Grab Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 3, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Record Q2 performance: Adjusted EBITDA rose 54% year over year to $168 million, with the margin expanding to 16.9% from 13.3%. On-demand GMV increased 21% to $6.5 billion and monthly transacting users reached a record 54 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: Grab raised its full-year 2026 revenue and EBITDA guidance, citing continued momentum in the core business plus the consolidation of Superbank and Stash. Management said the core outlook remains aligned with its prior guidance despite 2%-3% foreign-exchange headwinds.
  • Positive Sentiment: Financial services is expected to reach adjusted EBITDA profitability in the second half of 2026. The loan book is expected to exceed $3 billion by year-end, while Superbank has more than 7 million customers and Stash adds a profitable wealth platform with approximately $5.5 billion in assets under management.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Grocery delivery remains a major growth opportunity, with GrabMart users up 42% and GMV growing 1.7 times faster than food delivery. Management expects grocery to represent a larger share of delivery GMV while maintaining year-over-year margin expansion.
  • Negative Sentiment: Elevated fuel prices are weighing on mobility economics and contributed to lower average ticket sizes and take-rate compression, although ride transactions grew 28%. Grab has committed $7 million to driver support and expects mobility margins to remain within the 8.5%-9% range through the second half.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Grab Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

There are 4 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Grab's second quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Ken Lek, Head of Strategic Finance and Investor Relations at Grab, joining me today are Anthony Tan, Chief Executive Officer, Alex Hungate, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Peter Oey, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements regarding future events, including our business and financial performance. These statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations. Actual results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties as described on this earnings call, in the earnings release, and in our Form 20-F and other filings with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. We will also be discussing non-IFRS financial measures on this call. These measures supplement but do not replace IFRS financial measures.

Operator

Please refer to the earnings materials for a reconciliation of non-IFRS to IFRS financial measures. For more information, please refer to our earnings press release remarks and supplementary presentations available on our IR website. For today's call, Anthony will deliver opening remarks, after which we will open the floor for questions. As a reminder, we are accepting questions via our IR email at investor.relations@grab.com. Do submit your questions ahead of time, we will add them to the Q&A queue. With that, I'll hand it over to Anthony.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Ken. Good day, everyone, thank you for joining us. We delivered a record second quarter. Adjusted EBITDA grew 54% year-over-year to $168 million, more than twice our revenue growth rate, with margin expanding to 16.9% of revenue from 13.3%. Our 18th consecutive quarter of adjusted EBITDA growth. On-demand GMV grew 21% year-over-year or 22% on a constant currency basis to $6.5 billion. Group MTUs, Monthly Transacting Users, reached another record high of 54 million, even as elevated fuel prices persisted across the region. On the strength of the first half, together with the consolidation of Superbank and the acquisition of Stash, we are raising our full year 2026 guidance, which Peter will take you through in detail. Before turning to the business, a brief update on our board.

Speaker 1

As we disclosed on July 6, Dara stepped down from our board effective that date, as we continue to enhance our governance in connection with our proposed acquisition of foodpanda's Taiwan business. Dara joined us in 2018 in connection with the sale of Uber's Southeast Asia business to Grab and has been a valued voice in our boardroom for eight years. On behalf of the board, everyone at Grab, I want to thank him personally for his contributions. We maintain ongoing dialogue with Uber in their capacity as a shareholder in Grab. On our core business, we continue to demonstrate our ability to drive on-demand growth acceleration, we are confident that the structural long-term modes we are investing in today will continue to expand our competitive advantage. What stands out this quarter is the health of that growth, led by transactions and users, not price.

Speaker 1

Three structural modes are driving it. Regional penetration remains incredibly nascent, giving us a massive runway. Our affordability initiatives are profitably unlocking new user segments and building durable daily habits. Engagement is deepening, with Daily Transacting User growth actively outpacing Monthly Transacting User growth. The clearest expression of our growth runway is groceries. GrabMart grew at 1.7 times the rate of food deliveries this quarter as we push deeper into planned everyday grocery occasions. By enhancing the value propositions of our offline anchors, Jaya Grocer and Everrise, deepening supermarket partnerships, and launching our own AI-powered Grab Shopping Agent, we are driving higher purchase frequency, growing basket sizes, and expanding our advertising opportunities, all while remaining disciplined in driving profitability expansion. Our financial services segment is also fast approaching adjusted EBITDA profitability, expected in the second half of 2026.

Speaker 1

Our lending playbook, acquiring users at minimal CAC, customer acquisition costs, underwriting with proprietary and behavioral transaction data, and funding loans with low-cost deposits from our digital banks has enabled financial services to continue being our fastest-growing segment. We recently consolidated Superbank, which now serves over 7.4 million customers, and in July, we completed our acquisition of Stash, bringing a profitable AI-powered wealth platform and over $5 billion in AUM into our ecosystem. Underpinning all of this is our Grab AI intelligence layer, which now processes trillions of tokens every month. Our cost per AI interaction with driver and merchant partners has approximately halved versus a year ago, while monthly interactions grew tenfold, which is why we can deploy AI to every ecosystem partner rather than reserving it just for the premium tier, and why we can continue to treat AI as a margin lever.

Speaker 1

Internally, our engineers now coexist with autonomous coding agents as standard practice, cutting time to market by up to 30% year on year, while BriX, our internal analytics agent platform, cumulatively saves our sales teams approximately 40,000 hours every quarter.

Speaker 2

Ultimately, our second quarter results prove that our business model is successfully converting scale into expanding operating leverage. We enter the second half of the year with a disciplined operating posture and absolute confidence in our ability to keep compounding profitable, durable growth. Thank you. Let's open it up for questions.

Operator

Thank you, Anthony. We'll now begin the Q&A session, and we encourage you to submit your questions throughout the webinar via email. With that, our first question, coming from several analysts, Divya from Morgan Stanley, Alicia from Citi, Jiong from Barclays, Ranjan from JPMorgan Chase, and Zubayr of Macquarie. Question is on our revised guidance, our upgraded guidance. Question for Peter and Alex. Peter, is the revised guidance mainly reflecting the consolidation of Superbank for 2H 2026? Second part for Alex, excluding Superbank's consolidation, were there any changes to the revised guidance based off our core business?

Speaker 2

Sure, great question. What you're seeing in the second half, it shows momentum continuing from the second quarter. We saw great demand growth on our top-line business. Our on-demand business continues to grow at over 20%+ now. If you look at the number of rides, was up 28% on a year-over-year basis. You see momentum in transactions, and you saw also in the momentum in the number of users now touching the platform at 54 million. I'll let Alex talk a little bit more about that because that's a really important core factor as to how we feel about the second half of this year. The other thing that we're seeing is also you've got the Superbank and also the Stash consolidation into play. You've got the on-demand business and our financial services momentum.

Speaker 2

You've got now the consolidation of Superbank, as well as also Stash into the mix, which is the second pillar of our revised guidance. Also at the same time, we are baking in some FX headwind into the business. We've got some of the currencies, our Asian currencies, unfortunately, taking some pressure against the U.S. dollars, and some of that also is mixed into the guidance itself. I'll let Alex explain a little bit more around the momentum of the business.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Peter. The deliveries business accelerated again, this time to 24% year-on-year growth on a constant currency basis. Fintech is now moving convincingly towards profitability in the second half, which is what we had guided for. Finally, we're getting resilient growth of 18% from mobility, despite the elevated fuel prices that we've seen since March. This guidance upgrade from the prior 700 to 720 does reflect the factors in the fuel price support that we provided for drivers continuing through second half. It also includes the FX headwinds of between 2%-3%, as Peter mentioned earlier. Basically, in summary, the core business is performing well and is in line with the prior guidance. The new guidance includes the addition of both Superbank and Stash consolidation, and these additional FX headwinds that Peter mentioned.

Operator

All right. The next question comes from Alicia from Citi and John of Daiwa. Question is on our financial services business for Alex. After the consolidation of Superbank and completion of the Stash acquisition, what is management's near-term focus for the fintech business? Should we be expecting the loan book growth to continue? As Superbank becomes more integrated into Grab's ecosystem, how should we think about the future growth prospect of Indonesia's fintech business and profitability?

Speaker 3

Okay, yeah. First, we are on track to achieve profitability for financial services in the second half of 2026. I remember it was back in September 2022 that we promised this to the market. We're very pleased to be delivering on our commitments. We are managing risk prudently. We expect the loan book to exceed $3 billion by the end of this year, including now the Superbank book as well. We are pleased with this consolidation of Superbank in May and then Stash just in July. Grab has obviously been collaborating with Superbank since it was founded in 2022. We know the business very well. We know the book very well. In fact, it's been a clear focus on the ecosystem since the start for Superbank.

Speaker 3

It enables us to lower the customer acquisition costs and improve underwriting because of the deep data science that we can do together with them. Since the app launched in 2024, June, Superbank's grown very rapidly. It had 1 million customers within the first year. That's 2024. Today, it has over 7 million customers with daily transactions of above 1 million. With more than 60% of Superbank users also using Grab and OVO, it's very clear that that ecosystem strategy is working very well. Superbank's already delivering robust financials, it's recorded its full-year profitability last year in 2025 already. Efficiency ratios since then have continued to improve. We've got pre-tax return on equity already hitting 5.7% in this quarter. Cost to income ratio is already now at 55% and continuing to decrease.

Speaker 3

Banks expect to continue to driving this ROE improvement, by end of 2026. The cost income ratios will continue to track down, probably hitting below 50% by the end of the year. The Stash acquisition, as I mentioned earlier, was completed in July. It's already profitable. It's a good team. We like them very much, and they've got strong capabilities that they bring to the group. The asset management growth has continued to accelerate, we're at 22% asset management growth year-on-year this quarter, reaching $5.5 billion. The best thing about it with the subscription model is a very high retention rate with over 1 million active subscribers. Both good acquisitions, fully consolidated now, and helping us drive towards this second half breakeven for financial services.

Operator

All right. Next question is for Anthony. Question is about Uber and Grab's relationship. Question comes from Divya from Morgan Stanley, Piyush from HSBC, Jiong from Barclays, and Hussaini from Maybank. Can you comment around Uber's proposed acquisition of Delivery Hero and how that could impact the competitive landscape in Southeast Asia through foodpanda?

Speaker 1

Thank you for that question. On Uber specifically, we maintain ongoing dialogue with Uber in their capacity as a shareholder in Grab. As shared in our previous public filings, Uber is restricted from competing with Grab in our core markets under 1 year following a full sale of its Grab shareholding. Regardless of that, our markets have always been competitive. Through the years, we have demonstrated steady gains in category position across the region while driving profitable growth at the same time. Our competitive strength stems from structural advantages that are hard to disrupt. We have continued to deepen our penetration with a record 54 million MTUs, as Peter shared, and we are seeing the highest level of DTUs on our platform. This is a result of our core focus on hyper-local execution and strong partnership with governments across 8 distinct markets, which led us to win in the region.

Speaker 1

GrabMaps, for example, is one that we've shown hyper-local focus. We also continue to double down on our product-led strategy targeted around improving affordability and reliability for our partners and consumers. Finally, we have a strong ecosystem flywheel that is reinforced by what Alex just talked about, our growing financial service business, which enhances the LTV of our customers from cross-sell across all our core services.

Operator

Thanks, Anthony. Next question is on grocery delivery for Alex. For Mart, are we hitting near the inflection point this quarter with further acceleration of user penetration and transaction volume growth? How should we be thinking about the growth trajectory of the Mart business and contribution to total GMV in 1 year's time? Question is from Alicia from Citi.

Speaker 3

Okay, thanks, Alicia. Thanks, Ranjan. Yes, it's true. Groceries penetration is still nascent compared to deliveries overall, but of course, it's highly complementary to our food business and an important part also of our fintech distribution channel. GrabMart users grew 42% year-on-year, but even then, Mart still only consists of about 14% of our food user base. Still lots of upside there. We spent the year really strengthening the foundations to create the best possible consumer experience. Leveraging both the offline anchors like Jaya Grocer and Everrise in Malaysia, and also deepening our partnerships with leading supermarket chains in every country across the region. We've been able to put together a broad everyday assortment of SKUs, we're also cross-selling organically using GrabMore, which continues to improve in terms of its effectiveness as a cross-selling channel.

Speaker 3

We've introduced an AI-powered Grab Shopping Agent, it's very convenient. It helps to build baskets for users, and allows us to serve the recurring weekly shop better because of this easy automated basket-building capability. Overall, GrabMart grew GMV at 1.7 times the rate of food deliveries this quarter. We expect this kind of growth to outpace the overall deliveries portfolio, and obviously, therefore, it will end the year at a slightly higher proportion of deliveries GMV. Longer term, we can see that some of the global peers are reporting something like 30% or even higher for grocery penetration. There's obviously lots of upside there when you compare against best in class outside of Southeast Asia, and we'll continue to target that kind of a much higher growth for grocery going forward.

Speaker 3

Most importantly for us, grocery already drives more frequent user behavior than food alone, and that's really important because we see that frequency expansion and transaction growth coming through this quarter with MTU growth at 54% year-on-year. That really shows that consumers like this Mart service and come back with multi-year kind of frequency increases for us. We're scaling groceries deliberately, but we're doing it within our commitment to grow deliveries margins year-on-year. You can see in this quarter, we did achieve that milestone also despite the large growth that we generated from groceries within the overall deliveries segment.

Operator

Okay. Next question is from Jiong from Barclays. It's in regards to Indonesia and the commission caps there. A question for Alex: What's the latest in regard to the regulations and commission caps for mobility in Indonesia? Is there any potential that this set of regulations will spill over to be implemented for deliveries of 4-wheelers in addition to 2-wheel?

Speaker 3

The two-wheel taxi business, or as we call it, Ojol in Indonesia, represents 6% of our total mobility GMV, so relatively small. It does contribute, though, positive adjusted EBITDA to our business today. The good news is that with the changes that have been implemented in July, we expect to be able to maintain this positive margin profile going forward for the Ojol business in Indonesia. It's very important that we continue to engage with ministries and with the driver groups themselves in terms of how the implementation goes into place, because we are very focused on making sure that driver earnings remain sustainable and that therefore the Ojol marketplace continues to remain healthy in Indonesia to provide earnings opportunities for those drivers.

Speaker 3

The full year guidance, I can confirm, does assume that the commission structure remains as currently implemented for Ojol only, and there's no information that we have to suggest that anything otherwise will occur. Overall, therefore, reiterating our group mobility margins for the second half will remain within the historical range of between 8.5%-9%.

Operator

Thanks, Alex. Sticking to mobility, this time a question on fuel prices. Question for Alex. What is your outlook for fuel prices and the timing for mobility margins to go back to the higher end of the range?

Speaker 3

I don't think any of us are going to stand here and try to predict fuel price through the rest of the year. It's obviously a very volatile situation. I tell you what, we are committed to continuing to support our drivers no matter what happens. We have committed $7 million already to build support programs since the spike began in March, and that's been successful because it has allowed us to maintain the health of the marketplace, with more drivers coming into the marketplace to drive for Grab. That's really our goal, is to support them through this difficult time and make sure that marketplace health continues to flourish. This kind of support through the rest of the year is already factored into our guidance. Just to confirm, mobility margins this quarter were 8.6%.

Speaker 3

In other words, very much within the 8.5%-9% guidance range. We expect to stay within that range through the second half, no matter what happens with fuel prices. Obviously, if fuel prices go down, that will be supportive for us to improve from that point. The monthly active drivers is up 19%, actually, at an all-time high now. We're very happy with the results of the support that we've put into the marketplace. It's a relatively small number, 7 million, in comparison with our overall mobility business. You can see that we've been very targeted in how we use that support, and therefore, we've been able to manage the margins accordingly. Longer term, obviously, EVs are coming into the marketplace in Southeast Asia in a very rapid rate.

Speaker 3

We're being a catalyst for that because we think that this is a structural buffer for volatility in oil prices going forward. It fundamentally reduces the total cost of ownership for drivers. EVs actually have lower costs once the initial investment is made in the vehicle. This quarter, for example, we announced nine new fleet partnerships in Thailand. We've announced a new partnership with Wuling in Indonesia, and we've expanded charging access through the app for drivers in the Philippines. In nearly every market, we have examples of how we're becoming a positive catalyst for the introduction of cleaner vehicles into Southeast Asia.

Operator

Right. Sticking to mobility still, a new question on mobility growth this time round, specifically around the various metrics, GMV revenue, and transactions. Mobility GMV grew 18%, while transactions grew 28%, but revenue only grew by 12%. Can management help bridge the net take rate compression across lower average ticket size, product, and country mix, and higher driver incentives? Should take rate stabilize or recover in second half? How should we think about mobility revenue growth going forward?

Speaker 2

Okay, let me take that one, give Alex a bit of a break. A lot went on in the second quarter into the mobility business, and Alex actually referred to a lot of that. I think one critical metric that is one of the signals that we were watching for is the number of rides on the platform. As fuel prices went up, this is going back in March and April period, what were the number of drivers that we see on the platform, as well as what does it mean for the riders themselves? They still need to do the commute. They still need to go to point A to point B. We leaned in on a number of factors there, and that actually translated somewhat to the take rate that you're seeing here on the question itself.

Speaker 2

Alex talked about the $7 million that we leaned in. We're also leaning over and above that around partner incentives. That was critical because we wanted to make sure that the supply was strong when it comes to drivers. There were a few countries that we leaned in quite hard. Philippines was one of them. Thailand was the other one. We leaned in also in Singapore as well as in Vietnam. This is critical because as we wanted to bring the supply up, and we saw that in the number of drivers, the monthly active drivers was up 19% on a year-over-year basis. We wanted to make sure the drivers were also earning and were not impacted. We actually saw our drivers earning up 4% on a year-over-year basis. As a marketplace, we wanted to make sure that the riders also are not impacted.

Speaker 2

What we saw was the number of rides were up 28%, yet the prices were actually being compressed, which is exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted to see the riders still using our transport services, which they were, while the average ticket size went down because we did implement a lot of the saver products while out there to keep the marketplace very healthy. It worked, and you saw that in the numbers itself. What we were focused was on the margin of the mobility business, and margin was 8.6%, so well within the historical ranges within what Alex talked about here.

Speaker 2

It's a combination of really what we saw in keeping the marketplace healthy, which is really critical, keeping mobility rides affordable for the customer, really important at the same time, more drivers on the platform, which we saw, and that's the setup that we want to see going into Q3. Because we weren't sure whether the oil or the fuel crisis was going to end. We wanted to have that set up going into the second half, and which we're actually going through right now, and we're seeing very similar pattern to what we're seeing in terms of the second quarter, with fuel prices in certain countries still a little bit elevated than we want it to be.

Operator

Shifting our attention now to share buyback and capital allocation. Question from Divya from Morgan Stanley and Hussaini from Maybank. This is a question for Peter. Peter, you announced a $750 million share buyback, taking total authorization up to $1.75 billion. How should investors think about the pace of execution, and under what circumstances would you accelerate repurchases?

Speaker 2

Yeah. Let's go back to the first half. We announced the $500 million buyback in February earnings. Out of that, we've executed roughly about $400 million of that 500, of which some of those were accelerated. We felt that it was constructive for us to go in given where the share price is. Some of them were also tied to contingent forward purchase. With the new $750 million, which takes the whole program up to $1.75 billion of cumulative buyback, we'll keep deploying against that with the same discipline and the same focus. On pace, we'll execute where we continue to see a dislocation in the share price.

Speaker 2

As from a capital allocation framework, we remain very balanced between the organic growth that you're seeing in the business, which we're investing in, also in M&A, which we keep a very high bar, also returning capital back to our shareholders, which you are seeing also at the same time. We focus on generating cash flow in the business, which also you see, which actually translates to long-term shareholder value.

Operator

All right. Next question is on autonomous vehicles from Piyush from HSBC. Question for Anthony. Anthony, Grab has done several partnerships and investments to be at the cutting edge of autonomous vehicles and remote driving. Can you please update us on the progress of various pilots and commercial rollout timeline in your region?

Speaker 1

Thank you, Piyush, for that question. Let me take a step back and start off with some facts. This region remains one where driver partners are the crux of our platform. Let me just share some numbers. Over 50% of all transactions in Southeast Asia are two-wheel, below $1 per ride, making AVs uneconomical for commercial rollout. Singapore specifically is only 10% of all four-wheel transactions regionally. In Singapore, now, to answer specifically your question, we are leading the pace of innovation. We aim to build a hybrid ecosystem at whatever pace regulators and commuters are ready for. We see global AV players as partners here, as you said, many of them, we've partnered, we've invested with. Not just Western players, also Eastern players, which expands our options.

Speaker 1

Our edge beyond partnership is a decade of mapping POI high density regulatory and customer relationships centered on trust that actually makes this work at scale. Since January, our Ai.R Shuttle, Ai.R shuttle, has served over 9,000 riders. We've moved through this deliberately with community rides first, then full public operations in April. When we surveyed rides, or specifically riders with the government, 99% said they would recommend it to a friend. Riders told us what they actually want the next: more destinations, direct routes, flexible booking. Two weeks ago, we announced the next phase. Supported by our government, our riders will now be able to book their own AV, go point to point, and be able to go directly straight to markets, pharmacies, schools, train stations, instead of following a fixed loop.

Speaker 1

That opens to trial riders over the next few months, and to the general public in Q4, when we start charging commercial fares. That makes Punggol our first point to point revenue-generating autonomous service. We are building this the right way. Focus on not just the software, but people as Dayar. We've set up a depot in Punggol, adding more vehicles this year. Through GrabAcademy, in partnership with the government, we've already certified more than 20 of our own driver partners as safety operators. Six of them have gone further and qualified as remote operators running fleet monitoring out of our AV operations command center. When the AV moment comes in Singapore, we will be the most experienced hybrid operator in Southeast Asia.

Operator

All right. Thanks, Anthony. Now our final question of the day, specifically on foodpanda Taiwan. Question from Piyush of HSBC, Naveen from UBS, and Jacqueline from CIMB. Question for Peter. On foodpanda Taiwan, can you share progress on your engagement with the regulators and the likely timeline for the deal? What's the likely upfront integration cost for Grab on deal completion? Is any upfront cost incorporated into your 2026 guidance?

Speaker 2

Look, as much as I can say here is we remain on track with the progress on this transaction itself. We're keen to enter the Taiwan market. We're continuing to all make the preparations behind the scenes. We continue to be very in close discussions with the Taiwanese regulators. Also expect to close by the end of the year.

Operator

Thanks, Peter. With that brings us to the end of our Q&A session. I'll now turn the time over to Peter for his closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Great. Look, before we wrap up, just to recap the headlines, scale converted into profitability in this business. You saw the EBITDA growing more than twice as fast as revenue. Our revenue margin expanded 360 basis points as a group. Our EBITDA is at 18 straight quarter of consecutive growth now. We backed that with capital, $1.75 billion in cumulative buyback authorizations since 2024. We reflected it in our latest guidance, raising both revenue as well as EBITDA for the full year. Our financial services is turning profitable in the second half. It's the next real catalyst for us. As always remind the Grab team, this is not a one-quarter story. It's the trajectory that we're driving. I want to thank everyone for joining us today.

Speaker 2

Anthony, Alex, and I want to genuinely thank you to our drivers and to all our merchant partners, to all our users and customers, our Grabbers, and our shareholders for sticking with us. Dayar and myself will be on the road for the next few weeks. We'll be in a very few countries, U.S., London, Hong Kong, and also hometown Singapore here. Reach out to us if you want to meet, have a coffee or have a conversation. We'd love to sit down with you. See you all next quarter.

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