Grab’s revenue rises, loss narrows

Grab Holdings Ltd, Southeast Asia’s No. 1 ride-hailing and food delivery firm, yesterday reported a 6% rise in quarterly revenue as more people ordered food online.

The company also benefited from growing demand for ride-share as people resume their pre-pandemic routines.

Grab said gross merchandise volume (GMV), a measure of transaction volume, rose 32% in the first quarter to $4.8 billion from a year earlier.

For the second quarter, Grab forecast GMV for deliveries between $2.55 billion and $2.65 billion, and for the mobility segment to be between $0.95 billion and $1 billion, betting the worst of the pandemic was over.

The company expects supply of cars on the road to stabilise in the second half of the year, and that driver incentives as a percentage of GMV to taper in that period.

Revenue for the first quarter was $228 million, compared with $216 million a year earlier.

Loss for the period narrowed to $435 million from $666 million.

Grab has struggled since becoming a publicly listed company in the United States through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), also known as a “blank cheuqe company” in December.

A SPAC, which stands for special purpose acquisition company, is created to raise capital from public markets and then use that cash to merge with a private company and take it public within a two-year timeframe.

Mounting losses, coupled with a broad tech sell-off, have weighed on its shares, which have lost more than 70% since the start-up went public.