$GRAB An update of how I'm thinking about Grab today, with a pros/cons list, non-exhaustive, but pretty long. Pros: 1. Grab remains the leading on-demand platform in the region, there is no regional player with the same combination of mobility, delivery, payments infrastructure. 2. 2025 marked the 2nd consecutive year of profitability. FinServices will be profitable by H2 2026, which means we should see an exponential inflection in the profitability curve from FY2026 and onward. 3. Southeast Asia still has a long runway for digitalisation. Despite Grab having 55M+ MTUs, it represents <8% of the total population. FP Taiwan will increase that addressable market further. As with any platform company, scale is key. 4. While switching costs are low in deliveries/mobility, Grab's moat lies in regional marketplace liquidity and operational density. The longer Grab holds on to a dominant position, the better placed they are to maintain it. 5. AVs are not an immediate existential threat in most cities within SEA for the foreseeable future for several reasons. Road infrastructure is not suitable for large-scale AV deployment, labour costs in most SEA cities are cheaper than AVs (for now), regulations are likely to withhold the spread of AVs due to driver backlash. 6. Grab is betting on a world of numerous AV winners, positioning itself as the demand layer for AV operators. Grab has invested/partnered with 6 AV businesses in the past year and a half, from WeRide to Momenta, giving it optionality. If Grab is right, AVs could ultimately benefit them. 7. GrabAds continue to become a larger segment of the business, improving margins. Active self-serve advertisers grew 21% and average advertiser spend increased 24% in Q2. Growth can still be much stronger, and the acquisition of Atome may help this. 8. Grab is increasingly focused on FInancial Services. The Atome acquisition is a make or break imo. If Grab sees strong synergies and becomes a leader in consumer lending, this segment alone could make Grab's valuation look cheap in hindsight. 9. Grab is seeing operating leverage in the business, Q2 adjusted EBITDA increased 54% while revenue grew 22%. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded from 13.3% to 16.9% of revenue. 10. Grab has delivered 18 consecutive quarters of adjusted EBITDA growth. I don't think this is outright positive as it means management has been extremely measured and careful with re-investing in the business. I view this as similar to MELI's 30 consecutive quarters of 30%+ growth. Being able to sustain that growth rate for so long means that MELI should have been doubling down much earlier, and arguably aiming for much higher growth (70% or even triple digits in some periods). 11. At the current $11.8B market cap and with $5.4B in net cash, EV is only $6.4B. Management is targeting $1.7B in Adj. EBITDA by 2028, which means Grab is trading at ~3.7x 2028 EV/EBITDA. Pretty cheap if we assume Grab executes well on its targets. 12. Stock now trades below $3, with expectations reset while operationally, the business is stronger than it's probably ever been. A large reason for the drawdown was revealed to be Toyota's full sale, which I view as irrelevant info. 13. Management has $900M in buybacks to execute, which at current market cap represents about 8% of the stock. Selling pressure is likely low with Toyota fully out and Uber unlikely to sell. Cons: 1. Mobility and delivery still have low switching cost and Grab does not appear to have become more dominant in the past 2 years. Bolt is doing well in Thailand, XanhSM in Vietnam, while ShopeeFood is a very close competitor in the 4 markets it operates in, growing market share for 3 consecutive years. 2. Grab's network effects appear to be limited locally rather than fully regional. Leadership in Singapore does little to improve driver liquidity in Vietnam, which makes national competition annoying at best. 3. Price is the major competitive variable in ride-hailing, which compresses margins. Grab has therefore been on an affordability push, which despite expanding the addressable market, constrains revenue per transaction and places pressure on driver economics. 4. Supply remains the limiting factor in mobility and deliveries, especially with the surge in oil prices. Partner and Consumer incentives continue to climb, growing faster than total revenues in the past 4 quarters. Grab spent US$706 million on incentives in Q2, with on-demand incentives rising to 10.9% of GMV. (72bp increase YoY) 5. Sea Limited is becoming a closer competitor each year. With the excess profits they are making, Sea is now expanding its capabilities in logistics across the region with same-day delivery. (This ties into the quick commerce story) Unlike a standalone delivery competitor, Sea has several profit pools with which to fund expansion. 6. Regulation has come to the fore, notably in Indonesia where the govt set commission caps for Ojols at 8%, down from 20%, materially affecting mobility revenues. 7. Grab's mobility margins are nearing maturity, with Adj. EBITDA margin of 8.6% in Q2 near the long-term target set by management of 9%+. 8. Protests by drivers have intensified in the past year, with Vietnamese drivers most recently calling for a 2-day app boycott. Indonesia has had 2 protests in recent years (Aug 2024 and Aug-Sept 2025), while Thailand also had one in May 2025. Unfortunately, this is an unresolvable situation as the push and pull between app-drivers is a win-lose scenario. 9. Grab's Stash acquisition could be argued to be a case of financial engineering, much like Grab's expansion in groceries through the purchase of Jaya and Everrise in 2024/2025 respectively. In 2025, deliveries GMV includes their supermarket businesses and means that true growth in the deliveries segment was closer to 10% rather than 21%. I think it is slightly unfair to count all supermarket revenues as "deliveries" revenue. 10. FP Taiwan is not a straightforward integration story. From what I know, FP Taiwan was incredibly poorly run by management despite initially having a dominant position. Uber is the other large player in the region, and as we know, they are very capable competitors. There is potentially a case where Grab may need to re-invest more into Taiwan and consolidation benefits could be offset by churn and integration costs. 11. One of the main issues Grab has to deal with is balancing three conflicting groups: consumers want lower prices, drivers want higher income and shareholders want higher margins. It's impossible to maximise all 3 simultaneously. 12. The existing lending strategy and synergies between mobility/deliveries and fin services appear to be extremely weak. It was revealed in the Atome deck that only around 1% of Grab’s 138 million annual transacting users borrow from Grab. For a segment that's been around for over 6 years now, that is very underwhelming. 13. Atome is therefore undoubtedly a response to weak internal execution. Yet, Atome is not the regional leader with Sea's consumer credit book and active borrower base multiple times larger. 14. Grab is shifting from cash-rich optionality to aggressive deployment. It has announced ~$2.5B to be spent on acquisitions in 2026 alone, and that excludes the further $1-1.5B that will likely be spent on acquiring the rest of Atome. This means that these bets must pay off. Over a billion has also been spent on buybacks and another $900M in future buybacks. 15. Longer-term, AV economics are uncertain. If a dominant AV supplier owns both fleet and customer demand, Grab’s mobility take rate could be pressured. Even worse, Grab could become dependent on concentrated AV suppliers. 16. There is also a possibility that Grab may eventually need to fund vehicles or infrastructure. Its current AV approach is to be extremely asset-light, but commercial-scale robotaxis may require fleet financing, depots, charging, maintenance or minimum-volume commitments. 17. While AVs are unlikely to be a threat in most cities within SEA in the next 10 years, Singapore is an attractive market for AVs. Road infrastructure is good, the government is inclined to allow AVs to flourish, and the intent of Waymo to launch by 2028 is there. Singapore makes up ~33% of mobility revenues, making potential AV disruption a major threat. 18. As Grab grows from facilitating payments into taking deposits and underwriting billions of dollars of consumer credit, regulators will demand more capital, compliance and consumer protection. 19. Acquisitions increase the execution risk, an area where I don't think management has been particularly skilled at. Conclusion: $GRAB today is definitely a stronger business than when I first invested in 2024. The valuation is also much cheaper today. However, there is definitely some cause for caution from me because I believe the nature of the thesis has changed somewhat. The original thesis was that Grab had established leading positions across Southeast Asia, and profitability would inflect as incentives normalised and operating leverage emerged. The FinServices segment would benefit from the synergies of the core businesses and the huge cash pile would be allocated to make the group stronger. Grab is committing billions towards Atome, foodpanda Taiwan, Stash, grocery operations, autonomous-vehicle investments and share repurchases today and therefore these large bets are of paramount importance. Atome is by far the most important of these bets. If Grab can combine Atome’s lending infrastructure with its data, distribution and deposit base to become a leading consumer lender, FinServices could become its most valuable segment. However, if the synergies remain weak, and it becomes clear that Grab had overpaid, the acquisition would have destroyed a substantial amount of shareholder value. The fact that only around 1% of Grab’s annual transacting users currently borrow from it suggests that converting ecosystem activity into financial-services adoption is far harder than management (and myself) initially believed. At the same time, I do not believe Grab’s competitive position should be taken for granted. Grab remains the regional leader, but Bolt, Xanh SM, ShopeeFood, Gojek and Uber are all capable competitors in their respective markets. Driver incentives are rising, regulatory intervention is intensifying and mobility margins are already approaching management’s long-term target. Thankfully for investors, the valuation provides a meaningful margin of safety. Overall, I remain bullish on Grab, but with considerably more caution than before. Operationally, the business is probably in the strongest position it has ever been. Strategically, however, it is also entering its most consequential and uncertain period. Grab is now not a turnaround story anymore, the focus is on capital-allocation and execution. Clearly Anthony and co. believe they can execute, and that the stock is too cheap, hence the massive $30M buy today. I hope they're right.

.@JensenHuang is a national treasure 🫡

タイのGRABは雨とか渋滞時にドライバー側からキャンセルされることがよくある。距離短いと余計。なので私はすかさず可愛い自撮りを送りつけていて、2年間勝率100%。それをIgに載せたら友人(男)が俺もやるわって挑戦したんだけど、写真の後キャンセルされたってメール来て、死ぬほど笑ってるwww

BREAKING: Elon Musk on China in his new interview with CCTV Finance: “I generally recommend people go to China as much as they can, because China has so many things to see. I took the bullet train from Beijing to Xi’an. That was a great experience. The train stations are amazing. “The Terracotta Warriors are one of the wonders of the world. Just make sure you look out the window and aren’t on your phone, because there’s so much to see. Any words I say do not do justice to the incredible majesty that is China. It’s awesome.”

FYI, Shopee $SE is the Shopify of Southeast Asia.

Canadian PM Mark Carney: There are only four countries at the forefront of AI: France, Canada, China and the United States. We must join forces to ensure an appropriate framework so that AI is safe and effective.

$GRAB CEO Anthony Tan buys 10,350,000 shares of Grab at $2.89/share. Anthony has been a net seller on the open market since the company went public. This is first open market purchase. Obviously, for him to buy $30M of stock while his net worth is around $300-400M shows how significant of a purchase this is and how much he thinks the market has lost their minds on this name. We are now looking at a public valuation LOWER than what Grab was worth in the private markets. Their enterprise value is $7B and they will profitably do $4.2B of revenue this year. Really nice to see an insider buy — it has been a tough hold but the broader thesis, in my opinion, is being executed in a VERY strong way with a horrible macro backdrop . For a CEO who has been criticized for many insider sells (many of which were pre-planned and also deserved given the guy founded the company and wasn’t liquid for a decade) it is nice to see him put almost 10% of his net worth into the company he started 15 years ago via purchases on the open market. Grab Holdings President & COO Alexander Charles Hungate also bought $867K of $GRAB with 299,571 shares at a $2.89 avg. The markets are the greatest game on earth, they will test your patience, they will turn your stomach inside out, they will drive you crazy as the price of an asset goes down while fundamentals get better, every bear case will make more sense as you see the price go down, but one thing is clear: execution and compounding earnings wins in the end. It’s nice to see a C-suite that believes in that themselves and takes advantage of that with a sizeable amount of their personal networth. The story continues!

Prediction: within 12 months, top three models will be open source. Economic winners will be the American clouds that serve them: Nebius Iren Baseten Together Fireworks

Just published my latest article: 6 Things We Learned from Grab's Atome Acquisition Entirely free to read, would appreciate all feedback: gabgrowth.com/p/6-things-we-…