Grab, Southeast Asia’s biggest ride-hailing and delivery firm, was to make its market debut yesterday, after a record US$40 billion merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), in a listing that is to set the tone for other regional offerings.
The backdoor NASDAQ listing marks the high point for the nine-year-old Singaporean company that began as a ride-hailing app and now operates across 465 cities in eight countries, offering food deliveries, payments, insurance and investment products.
Grab’s rivals, including regional Internet firm Sea Ltd (冬海) and Indonesia’s GoTo Group, are also bulking up, with the region’s internet economy forecast to double to US$360 billion in gross merchandise volume by 2025.
Photo: Reuters
Grab was founded by chief executive officer Anthony Tan (陳炳耀) and Tan Hooi Ling (陳慧玲), who developed the firm from an idea for a Harvard Business School venture competition in 2011.
CEO Tan, 39, expanded Grab into a regional operation with a range of services, after launching as a taxi app in Malaysia in 2012. It later moved its headquarters to Singapore.
“What we have shown to the world is that homegrown tech companies can develop great technology that can compete globally. Even when international players are in town ... we can compete and win,” Tan said, adding that Grab’s listing would help showcase the opportunity available to investors in Southeast Asia, a region with a population of about 650 million.
Grab’s listing brings a payday bonanza to early backers such as Softbank Group Corp and Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing (滴滴出行), which invested as early as 2014.
They were later joined by others, such as Toyota Motor Corp, Microsoft Corp and Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. Uber Technologies Inc became a shareholder in the company in 2018 after selling its Southeast Asian business to Grab following a five-year battle.
Analysts see scope for many players in Southeast Asia’s fragmented food delivery and financial services markets, but the road to profitability might be long.
In September, Grab cut its full-year adjusted net sales forecasts, citing renewed uncertainty over COVID-19 pandemic curbs on movement.
Third-quarter revenue fell 9 percent and adjusted loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) widened 66 percent to US$212 million.
Grab said gross merchandise value jumped 32 percent in the quarter to a record US$4 billion.
It aims to turn profitable on an EBITDA basis in 2023.
Grab said it completed its business combination with the SPAC, Altimeter Growth Corp.
Grab is to begin trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “GRAB.”
Alongside the SPAC transaction, Grab raised US$4.5 billion, including US$750 million from Silicon Valley tech investor Altimeter Capital Management LP in April.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”