarter, surpassing analysts’ estimates of $1.63 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.   

However, the San Francisco-based firm’s net loss widened to $295 million, or 77 cents per share, from $101 million, or 30 cents per share, a year earlier.

(Reporting by Ananya Mariam Rajesh in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)