Good morning and good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining Grab's Investor update session. I am Douglas Eu, Director of Strategic Finance and Investor Relations. Joining me today are Anthony Tan, Chief Executive Officer, Alex Hungate, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Peter Oey, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, we are going to be presenting both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures. Please see the supplemental slides, our press release, and our filings with the SEC for more disclosures about these non-IFRS measures, including a reconciliation of IFRS to non-IFRS measures. We are also going to be making some forward-looking statements today. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements, and we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements we make today, except as required by law.
For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, please refer to the press release we issued today and in other filings made with the SEC. With that, today, Grab is announcing an agreement to acquire a controlling 60% equity interest in Atome Financial, accelerating the growth and profitability of our financial services segment. Anthony will present the opening remarks covering the strategic rationale and merits of the proposed transaction. Alex will describe our strategic roadmap and cover our strengths and track record in financial services. Peter will discuss the outlook and capital allocation priorities. We will begin with a presentation from our management team, and after the presentation, we will have a Q&A session, and we encourage you to submit questions via email through the presentation to investor.relations@grab.com. With that, I will hand it over to Anthony.
Thanks, Douglas. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, Grab is announcing a landmark acquisition of Atome Financial, deepening our commitment to financial inclusion across Southeast Asia and accelerating the growth and profitability of our financial services segment. I want to first take a step back to emphasize that building businesses from the ground up is not new or foreign to us. We have already proven we can build a category-leading business not once, but twice, in mobility and in deliveries. Financial services, while nascent today, is where we are confident and where we intend to prove it again. In mobility, we set out to make transportation safer for all across Southeast Asia while improving our drivers' earnings potential. Today, despite being in this business for 14+ years, growth continues to remain robust and strong with transaction growth still at 28% year-on-year.
All of this is achieved with industry-leading adjusted EBITDA margins. In deliveries, we were not actually first to market in this region, but we were able to grow rapidly because we could leverage the existing supply we had already built in mobility, along with a brand and recognition that came with it, which let us scale quickly through COVID. While many expected the business to decelerate or decline once that period ended, not only have we moved beyond that, but we have done so sustainably, powered by our own product and tech-led strategies with GMV growth accelerating to 24% year-on-year. Financial services is our third segment. While it is still nascent, we have real conviction in its potential because it lets us leverage the same ecosystem strength, trust, and brand recognition that powered mobility and deliveries to unlock our next leg of growth.
It's already our fastest-growing segment, and we're on track to exit this year with a gross loan book of over $3 billion and to reach profitability in the second half of 2026. From here, we're targeting $500 million in adjusted EBITDA by 2028. The financial services option excites me because the headroom to grow ahead of us is enormous. Millions of people across Southeast Asia still lack a formal credit history and are shut out of traditional banking, and this is exactly the gap we are well-positioned to close. Despite how far financial services has advanced in markets in other parts of the world, the option here remains massive. It is simply not a credit card market. Only 5% of adults here own a credit card, a fraction of what you would see in a market like Brazil. Formal lending is just as thin.
Only 14% of adults have ever borrowed from a bank or financial institution. What fills that gap today is informal borrowing. Borrowing from friends, from family, for instance, and those are the safe ones, accounted for over a third of lending across these markets. That gap between the credit people need and what the formal system actually provides is the option in front of us. Closing it isn't something we're starting from scratch. I want to show you how far we've already come and where I believe the next chapter takes us. If you look at this slide, what you're really looking at is a story of how we built towards this moment, one piece at a time. We started to solve a basic problem, giving people markets without credit cards or formal payment infra a safe way to transact with each other on our platform.
That early bet is why the majority of transactions on our platform now run through our own wallet. This was built from scratch to scale we have today, and it's also why we have industry-leading payment processing costs as owning that infrastructure ourselves let us bring costs down for the entire platform. From there, we use the trust and the data that gave us to move into partner and ecosystem lending and insurance. Over a third of our active drivers now carry a loan with us, scaled prudently and with discipline, and non-performing loans have remained stable or improved across the portfolio, even as that scale has grown, which is also the foundation for the profitability we expect to reach in the second half of 2026. The next piece was digital banking. That took us somewhere GrabFin alone couldn't.
Our digibanks are able to take deposits and operate under the same oversight as any other financial institution with a footprint across Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. The next piece this year was Stash. We completed the acquisition and added a micro-investment platform. This not only let us diversify into fee-based income streams, but also deepen our ability to help people save and grow their investments for retirement, building on how we already help them spend and borrow. Which brings me to today and to Atome and to consumer lending. Atome is highly complementary to everything I just walked you through. Our lending so far has been led by driver and merchant lending, closed-loop, and embedded inside our own ecosystem. We do have consumer lending today, but it's still nascent. Atome is the natural next stage.
It pushes us into consumer lending, which allows us to widen credit access to our unbanked and underbanked across the region. Atome gives us that scale immediately, the same scale many of our peers have already reached by building organically over several years, often sustaining years of losses along the way. This is the missing piece. It completes our suite of financial services stretching across lending, insurance, payments, investments, and digital banking. Atome has substantial scale with a gross loan book of over $1 billion today, built across a wide range of over 30,000 unique brands and more than 25 million cumulative transacting users. Importantly, it does all this while already delivering a positive, profitable, adjusted EBITDA contribution. Atome has a diversified portfolio that serves a wide range of consumer credit needs under one app. Atome Card gives consumers a pay later card they can use anywhere.
Atome BNPL lets them shop and split purchases across their brand partners, and Atome cash loan gives them accessible credit when they need liquidity beyond a single purchase. Every product here is built around an individual consumer's everyday spending and borrowing needs, covering the full range of scenarios, whether they are paying at checkout, splitting a purchase, or drawing down cash. It is this relentless focus on enhancing their product suite that has driven strong and durable growth for Atome. Atome's GMV has grown over nine times across the past six years, and it is adjusted EBITDA positive today. What makes this more notable is that this growth has held up through periods of weaker macro conditions across the region, a sign of how durable the underlying demand for this business really is. Atome's growth has not come at all costs.
It has been achieved in a disciplined manner with prudent credit risk management and a constant focus on improving lifetime value and enabling the platform to also drive sustainable, profitable growth. There are two factors that support this. First, delinquency rates have improved across every cohort, and the 2026 cohort is the best performing yet. That tells us that underwriting is getting sharper as a platform scales, not just that risk is being managed defensively. Second, purchase frequency has stayed high and consistent, running at an annualized rate in the 50s to 60s and reaching a high of 62 transactions per user in the most recent quarter. That level of repeated engagement means this growth is not coming from acquiring new users alone. It is coming from existing users transacting with Atome again and again, which makes the revenue base far more recurring and predictable.
This is precisely the discipline we look for before scaling a lending business, and it is exactly what gives us confidence to accelerate from here. That confidence is grounded in Atome's credit underwriting engine, one of the most sophisticated in the region. Atome has built a system of over 100,000 variables and 131 models. That is what enables real-time credit decisions, credit approval rates above peers, and loss rates consistently below industry benchmarks.
What sets Atome apart, similar to Grab, is how deeply AI is embedded across the full risk stack through more than 22 live applications. Models are now built twice as fast, feature engineering is six times more efficient, and risk monitoring is four times more robust. The result speaks for itself. GMV has grown four fold over the past three years, and risk-adjusted margins have remained stable throughout. This is exactly the kind of platform you build from.
You've just seen the scale and discipline Atome already has, and this is exactly why we chose to acquire rather than build this ourselves. The strategic rationale also stems from Atome operating in five of the six markets we're already in, which means it comes with scale in exactly the geographies that matter. Beyond that, there's strong potential for strategic synergies as a combined platform. Combining our ecosystems will enable us to accelerate financial inclusion to the unbanked and underbanked across the region, with Atome leveraging the distribution and reach of Grab with ample opportunities to drive cross-sell opportunities across both of our networks. Let me put some numbers behind that opportunity, starting with where we stand today. As I mentioned earlier, consumer credit penetration across our own ecosystem is still nascent and smaller than what we see among peers.
Of our 138 million annual transacting users, only 1% borrow from us today. That's a deliberately small number. We prioritize prudence and profitability in scaling our financial services segment, even though we always knew the underlying demand was real. Atome changes that immediately. It expands our lending reach and broadens the base of our users we can serve from day one. As we expand the parameter of both platforms together over the midterm, we see the potential to scale our user base for lending by more than 10 times from where we stand today. That's the real size of the opportunity in front of us. Currently, our biggest lending exposure sits in digibank retail and MSME, both larger today than our consumer fintech book. That's largely a function of tenure. As digibank's loans run longer, so balances build up and stay on the books for longer.
Our fintech businesses, driver, merchant, and consumer lending, run on much shorter tenors with far higher origination and dispersal volumes. Of the three, consumer is still the most nascent. Add Atome's loan book as of the second quarter on a pro forma basis, and that changes immediately. Consumer cash loan exposure grows more than 16 times from where we are today, and consumer BNPL and card exposure grows more than four times. Put together with what we already have in driver, merchant, and digital bank lending, this gives Grab a sizable regional presence across nearly the full spectrum of consumer finance. Beyond the user and consumer exposure we've just walked through, Atome also brings over 30,000 unique brands into the fold, spanning categories like travel, electronics, home and lifestyle, fashion, beauty, and e-commerce. This matters in two directions. First, it opens up a much broader cross-sell opportunity for Grab.
These are categories we've historically never served, sitting at a different point on a frequency and average order value spectrum than our own F&B-heavy merchant base, and it gives us a path to bolt on more products to serve these merchants over time. Second, it works the other way as well. Atome now gets access to cross-sell into our own merchant base, which focus is largely F&B. This isn't just Grab gaining a new merchant network, it's two ecosystems that can now sell into each other. Finally, and most importantly, our shared vision. Grab's mission is to drive Southeast Asia forward by creating economic empowerment for everyone. Atome's mission is to improve the lives of consumers through greater financial access and technology.
Put those two together and we arrive at a shared vision to accelerate financial inclusion by responsibly extending credit access to the unbanked and underbanked across Southeast Asia. Jefferson founded Atome eight years ago on that same conviction that everyone deserves access to responsible credit, not just those with a conventional banking history. Having spent time personally with him and his team, I've come away impressed by what they've built since then, and I'm confident in our decision to work alongside them. Turning this vision into results starts with how we structure the deal, because we only pay full value for performance that Atome actually delivers. We're acquiring a controlling 60% stake today for $1.49 billion in cash, expected to complete by the third quarter of 2027. This is funded entirely from our existing cash.
We'll maintain an ample net cash buffer after completion, where we intend to complete approximately $900 million in buybacks over the next 12 months. The remaining 40% is tied directly to Atome's adjusted EBITDA and revenue performance over the next two years. We're confident in Atome's ability to deliver, and this structure protects our shareholders' downside while keeping our capital allocation disciplined. Atome's own management continues running the business throughout the earn-out period, which meaningfully de-risks our exposure from day one. This transaction reflects the same discipline we apply to every capital allocation decision at Grab. We only pursue inorganic options that clear a high hurdle rate of return because we evaluate this deal on what the combination makes possible over time, including cross-sell running in both directions and a multi-year head start into consumer lending that will take significantly longer and cost significantly more to build on our own.
The proposed transaction also drives meaningful upside to our group outlook, and Peter will walk through the details of this in a section. To start, we are introducing two new guidances for 2028. First, we expect to scale our gross loan portfolio from above $3 billion by the exit of 2026 to over $6 billion by the end of 2028, driving meaningful top-line expansion. Second, that growth carries our financial services segment adjusted EBITDA, including Atome, to $500 million in 2028. Building on the profitability we expect this segment to reach in the second half of 2026. That guidance reflects growth achieved in a disciplined, prudent manner, managing credit risk carefully even as we scale the top line. Together, these two targets flow straight through to our group numbers.
We are raising our revenue growth guidance to 30%+ CAGR from 2025 to 2028, up from 20%, and raising our 2028 adjusted EBITDA target to $1.7 billion, up from $1.5 billion. Peter will take you through exactly how we get there later in this session. Taken together, this is a transaction that gives us instant scale in consumer lending, built in a proven and complementary partner, is structured with real discipline, and already lifts our outlook for 2028. I'm excited about what Grab and Atome can build together. With that, I'd like to hand things over to someone who has been a close partner in getting us here. Jefferson Chen, Atome's Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, has kindly recorded a short video to share a few words with you directly.
We founded Atome on the simple belief everyone deserves access to responsible credit, not just those with a conventional banking history. Over the past few years, we have built one of the leading AI-empowered consumer finance platforms in Southeast Asia. We have helped tens of millions of consumers in all parts of the world access credit responsibly, and we have enabled millions of merchants to grow and expand their businesses. Behind our scale is a powerful AI and data flywheel. Every transaction makes our underwriting smarter, our risk model stronger, and our products more personalized. Combined with our two-sided network of merchants and consumers, these capabilities continue to compound as we grow.
This is exactly why partnering with Grab is such a natural fit for us. Grab has built one of the Southeast Asia's leading consumer ecosystems, while Atome brings proven AI-empowered credit infrastructure and underwriting expertise. Together, we will harness data, AI, and our combined ecosystems to build one of the region's largest financial services platforms, expanding financial access and creating great opportunities for the next billion.
Thank you, Anthony. Thank you, Jefferson. You've heard how the combination of Atome and Grab will bring together complementary capabilities and scale to accelerate growth and profitability. Now I'll describe how the combination creates value for users, partners, and shareholders. Our financial services strategy is centered on embedded distribution, offering the right product at the point of an existing transaction directly within the primary flows of our users. We already have daily relationships with millions of consumers and merchants, so we reach potential borrowers at a fraction of the cost of a standalone lender. Every transaction generates a behavioral signal, spending patterns, location, lifestyle, wallet management, that feeds directly into more accurate credit assessments. In many cases, repayments can also be deducted directly from the GrabPay wallet, reducing friction for the borrower and lowering default risk for us.
These three advantages compound into a flywheel that generates more value for the ecosystem as it scales. More transaction volume gives us better data insights. Better data insights enhance our credit underwriting, and better underwriting lets us price and reward more competitively. Better pricing attracts more partners and users, and more partners and users drive more transaction volume, starting the cycle again. This continuously improves our underwriting models and lets us scale the ecosystem more efficiently with better operating leverage over time. Atome accelerates this consumer underwriting flywheel by several years when compared with organic development. This not only enhances financial returns, but it also dramatically strengthens the whole on-demand ecosystem.
To bring this to life, let's consider three examples of how customers experience these embedded personalized financial offerings. The recently launched GXS Credit Card is one example, with whitelisting and limits decided based upon the data from the ecosystem. It makes spending on Grab more attractive by rebating GrabCoins, which can be used to buy additional Grab services. Ride Cover is built directly into Grab rides, giving users personal accident insurance during and after their trip. GrabPay for Travel lets inbound travelers use our payments infrastructure for cashless payments while they're in the region so that they can pay like a local. The most powerful example of how well customers respond to this kind of embedding is our digital banking growth. We've scaled to nine million deposit customers across our three digital banks within just three years.
Most of these signed up after seeing the bank's products embedded seamlessly in their customer journeys on Grab with little or no acquisition cost. For example, 76% of GXS Singapore's deposit customers are Grab users. That number is 92% for GXBank in Malaysia and 16% for Superbank customers who are either Grab or OVO users. We've seen how the Grab ecosystem drives customer acquisition for financial services via seamless embedding, personalization, and better underwriting. Now let's look at some equally compelling examples of how financial services power the ecosystem in turn, creating uplift for the whole platform. We see quantifiable increases in spend and engagement by consumers in Philippines and Malaysia after they draw down their loans. For example, GXBank FlexiCredit in Malaysia drove an 11% GMV uplift on Grab after drawdown and a 54% spend uplift through GXBank payment methods.
We also see better commissions and ad spend adoption by merchants who borrow from us. This uplift isn't limited to our own ecosystem. Embedding our services into partner ecosystems drives the same effect there, too. Let's hear directly from Michael La Cour, CEO of IKEA Singapore, an important GrabPay and PayLater partner in this short video.
At IKEA Singapore, we believe everyone deserves a better everyday life at home. That's why we are committed to making every step of the shopping journey simple, convenient, and seamless. As our omnichannel business grows, having safe and reliable payment experience become even more important. With GrabPay Later, we've made checkout easier for our customers, nearly doubling the adoption of Grab payment solutions online and improving payment success rate by 60%.
Grab is more than a payments partner. It's a financial service ecosystem which helps us serve customers with different payment needs, from everyday purchases to larger home investments. Together, we are creating a better shopping experience through technology and innovation, making it easier for more people to create the homes they love. Partnerships like this is the way forward in an ever-changing retail world. It builds on mutual growth and shared values. We look forward to the next steps together.
The advantages for our customers, our ecosystem, and our partners are significant and growing greater as our data flywheel scales. But how unique is our data? Well, first, it's real-world data generated from an existing physical ecosystem, not something a model can scrape or generate, which is what makes it durable and hard to replicate. Grab operates as the system of record for local commerce across Southeast Asia. Real-time signals from over 50 million ecosystem participants in store payments, mapping telemetry across more than 900 cities and adding up to over 20 billion cumulative transactions since 2012. To put that in perspective, we process 300 PB of data every single day. No one else in the region has a data set of this depth, breadth, or recency across both digital and physical commerce.
Here is the data on this slide that proves that Grab's underwriting, using our proprietary ecosystem data, outperforms underwriting that relies upon credit bureaus in our markets. We've built up 647 million cumulative repayment touch points, each one a behavioral signal on how a user manages their obligations. This allows us to make better lending decisions, which is why at comparable approval rates, our models produce lower delinquency than traditional bureau models. That has resulted in non-performing loans across our consumer finance and banking portfolios staying stable or improving over time. Here is some additional data on driver partner lending, showing how we've been able to scale significantly without compromising credit quality. Cumulative loan balances per cohort have expanded consistently over time. At the same time, cumulative charge-offs have improved and now follow a stable, predictable pattern.
68% of drivers access credit for the first time through Grab, and half of them say they did it specifically to avoid predatory lenders. In yet another illustration of the ecosystem flywheel, drivers who take a loan with us complete 13% higher number of rides per month on average. We've been doing this for quite some time, and that shows in the maturity of the book. The discipline we maintain in how we manage these loans, while still underwriting competitively, is what lets us consistently generate risk-adjusted returns above our cost of capital, even through several macroeconomic shocks, such as COVID and oil price spikes. We have found that AI already drives measurable financial and operational outcomes. Grab's merchant AI assistant has increased engagement with merchants by providing real-time suggestions for how to grow their business. Menu changes, promotions, performance tracking.
That engagement has also driven a sharp increase in lending dispersals. For example, in Thailand, merchants receiving AI-driven lending recommendations saw a 19% increase in average disbursement versus the control group. The equivalent uplift in Indonesia was 7%. AI has improved collections productivity by 62% since 2022, with room to improve further from here also. In summary, financial services is an integral part of our ecosystem. Not a standalone fintech business, but a fundamental complement to our on-demand business.
Customers, partners, and the ecosystem all benefit by the way that financial services are embedded, personalized, and priced through our unique proprietary data. These benefits grow as our ecosystem scales. The addition of Atome takes us to a whole new level of ecosystem value and financial performance. Finally, as the ecosystem scales, so does the value that AI can bring. The timing for our acquisition of Atome really could not be better. Now over to you, Peter, to round up with the financial impact of the acquisition.
Thanks, Alex. Anthony and Alex have shared our strategic direction for Grab's financial services and our acquisition of Atome, the opportunity we're going after, and the capabilities we have built to capture it. I will now walk you through how that translates into our financial roadmap, and specifically, how our acquisition of Atome reshapes our group outlook in a meaningful way. Let me set the stage for how we think about growth and profitability across the group over the medium term. This chart is a useful starting point because it shows where the two are converging rather than trading off against each other. Financial services has been our fastest-growing vertical at Grab and remains on track to reach profitability on an adjusted EBITDA basis in the second half of 2026, consistent with the guidance we've given.
This segment, together with GrabFin, our three digital banks, GXS, GXBank, and Superbank, and Stash, was already built to be one of the key monetization levers for the platform. What the proposed acquisition of Atome does, it further accelerates that path, so that upon completion of the transaction, it contributes to the overall group sooner and at greater scale than it would have on its own. Given how underserved the credit market still is across our region and the structural advantages in this segment, we believe we will be able to further reinforce with Atome. This is a profit pool with plenty of room to grow into, one that depends less on winning share from a competitor and more on serving demand that isn't being met today. It also reinforces the ecosystem effect Alex talked about.
When we can lend into our own ecosystem and rely on it for funding and distribution, the whole platform becomes stickier. Financial services also becomes a lever that strengthens our on-demand verticals in mobility and deliveries, and also advertising. Mobility and deliveries remain our core on-demand businesses, and they continue to grow at a healthy clip. Mobility is operating in the 8.5%-9% adjusted EBITDA margin range, and growth remains robust. While deliveries continues to grow towards our 4% steady state adjusted EBITDA margin target at a healthy growth rate. This chart illustrates why we believe buy is the right call over build. If we try to reach the same scale in consumer lending organically without Atome, the green bar shows what that path looks like. Real positive growth, but building from a much smaller base and taking years longer to get where the yellow bars already are.
That gap exists because of how lending economics work. We front book the expected credit loss at the point of a loan is originated while the revenue from the same loan is recognized over its life. The more aggressively you scale a lending book, the more that timing mismatch weighs on risk-adjusted revenue in the early years, even as the underlying economics are sound. Atome has already moved past that phase of its own build-out. With Atome, we're acquiring a platform that's already further along that curve at a cost below what it would take us to build the equivalent capability ourselves. Because there's meaningful overlap between Atome's geographical footprint and ours, the synergies are sizable, which is why the yellow bars separate from the green ones, and that gap keeps on widening every year. Put together, this is the advantage Anthony spoke about earlier.
It lets us reach a substantially larger scale in risk-adjusted consumer lending revenue with a lower credit charge footprint than either business would carry building this alone, years ahead of where an organic build would get us. The conviction we have in this outlook comes from two things together. First, the continued strength of our existing financial services vertical, and second, what the proposed Atome acquisition adds on top of it. We're guiding towards $500 million in financial services adjusted EBITDA by 2028. Building from our expectation to reach profitability in the second half of 2026, off a base where the segment was still loss-making in 2025 at a $-110 million. This chart walks through the levers that gets us from there to $500 million. The most material one is user growth.
As Atome extends our footprint alongside our core financial services vertical, we widen the perimeter of who we can serve and deepen the penetration of consumer lending within the Grab ecosystem. That increase in consumer penetration is the single largest driver on this bridge. From there, a shift towards longer tenure products and improving yields adds a further step up. As our credit models continue to improve, we expect credit provisions to come down as a share of the book, adding another layer of margin. Finally, given the margin potential in the lending business at scale, we expect meaningful operating leverage as the fixed costs of running this platform, the underwriting infrastructure, the risk models, the servicing capability, gets spread across a much larger loan book without needing to scale at the same rate.
Underpinning the adjusted EBITDA trajectory is an expectation that we more than double our gross loan portfolio from just over $3 billion we are targeting by the end of 2026 to over $6 billion by the end of 2028, assuming the timely consolidation of Atome, with an increasing portion of the gross loan portfolio coming from consumer loans. I want to be clear that we do not see this as a capital-intensive way to grow. The bulk of this loan book by 2028 will sit with the GXS, GXBank, and Superbank, our directly consolidated digital banks. As the platform scales, we see room to move this funding mix towards increasingly lower cost sources over time. Atome's book today is already funded through its own financing partners, and that is a relationship we intend to keep on building as we scale together.
As this platform grows, we see continued room to optimize our overall cost of funds across the group. The bottom line is this: growing this loan book to over $6 billion is not an equity-funded story. It is a diversified funding strategy, and that means significantly less strain on our balance sheet. Let me bring together everything I have just walked you through, the loan book, the financial services adjusted EBITDA path, and show you where it lands at the group level. With the consolidation of Atome and the $6 billion loan book and the $500 million financial services adjusted EBITDA target I just covered, we are upgrading our guidance at the group level. Our 2025 to 2028 revenue CAGR moves from 20%- 30%+. Our 2028 group adjusted EBITDA target moves from $1.5 billion- $1.7 billion.
Now, you might be asking, how do we arrive at an EBITDA outlook of $1.7 billion in 2028? There are two items that sets all this up. First, foodpanda Taiwan, which we expect to complete in 2026. This adds $60 million. Second, Superbank and Atome together at $300 million, which is the more meaningful piece, and consistent with everything I have just walked you through earlier on. Now, we are also choosing to deploy $160 million to widen our affordability offerings across the platform and to continue building structural advantages in groceries and retail. Both have already proven themselves as engines of accelerated growth, with affordability driving a meaningful share of our new user and engagement growth across mobility and deliveries. Grocery scaling at multiples of the rate of our core deliveries business.
That momentum gives us real conviction to lean in further because the long-term opportunity in both categories remains massive relative to where we are today. This strengthens lifetime value for our users because it widens the range of products they have access to on our platform. It also deepens our structural moats in these categories, in the same way financial services is doing its side, growing what each user contributes to the platform over time. Put all of that together and you get to $1.7 billion. A number that reflects both the contribution from Superbank and Atome, and our decision to reinvest a portion of that into the platform's long-term competitive position. Capital allocation for this transaction follows the same four principles that govern every capital decision we make as a group. We remain disciplined in how we invest for organic and profitable growth.
That discipline extends directly to how we evaluate inorganic opportunities. Atome met that bar. It is a proven consumer lending platform that lets us accelerate growth in this segment profitably, rather than spending years and capital building it ourselves. The structure reflects the same discipline. The upfront consideration is funded entirely from existing cash. The remaining stake is structured as an earn-out, so future payments are tied directly to Atome's actual performance rather than fixed today. We will also maintain a strong balance sheet with ample liquidity. Even after this transaction completes, we remain committed to a healthy net cash position, and this deal does not come at the expense of our financial flexibility. This chart shows the track record behind that commitment.
We announced our inaugural $500 million share repurchase program back in 2024, repurchasing $226 million that year and completing the program with a further $274 million in 2025. This year, we viewed the dislocation in our share price as an opportunity to further lean in. We announced a $500 million program in February and followed that with a further $750 million program in August. Between the two, we have repurchased $351 million through August 2026. We intend to complete around $900 million of the remaining mandate within the next 12 months. Taken together, that brings our cumulative share repurchases from 2024 to $1.75 billion, representing over 10% of shares since the start of 2024, and we intend to cancel these shares. This slide brings some transactions together. I will summarize it rather than go bullet by bullet since most of the substance here we have already covered.
Firstly, this deal is built with capital discipline at its core. We are acquiring 60% control today in cash at signing. The remaining 40% is priced two years after completion based on delivered performance, which means our exposure on that second tranche moves with how the business actually performs, not with the fixed price locked in today. Secondly, on financial impact, the case for this deal is exactly what I have walked you through this section. Atome is expected to be accretive to our group revenue and adjusted EBITDA. We expect the combined financial services segment, including Atome, to reach $500 million in adjusted EBITDA and a loan book of over $6 billion by 2028. That is the basis for raising our group targets to $1.7 billion in adjusted EBITDA and the 30%+ revenue CAGR over the same period.
Third, on closing, we expect this transaction to complete by the third quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals. With that, I would like you to hear directly from the team who will be running this business day to day. You will hear from Kell Jay Lim, who leads our financial services segment, along with our digital bank leads and the Stash and Atome teams.
At Grab, we've built our financial services platform by solving real customer needs across our ecosystem. Each step has strengthened the platform and expanded the ways we serve customers across Southeast Asia. We started with payments to reduce cash friction. As our ecosystem grew, we saw that many customers and driver-partners still could not access financing through traditional institutions. Using our ecosystem data and proprietary AI models, we can responsibly extend credit to underserved customers, helping driver-partners grow their livelihoods, supporting merchant growth, and strengthening our ecosystem.
At GXS Bank and GXBank, we're making digital banking simpler and more accessible through savings, payments, and credit. Every customer relationship is an opportunity to help them build greater financial resilience within the Grab ecosystem and beyond.
At Superbank, we're making digital banking much more accessible to millions of Indonesians with simple, transparent, and secure financial products and services. Our mission is to make sure more and more people have access with ease to the formal financial system.
Atome strengthens Grab's digital financial services platform with diversified consumer credit products, deep AI expertise, proven credit underwriting track record, significant revenue scale, and profit contribution potential.
Financial services shouldn't end with payments and credit.
They should also help people save, invest, and build long-term financial well-being.
Together, we are building one of Southeast Asia's most comprehensive digital financial services platforms, strengthening the Grab ecosystem by serving customers across every stage of their financial journey.
Before we move to Q&A, let me close this slide and leave you with three things today. First, this transaction gives us access to a proven operator in consumer lending, and that lets us accelerate our expansion into this category in a far more sustainable way and at a faster pace than if we tried to build it ourselves. Second, this reflects the same disciplined capital allocation we apply to every investment we make. It's funded entirely from our existing cash. It's expected to be accretive to our group-adjusted EBITDA on completion, and it does not come at the expense of our balance sheet strength or our ongoing share repurchase program. We're guiding to $500 million in financial services adjusted EBITDA and a $6 billion loan book by 2028. We do this without compromising the shareholder returns we remain fully committed to.
And third, the opportunity in front of us is significant. Consumer fintech penetration across our region remains very low, which means there is massive headroom to grow into, and Atome is a highly complementary fit for that opportunity. We have already shown we have the right to win in financial services, built on our track record so far, the strength of our ecosystem and our data, and our ability to manage collections and credit risk with discipline. Thank you for your time today. We will now move to Q&A.
Thanks, Peter. With that, let us move to Q&A. As a reminder, please submit your questions to investor.relations@grab.com. We will primarily focus on responding to questions on the proposed acquisition on the call today, so please keep questions focused on this transaction. Our first question comes from the line of several analysts. We have Alicia from Citi, Ranjan from JPMorgan, Jiong from Barclays, and Venu from Bernstein. This is a question for Alex. Grab has been pursuing financial services and online lending for years. Why are you choosing now to buy a consumer lending business, and what does Atome have an edge over Grab, and why can't Grab replicate this on its own?
Thanks. Great question. Yes, we have a successful business lending to drivers and to merchants, but we have only just begun the journey of lending to consumers. In fact, only 1% of our 138 million annual transacting users have taken a loan from us. So we are starting off on the consumer journey. This acquisition is an opportunity for us to leapfrog the 10 years of learning across multiple products and multiple markets that Atome has already been through. So we do not have to go through the pain of all the credit losses to train those models. The Atome team have done a fantastic job. Their AI-driven underwriting is best in class. They have developed a great company that is growing very fast, nine times growth in six years. They are already profitable, generating strong cash flows.
The prospect of using our data to improve their credit models to the next level is actually a big leapfrog in terms of the capability that they built already. Frankly, the distribution that they built up with 30,000 retail brands across their network would also take us many years to build up. So it is a great combination of assets that will give us tremendous revenue synergies together.
Thank you, Alex. The next question will come from Venu of Bernstein and Divya of Morgan Stanley. This is a question about the Atome management. The question is, will the founder and the top management of Atome remain with the business, and are there any commitments for that? This is another question for Alex.
Yes. Jefferson and Chun, the two founders, and the rest of the team are super talented. With this earn-out structure, I think there is a very strong incentive for them to remain around for those two years. Frankly, we also share a common mission, a mission to help close this financial inclusion gap across Southeast Asia. So we believe that with shared mission, shared values that we believe we share with them, there is a very good chance that many of them, hopefully all of them, will stay around even past the two year period. So we are looking forward to working with them during the two years so that we can start to integrate the teams.
Okay, this question now moves to the guidance of the $500 million EBITDA for financial services, and it is from Joey of Macquarie. This is a question for Peter. On slide 36, your slide shows improving cost leverage to be a significant driver of EBITDA growth to achieve the $500 million. What do you need to do to execute on that component?
Yes, Joey. The way to think about it is if we just step back first, the financial services segment was loss-making in 2025. When we also announced in last quarterly earnings, we said that it will be expected to be profitable in the second half of 2026. So you see the trajectory of the profitability of our financial services business. Now on the cost leverage, your question around improving cost leverage, I would say four things here. I think the first one, which is the biggest opportunity and the largest driver, is the user growth, because Atome really extends that footprint. We operate across five markets that we share today, and it deepens the whole consumer lending penetration across all our Grab ecosystem today.
It really just complements in terms of what we have across not just the financial services, whether it's our banks or GrabFin, but also our on-demand services that we can really start to amalgamate work together on. That's the first one, the user growth. The second one is a shift towards longer tenured products. Part of that, complementing that, will be improving yields at the same time. As you know today, a majority of our loan book today, especially on the driver side, is very short-tenured, and we've always had an aspiration to actually extend those tenured products. This is now a great opportunity for us as we team up to really shift towards that much longer tenured products and also improving that yield. That's the second one.
The third one is, as the credit provision comes down as a share of the book, we see that our credit models continue to improve. That's really, really important. One of the secret sauce of lending, as we all know, is the credit engine, the risk appetite, and the credit model engine. This is where Atome really comes in. Together also, we can really improve the credit provision coming down, which improves operating leverage in the business. Lastly is operating leverage is just the fixed cost. The whole underwriting infrastructure, the risk model, the servicing, the collections, they all get spread now across a much larger loan book without really scaling at the same rate. Lots of opportunities.
Right. Thanks, Peter. The next question is more specific to Atome, asked by several analysts as well. Just from Ranjan from JPMorgan and Julie at Macquarie. Question for Alex. Can you talk a little bit more about the profitability of Atome? The question is asking, it's very low at the moment, so just wants to understand what's the reasons for that, and if there are any additional financial metrics that we're able to share, such as ROE, yields, cost of credit, or the tenor of the book.
Okay. Yeah. So actually, it's moved into profitability relatively recently. But the growth trajectory of the profitability is very attractive and is rapidly moving into providing strong profitability. That's obviously a good time for this acquisition because the high growth continues, but the operating leverage in their own model is showing very clearly, over the last 12 to six months as it comes through into generating strong profitability. It's a very complementary fit, as we talked about earlier. That revenue growth we expect to continue to grow, which will drive further operating leverage. That profitability is achieved with a very high growth rate on loan dispersals. As you understand, when you disperse a lot of loans, you also incur the provisions for those loans. So even with those, it's generating very attractive profitability currently.
Going through to 2028, as that process continues and compounds, it will account for a good part of the 500 million that Peter talked about earlier in our guidance. We know that the cash flows are already attractive. They will grow rapidly over time now as the revenue's increased. The revenue growth of Atome as a standalone will be accelerated by working with the Grab ecosystem. It should grow even faster than they would have done on a standalone basis. We are not providing risk-adjusted returns specifically for Atome at this point. But in terms of the loan tenor, I will say that these are relatively shorter tenor loans, and the average is below six months for the entire Atome portfolio.
Okay. We will move on to the next question, and this question is on valuations. This is a question for Peter. This comes from Piyush of HSBC. For the phase two part of the transaction, there is a valuation range of a floor of $2 billion and a cap of $4.5 billion for the remaining 40% stake. The question is: if the upper end of the valuation range materializes, then what could be the upside to 2028 adjusted EBITDA target of $1.7 billion? So this is for Peter.
Yeah, so Piyush, one of the characteristics of Atome is what Alex mentioned, that they are growing very fast as a business overall, from the top-line dispersal and loan book also. What we see is what that means to our on-demand business also. It will accelerate also a lot faster than it would have as well. We see the synergies for those two to come together. The synergy is ascribed not just to Atome, but the way we look at it also is also to our on-demand business, so our mobility and our deliveries business, because they go hand-in-hand as an ecosystem, as you know [inaudible] quite well. I would also highlight that it is really important that in the 2028, which is where we have been guiding also, is just a point in time.
The second transaction also, as it happens, the phase two is that point in time also. The multiple really does not capture Atome's growth trajectory and EBITDA expansion beyond that. Not to mention that there is incremental synergies we see also that we can derive beyond that phase two, especially beyond 2029. I think what is key to highlight, Piyush, is that the valuation of Atome reflects this fast growth. They have a leading market position. They have an improving cash flow, which is really important to us also, and its unique underwriting engine. All that we see as this two-step process with this transaction really gives us that EBITDA trajectory growth beyond the phase two marker in 2029.
Right. Thanks, Peter. The next question comes from Alicia Yap of Citi. So question for Anthony pertaining to management bandwidth. With recent moves across Atome, Superbank, and Stash, fintech is taking a more prominent role in Grab's portfolio. How is management managing integration bandwidth across the multiple assets concurrently to mitigate operational execution risk? This is a question for Anthony.
Thanks, Alicia. Great question. The short answer is that each transaction structure does the heavy lifting. We deliberately stage these so they don't compete for the same bandwidth. Atome is the clearest example. Post-close, Atome's management team continues to run the business under its own brand and licenses for two years. The phase two consideration is tied directly to the performance they deliver in that window. The people best placed to run Atome are running Atome with every incentive to execute while our teams focus on a specific synergy work, underwriting insights, cross-sell, funding costs, not a big bang integration. On Superbank, we consolidated Superbank in May, and it runs under its own banking leadership led by Pak Tigor within the regulators' framework, the same playbook we've now run with GXS and GXB. Stash operates standalone with its own team and its own book.
The wealth synergies are ahead of us, not something we force today. Each asset has one accountable leader and its own plan. None of this runs through a single central team stretched across four deals. Here's why we do them all. Each one plugs into the same flywheel. Atome's lending meets our ecosystem data and distribution. Superbank strengthens our deposit base and funding costs. Each one makes the ecosystem more valuable. That's growth none of these individual business could generate standing alone. It comes from the ecosystem, not from a lot of heavy integration work. As you can see, the discipline is already in the numbers. Our $1.7 billion raised guidance 2028 target reflects these moves, including the platform investment to support them.
All right. Thanks, Anthony. The next question is on just general integration. It's a question from Divya from Morgan Stanley, a question for Alex, and it pertains to the GrabFin product as well. The question is, what happens to Grab's own existing PayLater by Grab product in Singapore and Malaysia? Will these products be retired, like merged into Atome, or will they run in parallel as well? It's a question for Alex.
Thanks, Divya. There are a couple of markets where we both have products in the market, although we are relatively early in consumer lending overall, which was the whole thesis behind this acquisition, the acceleration to enjoy the maturity of the credit models they have across a whole range of products in consumer lending. But in those markets where we both do have offerings in the market, we feel we would want to keep them in place to give consumers more choice. The credit market is very large in places like Singapore and Malaysia, so there is lots of white space. It is really not a net sum zero situation between us and Atome's, and we are both growing rapidly, so we will keep both those offerings in the marketplace.
Thanks, Alex. Next question pertains to, once again, a question for Alex and from Divya from Morgan Stanley. With Grab owning 60% and consolidating the business, what governance rights, if any, will AIG retain over underwriting policy, credit risk appetite, or capital allocation during phase one to phase two, given that AIG's ultimate payout depends on Atome's performance during that period, which creates a potential principal agent tension. Will Grab's cheaper cost of capital be used to refinance Atome's existing facilities, and would that inflate phase twos adjusted EBITDA in AIG's favor?
We have a methodology that we already use for managing risk appetite vis-a-vis the banks. At the banks, the credit committee of the banks risk committee will set a risk appetite statement across the key measures of risk, and then the team can execute within those guardrails. That is exactly the approach that we will apply for Atome. There will be a subcommittee of the board, essentially, that is controlled by Grab, and that subcommittee will set the risk appetite statement corridors. But then the Atome team gets to execute within that.
That is what we want because they have got a tremendous track record of managing risk through the cycles, through the macroeconomic shocks like oil price spikes, et cetera. They have been able to show that they can control delinquencies and control credit losses. That is the capability we are buying. We do not want to interfere with that.
In terms of the way we will work together, we think there are opportunities for us to work together during the two year period before phase two creates the full buyout. Those opportunities will be win-win opportunities. They can be embedded finance distribution deals. They can be distribution deals for us to access the Atome customer base, too, because do not forget, they have got 25 million transacted users also that we would like to cross-sell to. They can also, to your point in the question, be balance sheet cooperation ideas as well because there are ways in which we can, under the regulatory frameworks, use some of the bank deposits to channel with Atome. Atome has existing bank facilities, and we can participate in those. Each one of those types of ways of working together will have to be arm's length because it is a related party transaction.
There is no inflation of the earn-out because it will all be market-based arm's length, and neither is there a subsidy going either to Grab or to Atome because we have the arm's length related party transaction process to manage all of that. Lots of scope for us to work together, even within the two years, but no danger of us losing control of the risk appetite, management, and governance, and no risk of any subsidy going one way or the other.
Okay, thanks Alex. Next question is on the 2028 outlook. This is a question for Peter, it is from Piyush of HSBC. In your 2028 outlook of the $1.7 billion adjusted EBITDA, there is a new element of investing in affordability and groceries retail. Can you please elaborate on this new element and what has changed in the last six or seven months, which is leading to $160 million drag on EBITDA guidance? This is for Peter.
Yeah, Piyush. You are right. We plan to deploy roughly about $160 million and really where we are focusing on is deepening that affordability across the platform. You have heard us many, many quarters around how powerful affordability has been for our on-demand business as a growth vector, and we are going to continue to double down on that. But also building meaningful structural advantages in what we are seeing in groceries and retail business also at the same time. We have always commented that groceries is growing closer to two times faster than food, and we see that as opportunity for us to really, for the next two years, to really put on the gas pedal on it and really just accelerate that growth. Both are proven growth of engines as affordability drives a really meaningful share of the new user engagement.
That has been really critical for us as we get every user on the ecosystem here, how do we make sure they continue to engage, frequency, as well as how do we also make sure their retention also is high? That has been a really core fundamental of our on-demand business, really improving that lifetime value scale of a user base. Grocery is also scaling at multiples of what the core deliveries growth rate is. As to question as to why now, why are we deploying this? Why are we thinking about this $160 million now and not before? I think what is unique is Atome, because I think Atome will give us access to a new user base, and it enlarges this cross-selling opportunity.
Alex had talked a lot about how that opportunity is in terms of where in the five markets that we cross today, they have 25 million transacted users on the platform also, and it just gives us access to new user base. At the same time also, we can monetize every user that comes into our platform more effectively, and that's part of our extending lifetime value growth of the user base. As they come into the affordability funnel or the grocery funnel, we see opportunities for us to cross-sell and upsell this user base to really extend that lifetime value. Part of that is also extending loans. With Atome also, it gives us that capability now to do consumer loan that we might not be able to do back pre-Atome, where obviously we were building it ourselves.
This gives us somewhat of a turbocharge for us to be able to extend that lifetime value even further. I also want to mention, Piyush, on the supply side, which is kind of unique here, we can also now tap into Atome's existing 30,000 unique brands that we don't serve today. Those brands that Atome, there's a slide on Anthony's presentation earlier, that covers travel, electronics, home and lifestyle, fashion, beauty, and e-commerce that we don't do today. That gives us a new penetration on the supply side that gives us more flexibility.
It also gives us more future merchant relationships bringing to our marketplace. With Atome and the momentum we're seeing in our on-demand business, just gives us conviction to double down and to lean in further. There's long-term opportunity in both what remains to be really massive relative to today. What I would just finish off, the bottom line is with the expansion of our financial services offering, the product spectrum, now with Atome, is worth more to us than ever before.
All right, this is for the next question, it's on capital allocation. A question once again for Peter. This is from Alicia of Citi and Jacqueline of CIMB. On uses of cash, are we expecting more M&A in fintech or financial services going forward? Can you help us understand why Grab has become more active in financial services M&A recently following Superbank, Stash, and now of course, Atome?
Yeah. Look, capital allocation, you've heard me many, many times, discipline remains very high. That's core throughout to our DNA and how we operate here as a management team. Nothing has changed from that. We continue to make sure we allocate the right capital to our organic growth in our business, and that has to be one of our most highest priority for us today. You saw in the last quarter the acceleration of our growth in the deliveries business, which has been really, really important, and also look at the mobility side, rides were up 28% year-over-year. All this organic growth is really important and that's one way that we are making sure we get the most yield and highest internal payback for those capital every cent that we deploy. From the M&A side, it's no different actually.
What is more important, actually it's done on a higher internal hurdle rate than what we're seeing in organic growth. If you see the theme of the M&As that we've been doing, it's all centered around how we can complement the existing Grab ecosystem. If you see how we are deploying capital in foodpanda Taiwan, potentially also closing this transaction, then you see what we've done with Stash Financial when it comes from a micro investment platform, was a new capability that we didn't have before. Now with Atome, it really can just scale consumer lending. It would have taken years for us to build it, and now we have this capability, a talented team, and a great platform that we can just leverage. So we adopt the same lens and framework for every deal and for any market also, and any size.
Let's also not forget that we're also doing share buybacks at the same time as we're allocating those capital. Look, I know our share price is dislocated and we're leaning in, and we've been leaning in since the beginning of this year. If you look at our total buyback program, now it's $1.75 billion in total. We announced today also that $900 million has been authorized, remaining tranche.
We're committed to completing that in the next 12 months. To provide some perspective, all the $1.75 billion buyback program, this is roughly about 10% of shares to be canceled since the start of 2024. Also from a free cash flow generation that we've got at 80% conversion remains. As we expand our profitability at the same time, also, this just gives us sufficient net cash buffer from a capital preservation, as also how we deploy capital. We continue to make sure that our balance sheet continues to strengthen.
Thanks, Peter, and thanks everyone. That brings us to the end of our Q&A session and your whole presentation. I will now turn the time over to Alex for his closing remarks.
Well, first of all, thank you all for joining us today. I guess there are three key takeaways from this call. First, it is hard to imagine an acquisition for Grab that generates as much revenue synergy as this. Atome is the leading independent digital lender in our region, with mature credit models that they have built up for all the key products across most of our key markets. So it is a really direct fit with our footprint. Grab has the largest on-demand platform where digital lending penetration is still only 1% of our annual transacting users. So together, we feel that we can grow that penetration to 10% over time. So think about that. That is a 10 times opportunity in revenue synergies. Second is this disciplined capital allocation that Peter was talking about that we apply to every investment.
This phase is funded entirely from cash and is expected to be accretive immediately to group adjusted EBITDA. While at the same time, our buyback program will retire more than 10% of shares outstanding at the completion of the program that has just been announced, demonstrating our focus on shareholder returns across the board. Finally, this is not a standalone fintech business.
It is a core part of our ecosystem and will accelerate our data flywheel. So the injection of credit into the marketplace in this way creates a flywheel of deeper engagement with consumers, more transactions, and faster GMV growth for mobility, food, and especially our fast-growing grocery and retail business. This new activity then feeds our credit models to enhance our credit performance even further as growth accelerates. So the three key benefits to why we are doing this transaction and accelerating and leapfrogging our position in the digital lending market. For further questions, please reach out to the IR team directly, and thank you again for joining us this evening.