Q3 2025 Grab Holdings Ltd Earnings Call
Speaker #1: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. My name is Tyler. I will be your conference operator for this session. Welcome to Grab's third quarter 2025 earnings results call.
Speaker #1: After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. If you have dialed into today's call, please press *9 to raise your hand and *6 to unmute.
Speaker #1: Please limit it to two questions per person. I will now turn it over to Douglas Eu to start the call.
Speaker #2: Good day, everyone, and welcome to Grab's third quarter 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 Oui, Chief Financial Officer.
Speaker #2: During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements about future events, including our future business and financial performance. These statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations.
Speaker #2: 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.
Speaker #2: 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 materials for the reconciliation of non-IFRS to IFRS financial measures.
Speaker #2: For more information, please refer to our earnings press release, remarks, and supplemental presentation available on our website. And with that, I will turn the call over to Anthony to deliver his opening remarks before we open it up for questions.
Speaker #3: Thank you so much, Doug. I really appreciate everyone being here with us. This quarter marks another vital step forward in our journey, not just in our financial performance but in how we are building a more resilient, tech-driven platform.
Speaker #3: Maintain cost discipline and leverage our ecosystem scale to drive profitable growth. Group-adjusted EBITDA rose 51% year on year to a new record of $136 million, marking our 15th consecutive quarter of sequential profitability improvement.
Speaker #3: Our adjusted free cash flow also improved by $185 million year-on-year to $283 million on a trailing twelve-month basis. Now, these achievements are the direct result of our consistent focus on improving accessibility, affordability, and reliability.
Speaker #3: This has enabled us to continue growing earnings for our driver and merchant partners while expanding our marketplace, bringing new users onto our platform, and deepening engagement and loyalty among our user base.
Speaker #3: As we head into the final stretch of 2025, we expect to exit the year on a high note. We remain on track for our financial services loan portfolio to exceed $1 billion and for full-year on-demand GMV growth to accelerate from 2024 levels.
Speaker #3: As a result, both our mobility and delivery segments are well on track to exit the year at record GMV levels. With our team's execution focused and AI unlocking new growth and efficiency frontiers at unprecedented speed, we are confident in our ability to drive sustainable, long-term value for our users, partners, and shareholders.
Speaker #3: With that, I now open the call for questions. Operator.
Speaker #1: Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Please raise your hand to ask a question, and you will be called on. If you have dialed into today's call, please press *9 to raise your hand and *6 to unmute.
Speaker #1: Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. And your first question comes from the line of Hang Vitt with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Speaker #4: Hi, good morning, management, and thank you very much for the opportunity. Two questions for me. Number one, on the competitive landscape, can you help us discuss some of the latest that you've seen on the competitive landscape, especially in Indonesia?
Speaker #4: You deliver a strong 24% year-on-year growth in your on-demand service overall. I'm wondering whether there's any color you can share regarding the growth you have achieved in Indonesia, and what has led to your strong outperformance versus peers?
Speaker #4: That's question number one. Question number two: can you discuss further on your latest update in guidance? What has led you to increase the guidance, and can you help us break down the estimate by segment?
Speaker #1: Hi, Pang. Alex here. Let me take your first question, and Peter will take the second question. On Indonesia, it's a key market for us.
Speaker #1: Our business continues to perform strongly there. It remains a very competitive market. But what we're seeing is that the product-led growth strategy that we've been talking about for the last few quarters is driving an increase in MTUs for both deliveries and mobility.
Speaker #1: Particularly, the affordability strategy is bringing in a lot of Grab Bike and Grab Car Saver users at the lower end of the pricing ladder.
Speaker #1: And at the top end, Indonesia still has a lot of wealthy customers, and we've launched Grab Executive there for mobility. There's a lot of domestic tourism and business travel, which is helping drive our high-value rise and our priority food delivery services.
Speaker #1: We're also growing GrabMart, which is helping to drive those elevated levels of delivery GMV growth that we're seeing. So overall, it's a reflection, a microcosm of what we're doing across the group.
Speaker #1: I would say you can't see these in the numbers, but I can tell you that there's strong growth in Indonesia, and there's strong sequential margin improvement as well.
Speaker #1: So we're very comfortable with what we're doing in terms of the market position and our penetration of the overall opportunity in Indonesia, which remains huge and something we continue to be excited about as we invest in that country.
Speaker #1: Hi, Pang. On your guidance question, look, you've seen our numbers from Q1 to Q3, how we've been performing. We're continuing to have that consecutive quarter-on-quarter growth in our EBITDA guidance.
Speaker #1: As we, and part of that is the top-line growth that you're seeing in the business that Alex just talked about. You've got that nice momentum in our deliveries business, growing at a 26% clip.
Speaker #1: You've got our mobility business also growing at 20%. And let's not forget our financial services, which are growing at 40% revenue, and our loan book continues to hit all-time highs.
Speaker #1: So, you've got a nice momentum just overall from the top-line side. But at the same time, we continue to be very disciplined on our cost structure.
Speaker #1: You see our regional corporate costs increasing only 8% on a year-over-year basis. But what's more important is that we're seeing about a 150 basis points improvement in operating leverage as a percentage of revenue of our regional corporate costs.
Speaker #1: And that's critical as we continue to make sure that we're spending in the right areas. So, we expect this strong top-line growth to continue into the quarter.
Speaker #1: We're in the fourth quarter, which is usually our strongest quarter, and we're on track to ensure that we deliver all the things that Alex mentioned about affordability, reliability, accessibility, and so forth. With that, we are more confident in raising our EBITDA guidance to between $490 million and $500 million for the full year 2025.
Speaker #1: I do want to caveat as we enter into Q1, which is around the corner for us. It's one of our softer seasons, which is very traditional for us.
Speaker #1: But we do expect to maintain that profitable growth going into 2026.
Speaker #4: Thank you.
Speaker #1: Thanks, Pang.
Speaker #3: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Alicia Yap with Citigroup. Your line is now open.
Speaker #4: Hello. Good morning. Management, thanks for taking my questions, and congratulations on the solid set of results. Two questions. First, could you elaborate a little bit on your MTU growth?
Speaker #4: Have you seen any major differentiations in terms of the user profile you added this quarter? Compared to the last few quarters, for example, is that more female this quarter? Any more of the younger generations, or any of the second or lower-tier cities that contributed to the bigger additions of the new users this quarter?
Speaker #4: So, any metrics that you could share would be helpful. And then, second question, is given the successful conversions of the product-led innovations to drive the order growth and also the higher frequency per user, as well as your explorations into GrabMart and also the grocery business.
Speaker #4: So, following a few quarters of accelerated GMV growth for your delivery business, how should we be thinking about the growth rate for the fourth quarter this year and also into 2026?
Speaker #4: Should the growth rate be normalizing around maybe mid to high teens, or would it be possible to stay above 20% growth for 2026?
Speaker #4: And then, if you are able to grow faster than the high teens or even 20% more, would that mean your margin expansion will be more gradual, or even potentially see margins flattish or declining for next year?
Speaker #4: Thank you.
Speaker #1: Thanks, Alicia, for those questions. Let me take those two. So, MTU growth, as you saw, on-demand MTUs grew 14% year-on-year. In fact, DTUs grew even faster.
Speaker #1: So our daily transactions are growing faster than our monthly transactions. So we are succeeding in our goal of being part of the daily lives of Southeast Asians.
Speaker #1: On-demand transactions grew 27%. So, you can clearly see the increase in frequency effect as well. This is very much part of our strategy for driving the flywheel of increased demand, increased supply, improved quality of services, and driving further demand after that.
Speaker #1: In terms of the demographics, Save a Delivery has obviously been instrumental in acquiring new users, growing frequency as well over the past few quarters.
Speaker #1: So almost a third of our deliveries MTUs, the joining the platform, the new MTUs are coming through Save a Delivery. So that's an important driver of the flywheel.
Speaker #1: Again, this quarter, it's similar for transport, where we see GrabBike Saver and GrabCar Saver also bringing in a lot of MTUs. At the same time, as I mentioned earlier when I was answering Pang's question, the high-value services are also growing fast.
Speaker #1: So high-value rides grew 66% year-on-year. And then priority deliveries are also growing fast. So we're seeing growth at both ends of the pricing ladder, which is healthy.
Speaker #1: But the critical thing is that we're also being successful in cross-selling and retaining these new users to build long-term customer value. So, what you can see overall, if you look at the GMV per MTU, is that despite the strong growth in MTUs, the GMV spend per MTU grew 7% year on year.
Speaker #1: So, I think that shows that your affordability strategy is both bringing in new customers, but also, with our cross-sell, is allowing us to deepen the value for each of those customers.
Speaker #1: So, this growth effect is distributed both across big and small cities. You asked about that. But I would say that it skews to younger customers for the saver products.
Speaker #1: But it does show that our product-led flywheel for deliveries and mobility is spinning faster and faster. And then your next question about growth rates going forward.
Speaker #1: We still feel that our MTU penetration of Southeast Asia is low when you consider the size of the population and the growing spending power.
Speaker #1: So when you look at what's driving these elevated growth levels in the last three quarters, where we've managed to accelerate quarter after quarter, you can see that there are three elements which I feel are all sustainable going forward.
Speaker #1: One is the product-led viral growth. Without increasing consumer incentives, we're able—with group orders and family accounts—to bring in new users so that the ecosystem is self-generating and bringing in new users on its own.
Speaker #1: We've also got this very strong GU base, Grab Unlimited. It's the biggest paid subscription program in Southeast Asia. The users grew again 14% year-on-year.
Speaker #1: To another all-time high. So they now represent over 20% of our delivery MTU base. This is also a sustainable driver of future growth. And then we have this adjacent GrabMart opportunity, where now we have this functionality called GrabMore, where a food user can just add on a grocery order to the food delivery that they're about to receive.
Speaker #1: Proving to be very popular, and that will allow us to penetrate more and more of our large food base so that we can keep Grab Mart growing.
Speaker #1: It's already growing at one and a half times the size of food, but we think there's potential to increase that penetration in terms of the margin impact.
Speaker #1: We will be disciplined in driving sustainable growth, but also focusing on absolute EBITDA growth. If you look at the margins this quarter, in fact, they've improved both for Mobilities and for Deliveries.
Speaker #1: As we've said in prior quarters, sometimes we'll launch new products and promote those new products, which will mean margins dip down. However, overall, you can see that the margins this quarter have recovered to the average levels for the year.
Speaker #1: So there's no change in our margin outlook that we've stated for the longer term. We still expect to get deliveries to 4% plus and mobility to 9% plus.
Speaker #1: So, we believe we can do this while not sacrificing growth. As you heard earlier, we expect fourth quarter on-demand GMV to grow sequentially from the third quarter.
Speaker #1: So we will exit 2025 at record GMV levels and make a healthy entry into 2026. We do expect margins for deliveries to continue to grow from these levels into next year, even while we invest in new product initiatives and the grocery growth, where we're seeing stronger and stronger traction.
Speaker #1: Thanks, Alicia.
Speaker #2: Thanks. Very helpful.
Speaker #1: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Navin Killa with UBS. Your line is now open.
Speaker #3: Hi. Good morning, and thank you for giving me the opportunity. I had a couple of questions. One is with regards to your balance sheet.
Speaker #3: Obviously, we have a strong cash balance; we raised the convertible bonds earlier this year. The business continues to be free cash flow positive. So, how should we think about the use of this cash going into the next 12 to 18 months?
Speaker #3: And then secondly, in the context of some of the growth conversations that we have had, I just wanted to understand how you are seeing the macro environment.
Speaker #3: And I mean, if you were to split this growth for this year between, let's say, macro market share gains and the impact of some of these initiatives that you have launched around new products, how would you qualitatively think of these three factors driving the growth?
Speaker #4: And I mean, that's Peter here. Let me kick it off with your first question around capital allocation, and I'll ask Anthony to chime in around the macro. Your question around macro.
Speaker #4: On the capital allocation framework, there is no change in terms of how we're thinking about it. Our focus has always been on three pillars.
Speaker #4: The first one is around investing for organic growth, and you're seeing that in the business—the profitability of our business and the growth that you're seeing. Some of that came from also some product adjacencies and tokens that we've done as part of that profitable growth that you're seeing.
Speaker #4: But the organic growth has been really critical. One way that we've been deploying the balance sheet is on our loan book. If you look at the loan disbursal for Q3, for an example, we hit roughly a three and a half billion dollars on an annualized basis.
Speaker #4: On that disbursal, Q3 alone was up roughly 56% year-over-year. And that's a majority that is on our balance sheet itself.
Speaker #4: So it's a great use of capital for us. It yields a higher rate of return. Actually, it returns above our average cost of capital for us.
Speaker #4: And we'll continue to use that balance sheet as we recycle those loans. That's just one example in terms of organic growth. We're also, obviously, deploying some of that capital in terms of investing in new products that we're earmarking for 2026.
Speaker #4: On the second pillar, we focus on what we call very highly selective M&A, which is more opportunistic. These are often more speculative as well.
Speaker #4: But those have a very high bar, as you know, and we've always talked about this. But where we have been investing is in some of the longer-term bets that we're looking at for things such as autonomous vehicles.
Speaker #4: And we've deployed some of those capital in making those critical investments that we're leaning into. You've seen the announcement that we made with WeRide, for example, May Mobility, as part of our strategic pillar in terms of making sure that we are the pioneer and that we're leaning in on autonomous vehicle deployment here in Southeast Asia.
Speaker #4: But overall, as a framework that M&A is a very high bar for us. And we want to make sure that the synergies that we can extract is as of a greater value.
Speaker #4: And then third, where there's excess capital, Navin will obviously look at returning it to our shareholders. So those remain critical—those three things that we believe in the recent capital raise will give us strategic flexibility in the interest of our investors.
Speaker #4: We'll continue to look at and explore those longer-term growth opportunities that Alex mentioned, and how we can create the best value for our shareholders. But we are always, always prudent in terms of how we are managing our capital and our balance sheet.
Speaker #4: So, hopefully that answers the question. Anthony, on the macro?
Speaker #5: Yeah, thanks, Peter. And thanks, Navin, for a really good question, especially on the macro environment. So, look, in Southeast Asia, there's been a lot of positive focus recently.
Speaker #5: As many of you are aware, Malaysia hosted the ASEAN Summit earlier this week, and President Trump visited the region to finalize trade negotiations with several Southeast Asian countries.
Speaker #5: One to call out was the peace agreement between Thailand and Cambodia. These have been two very significant and positive events for the region, and we are seeing signs of tourism recovery in Thailand.
Speaker #5: As the country heads into its seasonally strongest quarter of the year, now to Navin, your second part of your question: Are we seeing weakness in consumption?
Speaker #5: The short answer is no. Our platform is proving to be highly resilient. We're not seeing a broad-based slowdown. In fact, our model is built for this exact environment.
Speaker #5: And our point to two key reasons. One, our strategy is countercyclical. The uncertainty, in many ways, actually accelerates our flywheel. We are seeing a healthy increase in partners coming into our gig platform to find income.
Speaker #5: And that, of course, improves supply. This also enables us to reduce wait times and enhance reliability. And, most importantly, it lowers prices for our users, which our users really appreciate.
Speaker #5: This increases our affordability and grows the overall user base. As you saw in our numbers, which is our key strength, our focus on affordability is paying off.
Speaker #5: So this isn't new. Our focus on affordability, which we began in 2023 with products like Saver Delivery and Saver Transport, was explicitly designed for this purpose.
Speaker #5: These services are now essential for our users, enabling them to manage their wallets effectively. This makes us a must-have service, not a nice-to-have, which protects us from a pullback in discretionary spending.
Speaker #5: Look, the reality is we may not be immune to macro trends, but our strategy is designed to be resilient and even opportunistic in this landscape.
Speaker #5: So we continue to reinforce this by partnering with governments as well. For instance, in Indonesia, we've been running what we call the Kota Masa Depan, which is the Future Cities program in partnership with the Ministry of Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises, where we have worked to support small businesses in digital upskilling across nearly 20 cities.
Speaker #5: And in Vietnam, our EV launch is really designed to drive better NPS and also lower partners' costs. These aren't side projects. They strengthen our ecosystem and create a more sustainable, profitable business for the long term.
Speaker #5: So we are confident in our strategy and our outlook.
Speaker #1: Thank you.
Speaker #6: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Vanya Gopal, Goray with Bernstein. Your line is now open.
Speaker #7: Hi. Good morning and thanks for the opportunity. I have two questions. The first question is more about what you discussed earlier in the call regarding the Grab Mart business and the grocery business, which is outpacing the growth of food delivery.
Speaker #7: I wanted to really understand, in terms of regions that are driving that growth for you, especially geographic regions. More importantly, I want to understand what those big initiatives are that you would need to incrementally take to make this a much, much larger segment.
Speaker #7: The reason I'm asking this is because grocery, on an absolute basis, is perhaps still relatively smaller in terms of penetration compared to the overall TAM that is there in the region.
Speaker #7: So newer models like quick commerce or any thoughts around any change in the landscape around the models that you might use to really scale up this business?
Speaker #7: That's the first question. The second one is more of a follow-up on the investment side of the question that was discussed. I wanted to understand the investments that you have made in the autonomous tech company.
Speaker #7: This is largely to secure tech, or is it more in the nature of financial investment? And more importantly, could you also outline the current progress with respect to the rollout of autonomous?
Speaker #7: Thanks.
Speaker #1: Thanks, Anu. This is Alex. Let me take the first question. I think Anthony will take the question about AVs. So you're right, our deliveries—our groceries business, GrabMart—is relatively small compared to the rest of deliveries.
Speaker #1: It's only about 10% of deliveries GMV today, so it's very small compared to the TAM that you have correctly identified is out there. We are seeing GrabMart grow across all markets.
Speaker #1: And one of the drivers for that is the rollout of Grab More, this capability that allows customers to add groceries to their food orders for the same delivery cost, proving to be very, very powerful for cross-selling into groceries.
Speaker #1: So Grab Mart continues to outperform, growing one and a half times faster than the food delivery segment. We've also seen that the users of both food and Mart demonstrate order frequencies that are 1.8 times higher than food-only users.
Speaker #1: So we know that it's a great driver of stickiness, loyalty, and long-term value. In terms of the various business models, we are experimenting with some of the newer business models that would open up more TAM for us.
Speaker #1: So in Malaysia, where we have Jaya, we are experimenting with quick commerce around certain Jaya stores where we can really sweat the inventory and store assets.
Speaker #1: So, without increasing our fixed costs, we're able to drive up the volume of orders quite significantly. Even though the experiments there are primarily grocery-focused, we have seen a nice step up in demand when quick delivery is an option for customers.
Speaker #1: So I think there's something to build on there. And we've started to experiment in one or two other countries as well, like Indonesia, where we work very closely with certain partners.
Speaker #1: So yeah, I think watch this space. Very early days for us. Grocery-focused, but we are definitely exploring new models which can help us unlock future large TAM.
Speaker #1: Now, Anthony, on AVs.
Speaker #2: Yeah, thank you, Vanya Gopal. Let me talk about the plans and our strategy with regards to AVs. Now, our recent AV investments are all very deliberate.
Speaker #2: It's part of our long-term strategy to lead the adoption of AV and remote driving across Southeast Asia and to secure the technology supply chain through strategic partnerships.
Speaker #2: While AVs are already a reality in parts of the world, we expect a longer ramp-up to mainstream adoption in Southeast Asia for a few reasons.
Speaker #2: One, Southeast Asia is still behind in the cost curve. Labor costs in Southeast Asia are significantly lower compared to the U.S., with Singapore being an exception.
Speaker #2: Now, we believe, therefore, it will require considerable time for the unit economics to reach parity with human drivers. Second, the crossover point will occur when AVs become safer and even cheaper than alternative options before we see a huge transformation in the way current transportation is served.
Speaker #2: Now, as the largest mobility platform in Southeast Asia, AVs and remote driving are something we must lean into. We'll continuously learn about the technical optimization of AV performance on our platform.
Speaker #2: We'll also maintain a hybrid fleet approach for the foreseeable future and intend to collaborate very closely with regulators across Southeast Asia. Now, one of our top priorities as part of this, or I would say essential part of this strategy, is to work alongside regulators to upskill our driver partners as part of this shift.
Speaker #2: Our focus is to find the new jobs that will be required as we shift towards a hybrid transport world. We see new kinds of jobs emerging.
Speaker #2: For example, drivers could be remote safety drivers, data labelers; they could change LIDARs, cameras, and so forth. So, as we lean into AVs and remote driving— with several partnerships already under our belt and more on the way— we remain very excited about the longer-term opportunity to build capabilities to operate a world-class hybrid human and autonomous fleet to deliver the best experiences for our customers.
Speaker #3: Thank you.
Speaker #4: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Wei Fang with Missuno Securities. Your line is now open.
Speaker #5: Hello. Can you hear me OK?
Speaker #1: Yes, we can. Go ahead, Wei.
Speaker #5: Great. Thank you. I have one quick question on the financial services segment. We see very strong growth there, right? But with sizable bad loan provisions, of course.
Speaker #5: I was just wondering if management can talk about what you have learned about the newly acquired customers in recent quarters and how you are fine-tuning your risk provisions going forward.
Speaker #5: That's it. Thank you.
Speaker #1: Thanks, Wei. Let me take that one. You're right; we are accelerating our financial services growth, and we are reaffirming our goal to exceed a $1 billion loan book.
Speaker #1: After excluding credit loss provisions by the end of 2025, you can see in this quarter there's been an acceleration of loan disbursements. So we're now at a $3.5 billion run rate on an annualized basis.
Speaker #1: Growing 56% year-on-year, so there is very strong underlying growth. We do see, as you mentioned in your question, an increase in the expected credit losses coming out of the models that we run to ensure that we're providing well for future growth.
Speaker #1: It's a natural consequence of that growth. It's an upfront provisioning that occurs in the lending accounting of lending, and it's obviously offset against the revenue generation from those loans over their lifetime.
Speaker #1: So you should expect that with this kind of accelerated growth, the ECLs will run through the P&L and sit on the balance sheet, as you're seeing in the current quarter.
Speaker #1: What I would say, though, is if you look at the underlying performance of the financial services business, without taking those provisions into account, then our financial services segment adjusted EBITDA improved actually quarter on quarter and year on year, by about $4 million quarter on quarter and $17 million year on year.
Speaker #1: That's an important measure for you all to see, because it underlies that if we don't need to pull down all of those provisions, it underlines how we're getting operating leverage out of the growth of the business.
Speaker #1: You asked what we were learning from the customers. We are, in many ways, a data science company. So, we are learning every single second of every single day from how our models ingest all of the different data points that we can generate throughout our ecosystem.
Speaker #1: Unlike banks, we can access a lot of unconventional markers of likelihood to repay. That allows us to underwrite segments of the population in Southeast Asia that currently cannot access credit.
Speaker #1: These are often known as underbanked or unbanked. A lot of what we do is about financial inclusion, bringing people into the market and allowing them to actually establish a credit record.
Speaker #1: About one third of our customers could not access data because they weren't on a credit bureau. They could not access credit because they weren't on a credit bureau prior to borrowing from Grab and our financial subsidiaries.
Speaker #1: This is very important to us and very much aligned with our mission. The repayment record from those customers is very pleasing. They know that when they repay us, they start to establish a credit record.
Speaker #1: And they start to therefore become included in the financial and economic prosperity of Southeast Asia. So we're very pleased to learn more about those customers and to bring them into the financial services domain for the first time.
Speaker #1: So, the credit models, every time we launch a new product, obviously take time to be established. But what you're seeing this quarter is that across the banks and GFIN, we're starting to see that we've got credit models maturing.
Speaker #1: We've got new models being launched all the time. We're increasing the cycle speed with which our data science improves these models. So, that's why going into this fourth quarter, if you run the numbers, we're predicting an acceleration of the loan book size.
Speaker #1: And we also are indicating that that acceleration will continue into 2026. Thanks, Wei.
Speaker #5: Thank you very much.
Speaker #4: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney with Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.
Speaker #6: OK, thank you. Two questions, please. One on the consumer incentives. Just talk about how we should think about where those will hold going forward.
Speaker #6: There's been a little bit of volatility. Some leverage one quarter, de-leverage another quarter. Are you running them at a level that you think is sustainable going forward?
Speaker #6: Or do you think we should expect to see leverage against those in the future? And then second, just talk about advertising intensity. What I mean by that is advertising revenue, the ramp that you're seeing—still a little more color on.
Speaker #6: Where that is now, how much any new pockets of strength in there, and how to think about growth for that particular segment over the next year or two.
Speaker #6: Thank you very much.
Speaker #1: Hey, Mark. Alex here. Let me take that. On consumer incentives, you can see it's come down a little bit this quarter. We think that we can keep it at around this level going forward.
Speaker #1: Because we're getting a lot of boost from the viral product rollouts that we've been doing, we find that the incentive level doesn't have to be as high, despite the fact that we're accelerating growth in both deliveries and mobility, which is also staying relatively high.
Speaker #1: And transaction volumes in mobility have gone up to 30%. That's all been achieved with a reduction in incentives quarter on quarter. But I would say, in terms of modeling, if you can assume that the incentives stay at around this level on the consumer side.
Speaker #1: In fact, this quarter, we've had to actually boost the driver incentives slightly. Because the growth in demand was so high, we needed to make sure that we could maintain the fulfillment quality and reliability of our services.
Speaker #1: So, you can see that, in contrast, there's a slight increase in driver incentives. So, going to the core question, these incentives can go up and down a little bit quarter to quarter.
Speaker #1: But in terms of modeling, steady state, I'd say we're about the right levels where we are today. The ads piece, the bigger we get, the more interesting we get for advertisers.
Speaker #1: Whether those be the merchants on the platform or FMCG customers who want to advertise across the platform as well. I think for the food side, we see continued penetration of advertising.
Speaker #1: So we expect that to continue to move up gradually into next year. We've got total the total number of quarterly active advertisers joining our self-serve platform actually increased 15% year on year.
Speaker #1: So, we're continuing to see new advertisers coming onto the platform, which is great. Many of them are coming in through our self-serve capabilities. Then, the average spend of the active advertisers on that self-serve platform grew 41%.
Speaker #1: So once people try the platform, they see it. It works very well for them in terms of ROAS. And they start to increase their spend.
Speaker #1: So, these are both lead indicators of what we expect, which is a continued increase in the penetration of our delivery GMV with ads. As we grow the Grab Mart business, which we've talked about a lot on this call, we expect to be able to attract more and more FMCG advertisers.
Speaker #1: And there, if you look at some of the models in other parts of the world, you can see the penetration of advertising for online grocery businesses is actually even higher than online food businesses.
Speaker #1: So that's something that, as the scale increases, we should be able to improve as well. We're very bullish about the advertising part of our business.
Speaker #1: In fact, I would say it's a key driver of margin growth in the longer run.
Speaker #6: Thank you very much, Alex.
Speaker #1: Thanks, Mark.
Speaker #4: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Divya Gangar with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Speaker #7: Hi, good morning. I had two questions. One is actually a continuation of what you just said, Alex, on the advertising being a driver for deliveries.
Speaker #7: So my question is on deliveries margins path to 4%. Could you talk about how different are the margins across countries just qualitatively? And the role of some of these countries lifting up the overall portfolio margins?
Speaker #7: In the past, we've thought that Indonesia has been a drag. But looking at the competitive dynamics there, the margins for deliveries seem to be relatively healthy in Indonesia, at least for our competitor.
Speaker #7: So, trying to understand how we look at that path to 4% from an advertising country-wise perspective, as well as Grab Mart, and how dilutive that is to margins.
Speaker #7: So that’s my first question. And my second question is on financial services. Now that we’re closer to the break-even year for fintech, could you maybe just share the framework and the milestones we need to hit over the next six months to be able to meet the target?
Speaker #7: And what do you see as the key risks? Also, if you can talk about some typical use cases that you're seeing for this loan book expansion, especially on the digital bank side, that would be helpful.
Speaker #7: Thanks.
Speaker #1: Thanks, Divya. Yes, in general, the Mart business has a lower margin than the food deliveries at this point. But of course, that's a lot because of the speed of growth.
Speaker #1: And also because the dynamic with the FMCG advertisers is such that we get more valuable to them the larger we are. So, although we have a lot of interest from FMCG advertisers, I think we're relatively small compared to some other venues still in terms of commerce in general.
Speaker #1: And therefore, it's important that we continue this growth. I think that's where you start to see improved margins on the GrabMart side.
Speaker #1: In terms of Indonesia, I can confirm Indonesia continues to grow strongly again for us. Our deliveries business in Indonesia grew in the high teens year-on-year for this past quarter.
Speaker #1: So, although the margin is stable, we're actually able to generate a lot of growth from that situation. And, like I was just saying, we feel that it's important to get larger in order to really realize the full opportunity from the Mart business.
Speaker #1: In other markets, for example, Malaysia, we've already reached our steady state margin target of around 4%. That's where we're starting to experiment with some of these other models around instant commerce.
Speaker #1: As I mentioned earlier, because there we can generate a lot more growth from entering into these adjacent markets based on the asset configuration that we have with Jaya Grocer doing very, very well in Malaysia, for example.
Speaker #1: So, there are some differences across markets. You're absolutely right. But we're adopting a portfolio approach, making sure we achieve our margin targets not just across different countries, but also across the verticals.
Speaker #1: So we can produce this kind of high growth, but also maintain our margin progression towards those long-term targets that we've shared with you over the past quarters and years.
Speaker #1: Moving to financial services, yes, we're coming now towards our break-even year. I can confirm that we are reiterating that we will break even overall as a segment in the second half.
Speaker #1: So, it's a combination of banks and GFIN, and the banks will break even in the fourth quarter. The milestones really relate to loan disbursal growth, which, as you can see, is accelerating now through this annualized run rate of $3.5 billion in this current quarter.
Speaker #1: We are starting to see that the credit models are maturing nicely. We now have flexi loan products available for consumers in all three of the bank markets.
Speaker #1: We've just launched a flexi loan product through our non-bank financial company in the Philippines just in this last quarter. So we are also able to serve personal loan needs in other parts of the region beyond where we have those three banks using GFIN as the vehicle.
Speaker #1: We can share expertise about credit modeling across those countries, which is proving to be very, very successful. As I said, we're really a data science company.
Speaker #1: So, the way in which those models advance is super important to us. You can see that EBITDA can fluctuate as the ECLs flow through the P&L and into the balance sheet.
Speaker #1: So, I think the key thing to watch there is that the segment-adjusted EBITDA, excluding the credit loss provisions, is continuing to improve. So, that gives us line of sight and confidence that we're going to hit those break-even targets.
Speaker #1: So the key thing for you to watch is the loan disbursal growth. We are seeing operating leverage on the cost base too, so we're confident that we can continue to manage the costs very tightly going into 2026.
Speaker #1: In terms of the U.S., I think the last part of your question was asking about the different use cases. We are serving on the SME side.
Speaker #1: We're serving merchants that are on the Grab ecosystem, so we have tremendous line of sight of their cash flows. Therefore, the credit models have a unique advantage relative to a conventional bank that wouldn't have line of sight of those cash flows.
Speaker #1: So small businesses will be a big focus for us. The unbanked and underbanked, as I mentioned, particularly gig workers, we're able to finance them very, very accurately.
Speaker #1: And you can see that while I think we've said that the risk-adjusted returns from our lending activities are actually comfortably above our cost of capital.
Speaker #1: And they remain above that. Even as we grow at these rates, in fact, the returns improved slightly quarter on quarter. So, we are continuing to grow very rapidly.
Speaker #1: But at the same time, within the risk appetite that we've set for ourselves, because of the performance of these credit models, I hope that helps in terms of some scenarios where we can provide unique capabilities to help the progress of Southeast Asia by bringing more and more people into the financial inclusion sphere.
Speaker #2: Yeah. Thank you very much.
Speaker #1: Thanks, Divya.
Speaker #3: Thank you. And your final question comes from the line of Jiang Xiao with Barclays. Your line is now open.
Speaker #4: Good morning. Can you hear me OK? Good morning. Can you hear me OK? OK, perfect.
Speaker #1: Yes, we can. Yes, we can hear you, John.
Speaker #4: Great. Thank you for taking my questions, and congratulations on a very strong set of results. So, the first question is really a follow-up on the previous one regarding the food margins.
Speaker #4: I think the last quarter you talked about Q4 delivery margins should be up sequentially from Q3. I want to confirm that's still the case.
Speaker #4: But more importantly, looking into '26, I just want to get a better understanding of the pace of the margin expansion for the food business.
Speaker #4: And what are some of the factors that may make it faster or slower in terms of expanding the margins for the delivery business for '26?
Speaker #4: And my second question is around another way to monetize the delivery business. I think a couple of quarters ago, you may have talked about some of your thoughts around in-store kind of newer monetization. I recall.
Speaker #4: You might have mentioned something to start, at least trials in '26. I was just wondering if there's any update around that. What may be the sort of modality around that type of in-store ore monetization?
Speaker #4: Thank you so much.
Speaker #1: Hey, John. Let me take the food margin question that you asked about. The way we approached deliveries is a portfolio play, and Alex kind of alluded to that earlier when he answered the question to Divya.
Speaker #1: So as you know, the portfolio by delivery product is quite broad and quite wide. Compared to, say, to our mobility business. So if you look at it, we have the food business.
Speaker #1: And we have the mart, which is a composite of the grocery business. But also, there are some other parts of the non-grocery that we also serve there.
Speaker #1: We also have other forms of food products that we offer, including group orders and dine-out options. Additionally, there are omnichannel commerce product features that we've deployed in the marketplace.
Speaker #1: So it's a really broad portfolio. The way we think about it is that the margins you'll see in our overall deliveries are better to look at as an overall deliveries business.
Speaker #1: It can continue to be optimized. Now, there will be times from quarter to quarter where we will invest and lean into adopting a product or whether it’s a product launch.
Speaker #1: And you've seen that in the previous quarters. But overall, food margin, as our core business today, continues to see improvement overall, which is exactly what we want to see.
Speaker #1: Because it's the most mature of all delivery portfolios of products today. Where we are starting to invest, and also scale, is in the area of grocery delivery or mart deliveries that we've spoken a lot about.
Speaker #1: It's still under-penetrated. It's 10% of our overall deliveries business. We also have other products that we're pushing if you look at the cross-selling that we're doing across our different food and mart products.
Speaker #1: Also, it continues to increase, and we want to see more adoption of those other products that we've introduced from the beginning of this year.
Speaker #1: So, as a strategy overall, it's a portfolio play. You'll see that we'll, as a mixture of portfolio, those margins will be pretty much on an upper trajectory.
Speaker #1: But the mix between those margins will change quite a fair bit. Because again, the way that we're just on strategy in terms of scaling our deliveries business, that growth that you're seeing is a combination of those factors that you see on our portfolio play.
Speaker #1: At the same time, also as the countries and each of our countries also continue to execute, you'll see also the margin profile of those countries also look somewhat a little bit also from a portfolio different from country to country as we put on the gas on certain things.
Speaker #1: And we pull back on certain things also at the same time. But overall, the trajectory is moving up in the right direction. It's a portfolio that you'll see.
Speaker #1: And the monetization that comes with it is also really critical. And that's where Mark asked the question, or Divya around advertising, which is also really important.
Speaker #1: Because the advertising piece is a wrapper that goes around our deliveries play. Which is really critical. And we're bringing in more and more advertisers on the platform itself.
Speaker #1: So, I hope that gives you a bit of clarity. We don't do any in-store; we don't have any in-store, in terms of offline retail or anything of such, except for the Jaya portfolio that we have in the supermarket business.
Speaker #1: We do have certain gray stores that we use today, which is really important. But in terms of how we work with the offline retailers, especially in the area of making sure we're bringing in more traffic to our food merchants.
Speaker #1: So the dine-out that we do today brings all the ingredients for a user to transact from an online Grab app to an offline experience.
Speaker #1: Whether it's through the in-store dining that we serve today, or the reservation system that we're using now on the Grab app, that omnicommerce play becomes really important in terms of monetization.
Speaker #1: But also making sure our merchants are continuing to increase their earnings and traffic at the same time.
Speaker #2: Thank you very much, Divya.
Speaker #1: Thanks, John.
Speaker #2: Thank you. That concludes today's question and answer session. I will now turn the call back to Peter for closing remarks.
Speaker #1: Well, thanks very much, everyone, for dialing into the call. We also appreciate your time. Anthony, Alex, and I would like to express our appreciation, especially to our driver community, all our merchant partners, and also to our users and shareholders for their continued trust in all of us here at Grab.
Speaker #1: I also want to thank the entire Grab team for a great quarter. Thank you all, and we're looking forward to closing the year stronger than ever.
Speaker #1: We'll be on the road together with the IR team, Ken, Doug, and I. We'll do our usual hitting the roads, bringing the pavement. So we'll be attending various IR conferences across Europe, the U.S., and Hong Kong and Singapore over the next coming weeks.
Speaker #1: So if you wish to meet up, please just reach out to the IR team. We'd love to see you in person. Until then, we'll speak at the next quarter's earnings.
Speaker #1: Thanks, everyone.