Instacart's filing kept transaction value apart from revenue

The record

On 25 August 2023, Maplebear Inc., which operates as Instacart, filed a Form S-1 registration statement ahead of its initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. The filing states that gross transaction value, the value of products sold based on prices shown on the platform, grew from 24,909 million dollars in 2021 to 28,826 million dollars in 2022, a 16 percent increase, while total revenue grew from 1,834 million dollars to 2,551 million dollars over the same period, a 39 percent increase. The document separately discloses that advertising and other revenue, primarily fees paid by brand partners, grew from 572 million dollars, or 31 percent of total revenue, in 2021 to 740 million dollars, or 29 percent of total revenue, in 2022.

What the documents establish

The S-1 is Instacart's own disclosure, and it states directly that gross transaction value and revenue are distinct measures: transaction revenue and advertising revenue together were approximately 8.9 percent of GTV in 2022, meaning the great majority of GTV flows to retail partners and is not company revenue at all. The filing explains that GTV grew more slowly than revenue since 2020 specifically because GTV does not reflect the growth of advertising revenue or efficiency gains such as a higher batch rate, a distinction the company draws to keep the two measures from being read as interchangeable. Instacart's SEC EDGAR filing record confirms the S-1 filing date and its two subsequent amendments before the offering priced in September 2023.

The operating read

For an operator running a marketplace with a retail-media layer, the filing's own separation of GTV from revenue is more instructive than either figure alone: a business can grow GTV steadily while growing revenue faster if a rising share comes from advertising rather than a fixed transaction take rate. This note does not assert that retail media sustains the growth seen in the six months ended 30 June 2023, when advertising revenue grew 24 percent, slower than the prior full year's 29 percent rate; the filing states both figures without projecting which pace continues. A reader should treat GTV as a measure of platform scale and advertising revenue as a distinct, faster-growing line layered on top of it, exactly as the filing defines the two.

What to check before you decide

A reader evaluating any marketplace that reports both a transaction-value figure and a revenue figure should check which measure a given growth claim is actually describing.

• Is a cited growth rate describing gross transaction value, which mostly passes through to retail or supply partners, or company revenue, which does not?
• What share of revenue comes from advertising rather than transaction fees, and is that share growing faster or slower than the core transaction business?
• Does the filing's own disclosed period show advertising revenue growth accelerating or decelerating, rather than assuming a single reported year continues indefinitely?

Instacart's own filing draws the GTV-versus-revenue distinction explicitly and shows advertising revenue growing off a smaller base than transaction revenue. Keeping that separation intact, as the filing itself insists on, is the check this document supports for any similar marketplace disclosure.