Grab (GRAB) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Monday, May 4, 2026, at 7 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

  • Chief Executive Officer — Ping Yeow Tan
  • Chief Operating Officer — Alexander Charles Hungate
  • Chief Financial Officer — Peter Oey

TAKEAWAYS

  • On-Demand GMV Growth -- 24% year-over-year increase, attributed to seasonal headwinds from Ramadan and Chinese New Year.
  • Group MTUs -- Reached 52 million, indicating significant user base expansion.
  • Financial Services Loan Disbursals -- Grew 67% year over year to exceed $1 billion for the first time, marking a segment high.
  • Adjusted EBITDA -- Achieved 17 consecutive quarters of growth, with trailing 12-month adjusted free cash flow at $489 million.
  • Mobility Transactions -- Increased 28% year over year, outpacing Mobility GMV growth.
  • Driver Partner Earnings -- Drivers using Turbo, the AI-powered mode, experienced a 23% uplift per online hour.
  • Merchant AI Assistant Adoption (Mai) -- Adopted by nearly 50% of single-store merchants within a year, driving a 15% GMV uplift for those users.
  • Average Advertiser Spend -- Grew 44% year over year, tied to measurable returns from AI investments.
  • Autonomous Vehicles Progress -- Public operations launched via partnership with WeRide, fleet logged 40,000+ kilometers and served thousands of rides; sector adoption remains early stage in Southeast Asia.
  • Mobility Weekly Average Transaction Volumes (April) -- Sustained at 32% above prior year.
  • Group Orders GMV -- Increased 74% year over year, with new group rides now live in all six core markets.
  • GrabUnlimited Proportion -- Accounted for one-third of deliveries GMV.
  • Financial Services Revenue Growth -- Up 43% year over year and 38% in constant currency; over one-third of incremental revenue contributed to Financial Services bottom line.
  • Loan Book Credit Quality -- Improved year over year as evidenced by better ECL as a percentage of gross loan portfolio; selective tightening undertaken in specific sectors.
  • Indonesia 2-Wheel Ride-Hailing GMV Exposure -- Segment impacted by recent commission cap represents less than 6% of total Mobility GMV.
  • Regional Corporate Costs -- Increased to $114 million mainly due to deliberate AI infrastructure and tokenization investments; expected to stabilize at this level for the remainder of the year.
  • Share Buyback Program -- $400 million accelerated repurchase initiated in March, projected to offset dilution from stock-based compensation by ~2% of total shares outstanding.
  • GrabMart Contribution -- Now 10% of deliveries GMV, growing at 1.7x the rate of food delivery; grocery MTUs rose 2.6x faster than food MTUs year over year.
  • Grocery Order Frequency -- 1.8x higher for grocery versus food-only users.
  • Deposits -- Remained flat quarter-on-quarter at $1.6 billion; management states deposit acquisition is not a challenge.
  • Loan Book Target -- On track for $2 billion by year-end, with ample deposit headroom to support lending growth.
  • Full-Year 2026 Guidance -- Revenue projected at $4.04 billion to $4.10 billion and adjusted EBITDA forecasted at $700 million to $720 million.
  • Buyback Mandate Remaining -- $100 million in share repurchase authorization remains available.

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RISKS

  • Chief Operating Officer Hungate said, "Group orders, for example, has GMV up 74% year-on-year, and we launched group rides at GrabX," but cited macroeconomic uncertainties, particularly inflation and elevated fuel prices, as ongoing headwinds impacting cost structure and potentially profitability.
  • Management acknowledged, "So yes, Q1, you can see that driver incentives was elevated. Two specific drivers there. 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 2 festive periods. The second factor was, of course, the fuel crisis. So 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."
  • Indonesia's recent 8% commission cap on 2-wheel driver partners applies to a segment that represents less than 6% of total Mobility GMV, and management reiterates expectations for Mobility margins to stabilize within the historical range.

SUMMARY

Grab Holdings (NASDAQ:GRAB) reported acceleration in on-demand GMV and expanded active user engagement, underpinned by AI-driven operational efficiencies and product innovation across key verticals. Management reaffirmed full-year revenue and EBITDA guidance despite highlighting persistent macroeconomic risks from inflation and fuel prices, as well as regulatory shifts in Indonesia's ride-hailing commission structure. The company progressed on its $400 million accelerated share repurchase while maintaining disciplined capital allocation, noting that incremental AI-related costs are expected to stabilize moving forward.

  • Chief Operating Officer Hungate confirmed, "Our Mobility business in April has seen weekly average transaction volumes sustained at plus 32% year-on-year."
  • Adoption of driver and merchant AI tools translated into higher earnings, increased advertiser spend, and improved platform monetization, illustrating tangible early returns on AI investment.
  • GrabMart's rapid growth outpaced food delivery, with the segment's user base and order frequency rising significantly faster, contributing to a diversified superapp ecosystem.
  • Loan growth in Financial Services remained robust, and credit quality improved due to tighter risk controls. Segment breakeven is still targeted in the second half of the year.
  • The company noted no issues in deposit growth, emphasizing balance sheet optimization over absolute deposit accumulation due to prevailing yield curve dynamics.
  • Programmatic share buyback execution continued, with $100 million capacity remaining and expected dilution from stock-based compensation more than offset by repurchases.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

  • MTU (Monthly Transacting User): Distinct users who completed at least one transaction on the Grab platform in a given month.
  • GMV (Gross Merchandise Value): The total value of transactions conducted across Grab's platform within a designated period.
  • O2O (Online-to-Offline): Business segment involving digitally booked services fulfilled through physical offline operations, notably in ride-hailing.
  • ECL (Expected Credit Loss): The expected loss on loan portfolios, calculated using probability of borrower default and projected loss severity.
  • GrabUnlimited: Grab’s subscription offering providing value and benefits to frequent delivery customers.
  • GrabMart: Grab's grocery and essentials delivery vertical.
  • Turbo: AI-powered driving mode in the Grab Driver app that optimizes driver earnings and efficiency.
  • GrabX: Platform and event for launching new Grab products, often highlighting AI and tech-enabled marketplace innovations.
  • Mai: Grab’s merchant-facing AI Assistant to help optimize operations and engagement.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Ping Yeow Tan: 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 disbursals 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 a 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 8 markets. Over the years, this has generated a proprietary data set of over 20 billion transactions.

We feed these multimodal signals from hyper local mapping to in-store payment terminals into our AI Grab intelligence layer to optimize our own marketplace efficiency from dynamic pricing to last mile routing. Crucially, we paired this data advantage with our massive through 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'm 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 a feature. This has contributed to Mobility transactions growth outpacing Mobility GMV growth with transactions up 28% year-on-year. Within a 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 transaction 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 AIR service deployment partnership with WeRide is the first autonomous passenger service ever deployed within a Southeast Asian residential estate. The fleet has clocked over 40,000 kilometers and have safely served several thousand public rights.

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 pilot 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. Now 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 to $4.10 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $700 million to $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.

Douglas Eu: Thank you, Anthony. We will now transition to the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Our first and most apps question comes from the line of several analysts Divya at Morgan Stanley, Venu at Bernstein and Piyush of HSBC. As regard to the fuel crisis. So 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 risk? So this is a question for Alex.

Alexander Charles Hungate: Thanks, Divya, Venu, Piyush. This is a critical topic. And as I said in my prepared remarks, Q1 results actually give us a good solid foundation entering the year. And 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 plus 32% year-on-year. And our deliveries business continues to see record high daily transacting users in April. So 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 orders, for example, has GMV up 74% year-on-year, and we launched group rides at GrabX last month, which is a similar concept for sharing rides to reduce pricing for individual consumers. And that's now available across all 6 of our core markets. GrabUnlimited, of course, is very good value for high-frequency customers, and it continues to account for 1/3 of our deliveries GMV. So 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. And 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. So 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 6 markets with accessing to financing so they can own those more easily. In Vietnam, we have secured preferential charging rates also through our charging network partners, EBOOST and Charge+, which helps our drivers in the transition also.

And finally, in Thailand, I am pleased to say that our total 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. So this fuel crisis has become an opportunity in the sense that it helps us to accelerate that EV transition.

Douglas Eu: Thank you, Alex. So move on to the next question. The next question is on financial services and comes from Zhiwei of Macquarie and Venu of Bernstein. So for the Financial Services segment, the loan portfolio showed a 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? So this is a question for Alex again.

Alexander Charles Hungate: Thanks, Zhiwei, Venu. Yes, you're right. Strong EBITDA improvement in Financial Services, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. So 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. And more than 1/3 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. And importantly, the credit quality is improving alongside that. So loan disbursals grew 67% year-on-year to over $1 billion but the growth was modest.

You're right, this quarter because of seasonal factors, and that's a normal factor for first quarter. The ECL 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. And 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 risk appetite. Looking ahead, we do have some experience, of course, of managing these kinds of shocks to the macroeconomic situation.

So 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. And in both instances, our credit quality remained within our risk appetite throughout. So 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 breakeven target for financial services.

Douglas Eu: Thank you, Alex. So the next question is also another highly asked question, and it comes from several analysts. So from Alicia from Citi, Divya from Morgan Stanley, Zhiwei from Macquarie, Jiong for Barclays and Piyush from HSBC. So regarding recent news in Indonesia. So an 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? And what's the impact in the delivery segment, if any, from the proposed change? And if you can help to quantify it.

So this is a very long questions as well posed questions for Alex.

Alexander Charles Hungate: Okay. Thank you to all of you, all 5 of you for the question. Let me see if I can cover section by section. Okay. So it does appear that the immediate regulatory exposure is highly specific. So the recent announcements are explicitly focused on O2O drivers, [indiscernible] online drivers, who are our 2-wheel ride hailing partners, so 2-wheel ride-hailing partners [indiscernible]. The 4-wheel drivers earn well above the minimum wage. And so 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 -- of this decree so that our Indonesia and 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 O2O drivers that the decree referred to in Indonesia is less than 6% of our total mobility GMV. So O2O drivers in Singapore represent less than 6% of our total mobility GMV. So we are, therefore, reiterating our expectations for Mobility margins to stabilize within the historical range and not to go outside of that range.

Douglas Eu: Thank you, Alex. So 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 the shift in policy in Indonesia change your near- to medium-term investment or resource and capital allocation priorities. So just a question for Peter.

Peter Oey: Sure, yes. Look, I want to comment on specific M&A speculation. And -- but I'll speak to how we view our position in this evolving landscape. Within M&A, we always take into account the regulatory environment, it's really critical. And we want to work with the relevant agencies there also, because there's always synergies and dissynergies that we could accrue from any transactions. And as we've -- I've always spoken in many, many quarter -- quarterly earnings, we always have a very high bar when it comes to M&A transaction itself. When specifically to Indonesia, and also just our M&A portfolio, we've always been taking a very diversified approach.

And 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 in terms of geographies. So the way we always position the lens that we take is diversification and that's really important. So specifically 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 is also for our restaurants. So specifically to Indonesia, our strategy for Indonesia remains fundamentally unchanged despite what we've seen over the weekend and also the way we approach the strategies in Indonesia.

Our Indonesian Mobility business continues to grow double digits year-over-year. Remains very, very -- remains stable quarter-on-quarter in spite of the seasonal headwinds. And as I'm always reiterating that we're very highly disciplined in our capital allocation. So when we evaluate any strategic opportunity, it's strictly through the lens of long-term shareholder value and also how can we diversify our Grab business.

Douglas Eu: Thank you, Peter. So the next question comes from Alicia, Citi and Wei of Mizuho. So 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 does this impact the 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 the levers such as EV adoption and cross-border rights that could bring incentives back down in the second half and support the sequential EBITDA ramp-up implied by your full year $700 million to $720 million guidance?

Alexander Charles Hungate: Thanks, Alicia, Wei. Great question. So yes, Q1, you can see that driver incentives was elevated. Two specific drivers there. 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 2 festive periods. So it's -- the second factor was, of course, the fuel crisis. So 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.

So 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 was -- will continue through into the second quarter, but it 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 to $720 million for adjusted EBITDA, assuming that peak and not that it's a run rate, but it's more like a peak.

But 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 of 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. But of course, we'll do that very judiciously because we want to maintain demand for our driver partners through this difficult time. Finally, I think it's worth emphasizing, 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. And so 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 spend.

Douglas Eu: Thank you, Alex. So the next question, the topic we'll now move into AI. This comes from Divya, Morgan Stanley and Wei at Mizuho. On AI monetization, are you building toward a merchant and driver SaaS revenue stream that sits outside the current commission rate structure or is going to be remaining bundled into the existing take rate? What AI tools are you investing in mainly into this quarter? So this is a question for Anthony.

Ping Yeow Tan: 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 promise that our drivers and merchant partners face. There's 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 a 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. So when we build these AI tools well and we may generally partner and outserve them, the economics tends to follow naturally.

Douglas Eu: Thank you, Anthony. So another highly asked question is on regional corporate costs and also related to AI. So this comes from several analysts, Jiong at Barclays, Wei at Mizuho, Divya of Morgan Stanley and Ranjan of JPMorgan. So regional corporate costs increased year-on-year to $114 million for the first quarter. Can you help us understand how much of the step-up is AI infrastructure costs, whether it's tokenization of cloud versus general inflation as well as FX? And 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. So this is a question for Peter.

Ping Yeow Tan: Sure. Let me just 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. And Anthony just answered the question regarding AI and what we will be deploying to our partners as well as now we're starting to deploy to our consumers also at the same time. And 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.

So we are investing in our -- in the AI specifically towards tokenization stack that we saw in the first quarter and the cloud capacity that needs to run that powers those tokenization at the same time. Now the early returns on those investments 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 side and the merchant assist by 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 system, which is now over 50%, and we generated over 1.25 million interaction in just 2 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. So they're thriving as a merchant, and we're benefiting also as a platform from that. And this is the type of things that we want to see more and more coming out from these AI rolloutS, which is really critical.

Now if you strip it all these AI investments, and we saw some FX headwind also from the weaker USD, the U.S. dollar and our underlying cost base, which is really important remains lean and disciplined. And that's been a mandate that how we run Grab. So I'm not expecting any further step-ups from regional cooper costs. We expect the regional copper cost to stabilize around the levels that you saw in the first quarter for the rest of 2026.

Douglas Eu: Thank you, Peter. So the next question now moves to the share repurchase, and this comes from Ranjan of JPMorgan and Divya from Morgan Stanley. So Grab has announced that acceleration to repurchase $400 million of shares at the end of March itself. Nonetheless, the basic and diluted shares have increased quarter-on-quarter. So what is the impact of dilution from stock-based compensation? And with regard to the share repurchase program, would you consider upsizing this given the current stock price?

Peter Oey: Okay. So I'll take this one. If you step back, when we announced a $500 million buyback program earlier this year. And I announced also a $250 million accelerated share repurchase and an additional $150 million in contingent forward purchase on the 24th of March. So a total of $400 million has been accelerated, which means only in the market for 5 to 5 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 4 months. So I'll share a lot more in the next quarterly earnings when we look at the Q2 results.

Now in terms of share count, it would have amount to roughly around 2% of our total share count, which will more than offset for the dilution from stock-based compensation. So 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.

Douglas Eu: Thanks, Peter. So the next question now moves to groceries. This question comes from Wei of Mizuho. So regarding to grocery contribution, you've mentioned that GrabMart is only 10% of deliveries 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 basically -- to contribute to delivery GMV by 2028 to underpin the $1.5 billion EBITDA target? And at what point does grocery become margin accretive to the segment rather than the drag to the blended deliveries economics? So this is a question for Alex.

Alexander Charles Hungate: So GrabMart is an exciting segment. I mean, the TAM is very large, arguably larger than food delivery altogether. So 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 Grab more cross-sell as well. And by the way, Grab more grew more than double-digit quarter-on-quarter. So I think very, very good signs for both of those things. Overall, as a result, the MTUs going into grocery at 2.6x the rate of food MTU growth on a year-on-year basis.

So 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. And then 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. So over the long term, the North Star is very clear. We've got global peers, who have achieved like 20% to 40% mart penetration as a percentage of their deliveries business overall. So it's definitely the right model that we're pursuing.

And with regards to the 3-year guidance that you asked about, we expect that GrabMart will maintain its current growth momentum and outpace delivers growth throughout and therefore the higher basket sizes, the engagement and the lifetime value we can achieve reinforce our conviction to achieve a long-term sustainable economics alongside it as part of a comprehensive super app LTV relationship customers powered by AI. So that's how we think about it rather than a stand-alone vertical by vertical. That's our -- 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.

Douglas Eu: Thanks, Alex. So the next question, we'll move to Financial Services. This comes from Ranjan of JPMorgan. So a 2-part question. So 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 it's deposit base. The second part of the question is on the loan book and securitization. So would Grab consider securitizing its loan book to free capital to grow the business forward as well. So perhaps the first question will be for Alex and deposits and Peter, a question on securitization.

Alexander Charles Hungate: 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. And 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. So there's no point having excess deposits, particularly in this yield curve environment. So what you're seeing is that's 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.

Peter Oey: 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 the loan book grows. Just to remind everyone, we have 2 parts of our lending book we have, the bank's piece also, which are backed by the customer deposits and then you've got also our Grab Financial Services nonbank side, which is on balance sheet equity-wise. If you look at our current priorities, really 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.

And we are still on target to get to the $2 billion loan book by the end of the year. So our priority now is to use -- make sure that our digital banks capital structure is efficient, and those deposits are an important component of that. But long term, there could be options for us to recycle. That's not an immediate priority right now.

Douglas Eu: Thank you. So now we'll move on to the final question for today. This comes from Piyush of HSBC. So 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? So final question for Alex.

Alexander Charles Hungate: Well, maybe a very brief final answer then, Piyush, Thanks. So we're in the middle of the approval process to regulators. So no real updates today, but we'll make sure we provide updates as soon as we get any further feedback. Thank you. .

Douglas Eu: Okay. So thanks, everyone, for the questions. So that concludes today's earnings call. Let me hand over the time to Peter to deliver the closing remarks.

Peter Oey: Thanks, everybody. Look, great, there's a lot going on, typically in Southeast Asia and in Grab. Hope you got a flavor in terms of how our performance are. Q1 is 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 want to make sure our driver community are also benefiting and also I will be helping them along the way. And people are continuing to make sure that EV acceleration also happens within Southeast Asia. It's a great catalyst for that for us to lean in on EV adoption.

A lot of questions around Indonesia, also around the 8% commission. Just to reiterate, our demand or 2-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. What makes us confident is the traction that we're seeing across the portfolios of our businesses today. So 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 want to serve and help you also thrive.

Thank you very much for the first quarter and also to our shareholders for our 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 will be across Asia, Singapore, Hong Kong and also in Australia. Don't feel -- please reach out to us if you want to 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.

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This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. Parts of this article were created using Large Language Models (LLMs) based on The Motley Fool's insights and investing approach. It has been reviewed by our AI quality control systems. Since LLMs cannot (currently) own stocks, it has no positions in any of the stocks mentioned. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability.

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