Not totally a piece of favorable news for Grab Holdings this week as its shares fell around three percent in pre-market trading on Thursday. Some estimates are even saying they fell about 10 percent.
This came after Grab, probably the biggest ride-hailing and food delivery platform in Southeast Asia missed fourth-quarter results targets and gave a weak earnings outlook.
The company disclosed it is expecting a full-year adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization of between the $440 million to $470 million range, compared to $313 million in 2024, which is rather too optimistic. Financial analysis software for investment research targeted it at $492 million, so Grab really fell short.
However, alongside this news of its stocks falling behind, the company also announced yesterday that its revenue last year grew 19 percent year on year to $2.8 billion, which has exceeded its guidance of $2.76 billion to $2.78 billion. Not bad.
This steady flow of revenue could be credited to robust on-demand Gross Merchandise Volume growth and accelerating contributions from its financial services segment and advertising department.
“[The] fourth quarter was our strongest quarter ever. We finished 2024 with on-demand GMV growth accelerating to 20 percent year on year, and as we continue to generate profitability at scale,” Grab’s co-founder and CEO, Anthony Tan, broke his silence.
To compensate for this loss, Grab has also recently announced it is expecting promising results from its tie-ups with autonomous vehicles and profit from banks.
Autonomous vehicles are now dominating the ride-sharing community with several platforms adopting it. These are self-driving cars that can operate and hit the road even without human input.
Tan also said on Thursday, “We’ve been watching this space closely and are very excited about the long-term opportunity related to this tech. I personally, and, our leadership [have actually] taken many rides across the world, across various brands just to understand and be forward-leaning in this space. We believe we are in a prime position in supporting the AV transition over the next few years, and we have a very significant role to play in this region via a hybrid AV human fleet.”
Concerning its journey with the financial services space, the company has been pushing to accommodate three digital banks into its business, alongside GrabFin, its fintech platform.
Despite those setbacks, Grab’s executives are very optimistic.
“We have more users on our platform than ever," Tan further noted.