Prepared remarks
Good day, everyone, and welcome to Grab's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I'm Douglas Eu, Director of Investor Relations and Strategic Finance at Grab. And 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 our 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. Please refer to the earnings material for a reconciliation of non-IFRS to IFRS financial measures. For more information please refer to our earnings press release, remarks and supplemental presentation available on our IR website. For today's call, Anthony will deliver opening remarks, after which we will open the floor to questions. As a reminder, we are accepting questions via IR and e-mail at investorrelations@grab.com. Do submit your questions ahead of time, and we will add them to the Q&A queue. And with that, I'll hand it over to Anthony.
Great. Thanks, Doug. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We set out to start 2026 strongly, and we delivered against the backdrop of our seasonally softest quarter due to Ramadan and Chinese New Year. On-demand GMV growth accelerated to 24% year-on-year, while group MTUs increased to 52 million. In Financial Services, loan disbursals grew 67% to exceed $1 billion for the first time, and we remain on track for our Financial Services segment to achieve adjusted EBITDA breakeven in the second half of this year. We also delivered our 17th consecutive quarter of adjusted EBITDA growth, expanding our trailing 12-month adjusted free cash flow to $489 million. These results demonstrate the compounding nature of our strategy, which is increasingly being accelerated by our investments in AI. What truly sets our AI capabilities apart, however, is the proprietary data foundation we spent the last 14 years building to power them. Today Grab operates as a system of record for local commerce across Southeast Asia. We capture highly localized real-time data on how over 50 million users and partners interact across 8 markets. Over the years, this has generated a proprietary data set of over 20 billion transactions. We feed these multimodal signals from hyper-local mapping to in-store payment terminals into our AI Grab intelligence layer to optimize our own marketplace efficiency from dynamic pricing to last-mile routing. Crucially, we paired this data advantage with our massive physical fulfillment network. That closed-loop system or ecosystem is our biggest competitive moat, which is why our AI investments translate directly into measurable financial outcomes. We are already seeing significant tangible returns on these initiatives. For instance, I'm pleased to share driver partners who adopted Turbo, our AI-powered driving mode in our Grab Driver app to optimize driver earnings and efficiency, saw a 23% uplift in earnings per online hour compared to driver partners who have not adopted the feature. This has contributed to Mobility transactions growth outpacing Mobility GMV growth, with transactions up 28% year-on-year. Within a year of launch, our merchant AI Assistant, Mai, has been adopted by approximately half of our active single-store merchant base, driving a 15% uplift in GMV for engaged users. This deepened engagement directly supports our ability to improve monetization, with average advertiser spend growing 44% year-on-year as merchants see increasing measurable returns. Following the launch of 13 new AI-powered experiences at GrabX this year, we are turning external AI interfaces into our newest growth engines by acting as the essential fulfillment layer for Southeast Asia. We ensure that whenever customers use AI agents to navigate their day, those interactions act as top-of-funnel leads that drive transactions directly back to Grab. We're also making steady progress on autonomous vehicles. In April, we successfully transitioned our private trials to full paying public operations. Our AIR service deployment partnership with WeRide is the first autonomous passenger service ever deployed within a Southeast Asian residential estate. The fleet has clocked over 40,000 kilometers and has safely served several thousand public rides. That said, the adoption of AVs in Southeast Asia remains nascent. We see governments and regulators taking a measured approach in implementing AVs, which we believe is the right approach for our region. We will continue to incorporate AVs in our platform at a pace that reflects the trust communities place in us and our emphasis on customer safety. To be clear, we do not expect anyone to be able to deploy impactful disruption to our human driver network in the near future. Yet we remain firm believers in the technology. This has shaped how we have made small investments ahead of the curve to forge international partnerships while doubling down on ensuring our Singapore pilot succeeds. We intend to be the most experienced local hybrid AV and human operator in Southeast Asia, one able to amplify the efforts of any AV software player in bringing the smoothest, safest and most cost-efficient service when we eventually scale up in partnership with governments in this region. Now beyond AI and AVs, the structural health of our driver partner supply base remains our top priority. When fuel price volatility emerged in early March, we acted decisively to protect partner livelihoods by deploying targeted fuel rebates and proactively engaging with regulators across our markets. In April, we also launched the digital earnings tracker to provide driver partners with greater transparency over their earnings. In 2025, partners earned over $15 billion on our platform, up 19% year-on-year. Looking ahead, our record start to the year is a testament to the resilience of our ecosystem. Whether we are leveraging AI to drive greater marketplace efficiencies today or piloting the autonomous networks of tomorrow, our focus remains on compounding sustainable growth and out-serving our communities. Despite macroeconomic uncertainties, particularly regarding inflation and fuel prices, our platform is structurally stronger than ever. Against that backdrop, we reiterate our 2026 full-year guidance: Group revenue of $4.04 billion to $4.10 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $700 million to $720 million. Our first quarter provides us with a strong foundation. In March, we announced that we are advancing our buyback mandate with a $400 million accelerated share repurchase program. This is a reflection of our conviction in Grab's long-term value at these dislocated prices. Thank you so much. Let's open it up for questions.
Questions and answers
As regards to the fuel crisis, what's the impact of the ongoing Middle East conflict and higher fuel prices across your various operating countries? Has it started to impact business performance in the second quarter? Can you quantify the impact? And what is our strategy to manage long-term fuel risk? (This question is for Alex.)
Thanks, Divya, Venu, Piyush. This is a critical topic. As I said in my prepared remarks, Q1 results actually give us a good solid foundation entering the year. And as you saw from the slide pack, the demand trends in April have remained resilient. Our Mobility business in April has seen weekly average transaction volumes sustained at plus 32% year-on-year. And our deliveries business continues to see record high daily transacting users in April. So it's a good start to the year. The business, in fact, is in a structurally more resilient position today than it has been through our history. Product innovations we have made have really targeted affordability and reliability. Group orders, for example, has GMV up 74% year-on-year, and we launched group rides at GrabX last month, which is a similar concept for sharing rides to reduce pricing for individual consumers. That's now available across all six of our core markets. GrabUnlimited, of course, is very good value for high-frequency customers, and it continues to account for one-third of our deliveries GMV. So all of these are highly affordable products, which keep demand strong even when consumers are stretched. We're monitoring the fuel situation extremely closely. And of course, we will not hesitate to act further if needed. In the medium term, we are committed to accelerate the EV transition to reduce our driver partners' exposure to fuel price volatility. For example, in Thailand and the Philippines, we have a drive-to-own program that connects our drivers with OEMs like BYD and GAC, where we have deals of up to 70,000 vehicles available across six markets with access to financing so they can own those more easily. In Vietnam, we have secured preferential charging rates through our charging network partners, EBOOST and Charge+, which helps our drivers in the transition. And finally, in Thailand, I am pleased to say that our total fleet supply has crossed 30,000 EVs on the platform and demand for those from consumers is also strong, where they can select that EV option, and that demand has grown by over 35% year-on-year. So this fuel crisis has become an opportunity in the sense that it helps us to accelerate that EV transition.
For the Financial Services segment, the loan portfolio showed a modest quarter-on-quarter growth, but there was a step improvement to your segment adjusted EBITDA. Could you describe the factors that led to these improvements? What can we expect in coming quarters and how do you intend to drive that? (This question is for Alex.)
Thanks, Zhiwei, Venu. Yes, you're right. Strong EBITDA improvement in Financial Services, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. That is the operating leverage that we've been talking about starting to come through very strongly now as we scale up our loan portfolio. Revenue growth accelerated 43% year-on-year and 38% on a constant currency basis. More than one-third of that incremental revenue dropped straight to the bottom line for Financial Services, demonstrating the operating leverage we've been speaking about. The loan book growth is strong year-on-year, and importantly, the credit quality is improving alongside that. Loan disbursals grew 67% year-on-year to over $1 billion, but the growth was modest this quarter because of seasonal factors, and that's a normal factor for the first quarter. The expected credit loss (ECL) as a percentage of our gross loan portfolio has improved year-on-year, which shows the improving quality of our credit models. We've been proactive on risk management, and we've been tightening for some sectors. In other sectors where conventional lenders have stepped away, we've seen more opportunity. In Q1, we applied additional ECL overlays to account for macroeconomic uncertainty, with that selective tightening also part of our change in the risk appetite. Looking ahead, we do have experience of managing these kinds of macroeconomic shocks. Our underwriting models have already been through similar fuel price shocks seen at the start of the Ukraine conflict, not to mention COVID. In both instances, our credit quality remained within our risk appetite throughout. So we continue to monitor the portfolio performance very carefully. We aim to generate healthy risk-adjusted returns for our loan portfolio and we are reiterating our second-half 2026 breakeven target for Financial Services.
Regarding recent news in Indonesia: an Indonesia cap on rider commissions to 8% — can you clarify if that is applicable to 4-wheel drivers? What are the levers available to cushion the negative impact from lower rider commission? What's the likely impact on profitability due to the proposed change? And what's the impact in the delivery segment, if any, from the proposed change? Can you help to quantify it? (This is for Alex.)
Thank you. Let me see if I can cover section by section. It does appear that the immediate regulatory exposure is highly specific. The recent announcements are explicitly focused on O2O, or online-to-offline, drivers, who are our 2-wheel ride-hailing partners. The 4-wheel drivers earn well above the minimum wage, and so we believe they're less of a concern for the government and regulators in Indonesia. That said, we are engaging very proactively with the relevant ministries, and we are seeking absolute clarity on the technical aspects of how the decree will be implemented. It's essential, we believe, that together with regulators we shape a balanced implementation of this decree so that Indonesia's mobility marketplace remains healthy and driver partners' earnings remain well supported. It's worth noting that 2-wheel mobility — the O2O drivers that the decree referred to in Indonesia — is less than 6% of our total mobility GMV. So we are reiterating our expectations for Mobility margins to stabilize within the historical range and not to go outside of that range.
In relation to the 8% commission cap in Indonesia, is the likelihood of consolidation now looking higher in Indonesia as well? Does the shift in policy in Indonesia change your near- to medium-term investment or resource and capital allocation priorities? (This question is for Peter.)
Sure. I want to comment on specific M&A speculation, but I'll speak to how we view our position in this evolving landscape. Within M&A, we always take into account the regulatory environment; it's really critical. We want to work with the relevant agencies because there are always synergies and dissynergies that could accrue from any transaction. As I've said in many quarterly earnings, we always have a very high bar when it comes to any M&A transaction itself. Specifically for Indonesia and our M&A portfolio, we've always taken a diversified approach, which you see in the lines of our businesses and the geographic expansion. We're entering our ninth market, which shows our diversification. The lens we take is diversification and that's really important. Specifically for Indonesia, our strategy remains fundamentally unchanged despite the recent announcements. Our Indonesian Mobility business continues to grow double digits year-over-year and remains stable quarter-on-quarter despite seasonal headwinds. As I always reiterate, we're highly disciplined in our capital allocation. When we evaluate any strategic opportunity, it's strictly through the lens of long-term shareholder value and how we can diversify Grab's business.
Given the step-up in partner incentives to offset elevated fuel costs, how does this impact demand elasticity and translate into revisions to your near-term financial outlook for Mobility? Should we expect incentive levels to remain elevated? Or do you see offsetting levers such as EV adoption and cross-border rides that could bring incentives back down in the second half and support the sequential EBITDA ramp-up implied by your full-year $700 million to $720 million guidance? (This is for Alex.)
Thanks, Alicia, Wei. Great question. Yes, Q1 showed that driver incentives were elevated. Two specific drivers explain this. One is the confluence of Lunar New Year and Ramadan within the first quarter, both creating acute supply pressures during those festive periods. The second factor was the fuel crisis. Towards the end of the quarter in March, we made a deliberate decision to support our driver partners with targeted fuel rebates in some countries. As we move into the second quarter, the festive-driven incentive pressure normalizes, but fuel remains an important variable that we're watching closely. The targeted earnings support will continue into the second quarter, but without the seasonal impact. We expect Q1 to be a peak in driver incentives. We are reiterating the full-year guidance of $700 million to $720 million for adjusted EBITDA, assuming that peak and not that it's a run rate. We have multiple levers available, including more emphasis on advertising and Financial Services monetization to defend the overall margin trajectory if fuel pressures persist. In the medium term, if elevated fuel prices continue, we would have to pass some of the costs on to consumers, done judiciously to maintain demand. Finally, the impact of AI marketplace optimization this quarter was very powerful. We used it to manage incentive spend for consumers; consumer incentive spend became more efficient during this quarter. Going into the full year, we will have that capability to help manage some of the volatility in incentive spend.
On AI monetization, are you building toward a merchant and driver SaaS revenue stream that sits outside the current commission rate structure, or will it remain bundled into the existing take rate? What AI tools did you invest in primarily this quarter? (This is for Anthony.)
Thanks so much, Divya and Wei. Our approach to tools like merchant AI and the driver AI assistant coach has been to solve everyday problems that our drivers and merchant partners face. There's no reason why our partners should not have access to these tools that will enable them to grow their customers and earnings. If we get those tools and partnerships right, we build something competitors can't easily replicate and it creates high loyalty and engagement, which results in partners choosing us as their primary platform—not just because of the tech, but because of the trust and because they see growing earnings. This has translated into concrete results within our ecosystem. On a year-on-year basis, we see growth in the number of active merchant partners and their earnings also grew 12% during the quarter. For our Mobility business, total active driver partners increased 4% quarter-on-quarter and 16% year-on-year to reach another all-time high despite macroeconomic uncertainty. When we build these AI tools well and we genuinely partner to out-serve them, the economics tends to follow naturally.
Regional corporate costs increased year-on-year to $114 million for the first quarter. Can you help us understand how much of the step-up is AI infrastructure costs, whether it's tokenization or cloud versus general inflation as well as FX? How should we expect the AI spend to start translating into measurable cost savings elsewhere in the P&L that can offset this higher regional corporate cost run rate? (This is for Peter.)
Let me start by saying that the step-up in the first quarter regional corporate costs was a conscious decision. We decided as a management team to invest in the AI infrastructure we've been talking about for many quarters. Anthony answered the question regarding AI products we are deploying to partners and consumers. These investments underlie the Grab intelligence layer and the 13 new AI product experiences we announced at GrabX. Specifically, we invested in the tokenization stack and the cloud capacity needed to run it in Q1. The early returns on those investments are showing up in the numbers. Anthony shared some of those impacts: driver-side improvements and merchant AI assistant gains. For drivers, adoption of the driver system is now over 50%, and we generated over 1.25 million interactions in just two months since rollout. For merchants using the AI assistant, their GMV is up double digits year-on-year. These are the kinds of outcomes we want to see from the AI rollout. If you strip out the AI investments and account for some FX movement from a weaker U.S. dollar, our underlying cost base remains lean and disciplined. That's been a mandate in how we run Grab. I'm not expecting any further step-ups from regional corporate costs. We expect regional corporate costs to stabilize around the levels you saw in Q1 for the rest of 2026.
Grab announced an accelerated repurchase of $400 million of shares at the end of March. Nonetheless, the basic and diluted shares have increased quarter-on-quarter. What is the impact of dilution from stock-based compensation? And with regard to the share repurchase program, would you consider upsizing this given the current stock price?
If you step back, when we announced a $500 million buyback program earlier this year, I also announced a $250 million accelerated share repurchase and an additional $150 million in contingent forward purchase on March 24th. So a total of $400 million was accelerated and executed in the market over a short period in Q1. Both programs are expected to be executed over the next four months, and I'll share more in the next quarterly earnings when we report Q2 results. In terms of share count, the buybacks would amount to roughly around 2% of our total share count, which will more than offset the dilution from stock-based compensation. As a reminder, there's still another $100 million left in the buyback program, and we'll continue discussions around capital allocation with our Board.
Regarding grocery contribution: you've mentioned that GrabMart is only 10% of deliveries GMV but is growing 1.7x faster than food. When you look at the grocery TAM in Southeast Asia and the economics of the GrabMart model itself, where does GrabMart need to be to meaningfully contribute to deliveries GMV by 2028 to underpin the $1.5 billion EBITDA target? At what point does grocery become margin-accretive to the segment rather than a drag on blended deliveries economics? (This is for Alex.)
GrabMart is an exciting segment. The TAM is very large, arguably larger than food delivery altogether. We are accelerating product innovation, particularly the front end and the AI-powered shopping agent, which we think will transform the ease with which consumers can create a weekly shopping basket and improve targeting for cross-sell. GrabMore grew more than double-digits quarter-on-quarter, which is a very positive sign. MTUs going into grocery grew at 2.6x the rate of food MTU growth year-on-year, showing it is expanding the top of funnel — important in the age of AI for generating data and deepening long-term customer value. Order frequency for grocery users was 1.8x higher than food-only users, illustrating long-term value enhancement. Over the long term, our North Star is clear: global peers have achieved 20% to 40% mart penetration as a percentage of their deliveries business overall, so it's a model we're pursuing. For the three-year guidance, we expect GrabMart to maintain its current growth momentum and to outpace deliveries growth, with higher basket sizes, stronger engagement and improved lifetime value. That reinforces our conviction that GrabMart can achieve sustainable economics as part of a comprehensive super app LTV relationship with customers powered by AI, rather than as a stand-alone vertical.
Two-part question on Financial Services. First, deposits have remained flat quarter-on-quarter. What are the challenges Grab is facing in growing its deposit base? Second, on the loan book and securitization: would Grab consider securitizing its loan book to free capital to grow the business? (First part for Alex on deposits and second part for Peter on securitization.)
We actually don't have any issue in raising deposits. We've been gratified by the trust consumers have in the Grab brand and our capabilities to protect their money. If you look at our deposit pricing, we are not the most aggressive in the market; we're able to gather sufficient deposits to create the right shape of balance sheet. There's no point having excess deposits, particularly in this yield curve environment, so we carefully manage the level of deposits to optimize for P&L purposes. If we needed to raise more deposits, we're confident we can do that.
On securitization, it's a potential tool for us to recapitalize and recycle capital as the loan book grows. We have two parts of our lending book: the bank piece backed by customer deposits and our nonbank Grab Financial Services book, which is on balance sheet. Our current priority is scaling lending through our digital banks; we have deposits of roughly $1.6 billion and there is still headroom in the loan-to-deposit ratio to deploy towards loans. We're on target to get to a $2 billion loan book by year-end. So our priority now is to ensure the digital banks' capital structure is efficient, with deposits an important component. Long term, there could be options to recycle via securitization, but it's not an immediate priority.
Regarding Foodpanda Taiwan recently announced acquisition, can you share the progress and what are the key milestones to watch and likely timings of those milestones?
Thanks, Piyush. We're in the middle of the approval process with regulators. No material updates today, but we'll provide updates as soon as we receive further feedback.
Okay. Thanks, everyone, for the questions. That concludes today's earnings call. Let me hand over the time to Peter to deliver the closing remarks.
Thanks, everybody. There is a lot going on in Southeast Asia and at Grab. I hope you got a flavor for how our performance is tracking. Q1 is off to a fantastic start for us across the financial fundamentals of our business. There were many questions around fuel prices, which I hope we've addressed. We are leaning in to make sure our driver community benefits and to help them through this period, and we will continue to accelerate EV adoption in Southeast Asia — it's a great catalyst for us to lean in on. There were also many questions around Indonesia and the proposed 8% commission. Just to reiterate, our 2-wheel business in Indonesia is less than 6% of our GMV. We continue to reiterate our full-year guidance for 2026. What makes us confident is the traction we are seeing across our portfolio of businesses. Thank you to all the Grabbers, our driver partners and merchants for everything you do to serve our communities and thrive on our platform. Thank you as well to our shareholders for your support. As usual, the IR team — Ken, Doug and I — will be on the road over the next few weeks in the U.S. and across Asia including Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. Please reach out if you want to meet or have a chat. We're happy to do so. See you next quarter.