Big news from earnings season

Five top stories from Q2

Hellooo, earnings season, one of the few times of year when companies are suddenly forthright about their business performance and challenges, because they have to be. 

We’re still in the thick of it, but many companies of Expedite interest have already reported results. Here are five items of note from this prime time of year, with many more details, links, and context for paid subscribers below. 

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Read to the end for the MrBeast Burger drama! photo credit: Getty Images

1. Grubhub parent company Just Eat Takeaway posted better-than-expected results for the first half of the year.

Still, its CEO, Jitse Groen, shared some real talk with investors and analysts during the results call. 

2. Uber finally turns a profit. 

Shares in the company dropped shortly after the news, though, because the company posted lower-than-expected revenue for the second quarter of the year. Uber will also lose its finance chief, Nelson Chai, in January.

3. Sweetgreen’s robots are… working? So far. 

In its first month of operation, Sweetgreen’s lone robot-powered location outside Chicago had a comparatively high 26 percent operating margin. Its overall margin for the quarter was closer to 20 percent. 

4. DoorDash delivers better than expected results. 

Order frequency — or the number of times people order from DoorDash in a given month — reached an all-time high in the three months ending in June. It was also the company’s best-ever quarter for total orders (532 million) and gross order value ($16.5 billion), the company’s metric for describing the total value of orders on its platform, including taxes and tips and consumer fees. 

5. MrBeast sued Virtual Dining Concepts to get out of his MrBeast Burger contract and VDC didn’t mince words in its response. 

This one’s unrelated to earnings season, but too newsworthy to pass up:  MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, alleges food quality issues at the rapidly scaling burger brand have irreparably tarnished his reputation. In response, VDC says he’s essentially throwing a tantrum after trying to renegotiate the terms of the deal. 

Read on for the kind of Expedite commentary and context you know and love.