Good day everyone, welcome to Grab's first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Douglas Eu, Director, Investor Relations and Strategic Finance 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.
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 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 our email at investor.relations@grab.com. Do submit your questions ahead of time, and we will add them to the Q&A queue. 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 disbursements 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 the 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 eight markets. Over the years, this has generated a proprietary data set of over 20 billion transactions. We feed these multimodal signals from hyperlocal mapping to in-store payment terminals into our AI Grab Intelligence Layer to optimize our marketplace efficiency from dynamic pricing to last mile routing. Crucially, we pair this data advantage with our massive physical fulfillment network. That closed-loop system or ecosystem is our biggest competitive mode, 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 am 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 over one 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 Ai.R service, deployed in partnership with WeRide, is the first autonomous passenger service ever deployed within a Southeast Asian residential estate. The fleet has clocked over 40,000 km 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 pilots succeed. 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. 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 engage 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- $4.10 billion, and adjusted EBITDA of $700 million- $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.
Thank you, Anthony. We will now transition to the Q&A session. As a reminder, for those of you who would like to ask a question, please submit an email to our Investor Relations inbox, and we'll take them in the queue as well. Our first and most asked question comes from the line of several analysts, Divya of Morgan Stanley, Venu of Bernstein, and Piyush of HSBC. It's with regard to the fuel crisis. The question is: 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, and can you quantify the impact, and what is our strategy to manage long-term fuel risks? This is a question 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. 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 +32% year-on-year. Our deliveries business continues to see record high daily transacting users in April. 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 Order, for example, has GMV up 74% year-on-year. 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. It continues to account for a third of our deliveries GMV. All of these are highly affordable products which keep the demand strong even when consumers are stretched. We're monitoring the fuel situation extremely closely. 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 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 accessing to financing so they can own those more easily. In Vietnam, we've secured preferential charging rates also through our charging network partners, EBOOST and Charge+, which helps our drivers in the transition also. Finally, in Thailand, I am pleased to say that our total sub-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. This fuel crisis has become an opportunity in the sense that it helps us to accelerate that EV transition.
Thank you, Alex. We move on to the next question. The next question is on financial services and comes from Joey of Macquarie and Venu of Bernstein. For the financial services segment, your loan portfolio showed 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, and what can we expect in coming quarters, and how do you intend to drive that? This is a question for Alex again.
Thanks, Joey, 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 a third of that incremental revenue dropped straight to the bottom line for financial services, demonstrating that operating leverage that we've been speaking about. The loan book growth is strong year-on-year. Importantly, the credit quality is improving alongside that. Loan dispersals grew 67% year-on-year to over $1 billion. The growth was modest, you're right, this quarter because of seasonal factors, and that's a normal factor for first quarter.
The ECLs as a percentage of our gross loan portfolio has improved year on year, though, and that does show, I think, the improving quality of our credit models. We've been proactive on risk management though, so 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 those additional ECL overlays to account for that macroeconomic uncertainty with that selective tightening also part of our change in the, in the risk appetite. Looking ahead, we do have some experience, of course, of managing these kinds of shocks to the, to the macroeconomic situation. Our underwriting models have already been through the similar fuel price shock that we saw at the start of the Ukraine conflict, not to mention COVID as well.
In both instances, our credit quality remained within our risk appetite throughout. We continue to monitor the portfolio performance super carefully. We aim to generate healthy returns on risk-adjusted returns for our loan portfolio, and we are reiterating our second half 2026 break-even target for Financial Services.
All right. Thank you, Alex. This next question is also another highly asked question, and it comes from several analysts. From Alicia from Citi, Divya from Morgan Stanley, Che-Wei of Macquarie, Jiong from Barclays, and Piyush of HSBC. Regarding recent news in Indonesia. In Indonesia's cap on rider commissions to 8%, can you clarify if that is applicable to 4- Wheels? What are the levers available to cushion the key negative impact from lower rider commission? What's the likely impact of profitability due to the proposed change? What's the impact in the delivery segment, if any, from the proposed change, and if you can help to quantify it? This is a very long question, as well. Also another question for Alex.
Okay. Thank you to all of you, all five of you for the question. Let me see if I can cover section by section. Okay. It does appear that the immediate regulatory exposure is highly specific. The recent announcements have explicitly focused on ojol drivers, ojek online drivers, who are our 2-wheel ride-hailing partners. 2-wheel ride-hailing partners, the ojol. The 4-Wheel drivers earn well above the minimum wage. We believe that they're less of a concern for government and regulators in Indonesia. That said, of course, we're engaging very proactively with the relevant ministries, and we try to seek absolute clarity and 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 these, this decree, so that our Indonesian mobility marketplace remains healthy and that driver-partners' earnings remain well supported. It's worth noting, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, that 2-Wheel mobility, so the ojol drivers that the decree referred to in Indonesia, is less than 6% of our total mobility GMV. The ojol drivers in Singapore represent less than 6% of our total mobility GMV. We are therefore reiterating our expectations for mobility margins to stabilize within the historical range and not to go outside of that range.
Great. Thank you, Alex. We'll move on to a related topic as well. This comes from the line of Venu from Bernstein, Sachin of DBS, and Alicia of Citi. In relation to the 8% commission cap in Indonesia, is the likelihood of consolidation now looking higher in Indonesia as well? Does a shift in policy in Indonesia change your near to medium-term investment or resource and capital allocation priorities? Just a question for Peter.
Sure, yeah. Look, I won't comment on specific M&A speculation, but I'll speak to how we view our position in this evolving landscape. With any M&A, we always take into account the regulatory environment. It's really critical, and we wanna work with the relevant agencies there also, because there's always synergies and dis-synergies that we could accrue from any transactions. As I've always spoken in many quarterly earnings, we always have a very high bar when it comes to M&A transaction itself. When it's specifically to Indonesia, and also just our M&A portfolio, we've always been taking a very diversified approach. You see that in the lines of our businesses, and you see that our product continues to expand also broadly. We're entering our ninth market, which also shows our diversification also into geographies.
The way we always position the lens that we take is diversification, and that's really important. Specifically though for Indonesia, as Alex just mentioned, it's really important that we have a very constructive and very healthy ecosystem, both for our driver partners, consumers, as also for our restaurants. Specifically to Indonesia, our strategy for Indonesia remains fundamentally unchanged despite what we're seeing over the weekend and also, the way we approach the strategies in Indonesia, our Indonesia mobility business continues to grow double digits year-over-year. It remains very stable quarter-on-quarter in spite of the seasonal headwinds. As I'm always reiterating that we're very highly disciplined in our capital allocation.
When we evaluate any strategic opportunity, it is strictly through the lens of long-term shareholder value, and also how can we diversify our Grab business.
Thank you, Peter. The next question comes from Alicia of Citi and Wei of Mizuho. The question topic now moves back to the fuel crisis as well. Given the step-up in partner incentives to offset elevated fuel costs, how has this impacted demand elasticity and translated into revisions to your near-term financial outlook for mobility? Should we expect 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-$720 million guidance?
Thanks, Alicia and Wei. Great question. Yes, Q1, you can see that driver incentives was elevated. Two specific drivers, though. One is, and most importantly, was the confluence of Lunar New Year and Ramadan within the first quarter, both in the first quarter this year, creating acute supply pressures as usual during those two festive periods. It's a deliberate. The second factor was, of course, the fuel crisis. Towards the end of the quarter, during March, we started a deliberate decision to support our driver partners with the elevated fuel prices across some countries in the region. As we move into the second quarter, of course, the festive-driven incentive pressure normalizes, but fuel does remain an important variable that we're watching very, very closely.
The targeted earnings support will continue into the second quarter, no longer with the seasonal impact. We expect this first quarter to be a peak in the driver incentives. We are reiterating the full-year guidance, therefore, of $700 million-$720 million for adjusted EBITDA, assuming that peak, and not that it's a run rate, but it's more like a peak. I would say we've got multiple levers available to us, including, if necessary, more emphasis on advertising and financial services monetization to defend the overall margin trajectory for the full year if those fuel pressures persist through the full year. In the medium- term, if those elevated fuel prices continue, we would have to pass some more of the costs on to consumers.
Of course, we'll do that very judiciously because we want to maintain healthy demand for our driver-partners through this difficult time. Finally, I think it's worth emphasizing, as we saw that the impact of AI marketplace optimization this quarter was very powerful, and we did use it to manage, for example, incentive spend for consumers. You can see that the incentive spend for consumers became more efficient during this quarter. Going into the full year, we will also have that powerful capability at our disposal to try and manage some of the volatility and incentive spends.
Thank you, Alex. The next question, the topic will now move into AI. This comes from Divya of Morgan Stanley and Wei of Mizuho. On AI monetization, are you building toward a merchant and driver SaaS revenue stream that sits outside the current commission rate structure, or are these going to be remaining bundled into the existing take rate? What AI tools are you investing in mainly into this quarter? This is a question for Anthony.
Thanks so much, Divya and Wei. Appreciate the question. Look, our approach to tools like Merchant AI and Driver AI Assistant, Coach, has been to solve everyday problems that our drivers and merchant partners face. There is 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 that right, the tools and the partnership right, we build something competitors can't easily replicate, and it creates high loyalty, high engagement, which results in them choosing us as their primary platform. Not just because of the tech, but because of the trust and, of course, growing earnings for them. This has translated into concrete results within our ecosystem. On a year-on-year basis, not only do we see the growth in the number of active merchant partners, but 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 in spite of macroeconomic uncertainty. When we build these AI tools well, and when we genuinely partner and outserve them, the economics tends to follow naturally.
Thank you, Anthony. Another highly asked question is on regional corporate costs and also related to AI. This comes from several analysts, Jiong of Barclays, Wei of Mizuho, Divya of Morgan Stanley, and Ranjan of JP Morgan. Regional corporate costs increased year on year to $114 million for the first quarter. Can you help us understand how much of this 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 a question for Peter.
Sure. Let me start by saying that the step-up that you saw in the first quarter of regional corporate costs was a conscious decision. We made that decision as a management team to invest in the AI infrastructure that we've been talking about for many quarters, Anthony just answered a question regarding AI and what we're deploying to our partners, as well as now we're starting to deploy to our consumers also at the same time. That really underpins to the Grab Intelligence Layer that we spoke a lot about actually a few weeks ago at the GrabX event regarding the new 13 new product AI experience features that we're rolling out.
We are investing in our, in the AI, specifically towards tokenization stack that we saw in the first quarter, and also the cloud capacity that needs to run and powers those tokenization at the same time. The early returns on those investment is critical. Also, we can't discount because that's also showing up in the numbers, and Anthony just also shared some of those on the driver's side and the merchant assist where they're seeing the impact on earnings, which is really a critical part of that healthy ecosystem. If you look at the adoption of these Driver AI Assistant, which is now over 50%, and we've generated over 1.25 million interactions in just two months since we rolled it out.
We've seen also for merchants that are using the AI assistant, their GMV is also up double digits on a year-over-year basis. They're thriving as a merchant, and we're benefiting also as a platform from that. This is the type of things that we wanna see more and more coming out from these AI rollouts, which is really critical. Now, if you strip out all these AI investments, and we saw some FX headwind also from the weaker USD, the US dollar, and our underlying cost base, which is really important, remains lean and disciplined. That's been a mandate that how we run Grab. I'm not expecting any further step-ups from regional corporate costs. We expect the regional corporate costs to stabilize around the levels that you saw in the first quarter for the rest of 2026.
Thank you, Peter. The next question now moves to the share repurchase, and this comes from Ranjan of JP Morgan and Divya of Morgan Stanley. Grab has announced its acceleration to repurchase $400 million of shares, you know, at the end of March itself. Nevertheless, the basic and diluted shares have increased quarter-on-quarter. What is the impact of dilution from stock-based compensation? With regard to the share repurchase program, would you consider upsizing this given the current stock price?
Okay, I'll take this one. If you step back, we announced a $500 million share buyback program earlier this year. I announced also a $250 million accelerated share repurchase and an additional $150 million in contingent forward purchase on the 24th of March. For a total of $400 million has been accelerated, which means only in the market for five to five trading days in Q1 itself, so you can't look at it in isolation. Now, both these programs are expected to be executed over the next four months. I'll share a lot more in the next quarterly earnings when we look at the Q2 results.
In terms of share count, it would amount to roughly around 2% of our total share count, which will more than offset for the dilution from stock-based compensation. That's how we're viewing it. As a reminder, there's still another $100 million left to go in the share buyback program, and we'll continue to have discussions around capital allocations with our board.
Thanks, Peter. The next question now moves to groceries. This question comes from Wei of Mizuho. Regarding to a grocery contribution, you've mentioned that GrabMart is only 10% of Delivery's GMV, but 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 contribute to Delivery's GMV by 2028 to underpin the $1.5 billion EBITDA target? At what point does grocery become margin accretive, the segment rather than a drag to the blended Delivery's economics? This is a question for Alex.
GrabMart is an exciting segment. I mean, the TAM is very large, arguably larger than food delivery altogether. We are doing a lot to accelerate the product innovation, particularly the front-end, the AI-powered shopping agent, which we think will transform the ease with which consumers can, for example, create a weekly shopping basket and then improve the targeting for GrabMore cross-sell as well. By the way, GrabMore grew more than double-digit quarter-on-quarter. I think very, very good signs for both of those things. Overall, as a result, the MTUs going into grocery are 2.6x the rate of food MTU growth on a year-on-year basis.
That shows you that it's really expanding the top of our funnel, which is extra important in the age of AI in terms of generating data and deepening the long-term value relationships that we have with our consumers. The order frequency that we saw were 1.8x higher than the food-only users, which illustrates that long-term value enhancement that I was speaking about. Over the long- term, the North Star is very clear. We've got global peers who have achieved like 20%-40% Mart penetration as a percentage of their Deliveries business overall. It's definitely the right model that we're pursuing. With regards to the three-year guidance that you asked about, we expect that GrabMart will maintain its current growth momentum and outpace Deliveries growth throughout.
The higher basket sizes, the engagement and the lifetime value we can achieve reinforce our conviction to achieve the long-term sustainable economics alongside it as part of a comprehensive super app LTV relationship with customers powered by AI. That's how we think about it rather than standalone vertical by vertical. That's the power of our approach, and that power becomes enhanced in the AI world where our optimization across all those verticals to get to the right LTV customers is particularly powerful.
Thanks, Alex. The next question will move to financial services. This comes from Ranjan of JP Morgan, a two-part question. The first question is regarding the deposits. Deposits have remained flat quarter-on-quarter. The question is, what are the challenges that Grab is facing in growing deposit base? The second part of the question is on the loan book and securitization. Would Grab consider securitizing its loan book to free capital to grow the business forward as well? Perhaps the first question would be for Alex on deposits, and Peter, the question on securitization.
Okay. Well, first of all, we actually don't have any issue at all in raising deposits. We've been really gratified at the trust that consumers have in the Grab brand, the Grab ecosystem, our capabilities to protect their money. If you look at the pricing of our deposits, we are never the most aggressive in the market. We're able to actually gather sufficient deposits to create the right shape of balance sheet. There's no point in having excess deposits, particularly in this yield curve environment. What you're seeing is us carefully managing the level of deposits to make sure that we optimize for P&L purposes. If we needed to raise more deposits, we're very confident that we can do that.
On the topic of securitization, it's a potential tool for us to be able to recapital recycle on a long-term basis, particularly as our loan book grows. Just to remind everyone, we have two parts of our lending book. We have the banks piece also, which are backed by the customer deposits, and then you've got also our Grab Financial Services non-bank side, which is on balance sheet equity-wise. If you look at our current priority through scaling the lending through our digital banks, we have deposits of roughly $1.6 billion. There's still a lot of headroom in terms of the loan-to-deposit ratio that we could deploy towards those loans. We are still on target to get to the $2 billion loan book by the end of the year.
Our priority now is to make sure that our digital banks' capital structure is efficient, and those deposits are an important component of that. Long- term, there could be options for us to recycle. That's not an immediate priority right now.
Thank you. Now we'll move on to the final question for today. This comes from Piyush, HSBC. Regarding to Foodpanda, Taiwan, recently announced acquisition, can you share the progress and what are the key milestones to watch and likely timings of those milestones? Final question for Alex.
Maybe a very brief final answer then, Piyush. Thanks. We're in the middle of the approval process with regulators, no real updates today, we'll make sure we provide updates as soon as we get any further feedback. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks very much, everyone for the questions. That concludes today's earnings call. Let me hand over the time to Peter to deliver the closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone. Hey, look, there's a lot going on typically in Southeast Asia and in Grab. I hope you got a flavor on terms of how our performance are. Q1's off to a fantastic start for us across all the financial fundamentals of our business. A lot of questions around fuel prices, obviously, which we hope we've addressed that. We are leaning in. We wanna make sure our driver community are also benefiting, and also I will be helping them along the way. We are continuing to make sure that EV acceleration also happens within Southeast Asia. It's a great catalyst for that as far as to lean in on EV adoption. A lot of questions around Indonesia, also around the 8% commission
Just to reiterate, our demand or two wheels business for Indonesia is less than 6% of our GMV. We continue to reiterate our full year guidance for the rest of the year. You know, what makes us confidence is the traction that we're seeing across the portfolios of our businesses today. All the hard work, thank you very much for all the Grabbers. Thank you for all the support you gave us in the first quarter, to all our driver partners, to all our merchants, for all the things that we wanna serve and help you also thrive. Thank you very much for the first quarter, and also 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.
We'll be in the U.S., we'll be across Asia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and also in Australia. Please reach out to us if you wanna meet with us or have a chat, have a coffee. We're more than happy to sit down with you. See you all next quarter.