A Second Guidance Raise, A Buyback That Went Quiet Again
Grab's third quarter of 2025 extended the same growth-and-margin story management has now told for over a year: revenue grew 22% year-over-year (17% constant-currency) to a record $873 million, On-Demand GMV» grew 24% YoY (20% constant-currency) to $5.8 billion, and Group Adjusted EBITDA» hit $136 million - a fifteenth consecutive quarter of sequential improvement, up 51% YoY. CFO Peter Oey used the quarter to raise full-year guidance for the second time in 2025: revenue tightened to $3.38-3.40 billion (from $3.33-3.40 billion) and Adjusted EBITDA raised sharply to $490-500 million (from $460-480 million, itself already raised once from $440-470 million at the start of the year).
The capital-allocation thread this blog has followed for three straight quarters took another turn. Last quarter, Grab essentially completed its $500 million buyback authorization, funded partly by a newly-issued $1.5 billion convertible note - a sequencing this blog flagged as under-disclosed at the time. This quarter, Grab repurchased zero shares, and neither the press release, the presentation, nor CFO Oey's prepared remarks mention the buyback at all - not to say the program is now fully spent, not to announce a successor program, not even to acknowledge the topic exists. After two straight quarters where this blog had to reconstruct the buyback story from a single sentence buried in prepared remarks, this quarter offers no sentence to reconstruct from (see Beyond the Usual).
The Prescription
Grab should keep compounding the pattern that's now driven three straight quarters of accelerating GMV growth: Deliveries GMV growth accelerated for a third consecutive quarter to 26% YoY, Mobility transactions grew faster than GMV for a second straight quarter (meaning more affordable, more frequent trips rather than fewer expensive ones), and Financial Services kept growing loan disbursals 56% YoY while staying on track for its 2026 breakeven target. Layered onto genuinely improved disclosure this quarter - Oey was unusually specific about the $158 million non-cash derivative loss and $148 million non-cash investment gain washing through IFRS profit (see Beyond the Usual) - management is proving it can explain volatile line items clearly when it chooses to.
What it should stop doing: treating a $500 million capital-return program's ending as something that doesn't need a sentence. This is now the third straight quarter this blog has flagged a communication gap around the same buyback - a silent pause in Q1 2025, a debt-funded resumption explained only in a single CFO sentence in Q2 2025, and now a quarter where the topic isn't mentioned in any material at all. A company happy to specify a $158 million derivative loss down to the dollar has no excuse for leaving shareholders to guess whether $500 million of capital return is finished, paused, or about to resume differently.
Key Financial Metrics
Q3 2025 vs. Q3 2024 - consolidated, reported in USD
Grab reports natively in US dollars, so no FX conversion is needed here. The gap between headline and constant-currency growth widened again this quarter (roughly 4-5 percentage points across every line), similar to Q2 2025's pattern rather than reverting to Q1's tighter spread.
| Metric | Q3 2025 | Q3 2024 | YoY | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| On-Demand GMV | $5,774M | $4,659M | ✅ +24% | +20% constant-currency |
| Revenue | $873M | $716M | ✅ +22% | +17% constant-currency; all-time high, third straight quarter of accelerating growth |
| Total Segment Adjusted EBITDA | $231M | $178M | ✅ +30% | Every segment grew, outpacing revenue growth |
| Adjusted EBITDA | $136M | $90M | ✅ +51% | All-time high; fifteenth straight quarter of sequential improvement |
| Operating profit (IFRS) | $27M | $(38)M | ✅ NM | Best operating result in this blog's coverage |
| Profit for the period | $17M | $15M | ✅ +14% | Smallest YoY dollar improvement of any profitable quarter tracked here - see below |
| Net cash used in operating activities | $(127)M | $338M | ⚠️ NM | $464M worse YoY, mostly digital-bank deposit outflows (see Beyond the Usual) |
| Adjusted Free Cash Flow (quarter) | $203M | $149M | ✅ +37% | |
| Adjusted Free Cash Flow (trailing 12 months) | $283M | $98M | ✅ +189% | Up from $229M last quarter |
Regional corporate costs rose to $95 million (from $88 million a year ago and $92 million last quarter), but fell as a share of revenue to 10.8% from 12.3% a year ago - a continuation of the operating-leverage trend flagged last quarter. Profit for the period improved just $2 million YoY to $17 million - the smallest dollar improvement of any of the four profitable quarters this blog has tracked - even though operating profit improved $65 million. The gap is almost entirely below the operating line: net finance income actually fell to $11 million from $87 million a year ago, an $76 million swing in the wrong direction that operating profit's $65 million improvement didn't fully offset. Oey's prepared remarks disclosed the mechanics directly this quarter: IFRS profit includes $21 million of interest expense and a $158 million non-cash loss from the fair-value re-measurement of the convertible notes' embedded derivative, offset by $148 million of non-cash gains from marking Grab's investment portfolio to market - a near-total wash that happens to land close to net, but is the first time these two large, offsetting, non-cash items have been quantified separately rather than folded into a single "net finance income" line (see Beyond the Usual).
| Balance sheet metric | Sep 2025 | Dec 2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Assets | $11,355M | $9,295M | ✅ +22% |
| Total Liabilities | $4,841M | $2,944M | ⚠️ +64% |
| Total Equity | $6,514M | $6,351M | ✅ +3% |
The liabilities increase is still mostly last quarter's $1.5 billion convertible notes rather than new borrowing this quarter - current loans and borrowings sit at $1,817 million, up modestly from $1,630 million at Q2's close. Gross cash liquidity fell slightly to $7.4 billion from $7.6 billion, and net cash liquidity - gross cash less loans and borrowings - fell again to $5.3 billion from $5.7 billion, a third straight quarter of decline despite record trailing Adjusted Free Cash Flow (see Target Valuation Range below).
Trailing Eight Quarters
| Period | Revenue | Adjusted EBITDA | Profit/(Loss) for the Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q4 2023 | $653M | $35M | $11M |
| Q1 2024 | $653M | $62M | $(115)M |
| Q2 2024 | $664M | $64M | $(68)M |
| Q3 2024 | $716M | $90M | $15M |
| Q4 2024 | $764M | $97M | $11M |
| Q1 2025 | $773M | $106M | $10M |
| Q2 2025 | $819M | $109M | $20M |
| Q3 2025 | $873M | $136M | $17M |
Adjusted EBITDA has now improved sequentially in all eight of these quarters, extending management's own cited streak to fifteen, and the sequential dollar improvements have been getting larger, not smaller ($3M, $2M, $7M, $8M, $9M, $27M, $3M, $27M this-quarter). Profit for the period, though, is back to bouncing rather than compounding - after Q2 2025 broke a flat $10-15 million band with a jump to $20 million, Q3's $17 million is a step back rather than a continuation, entirely because of the finance-income swing described above rather than anything operational.
Segment Results
Q3 2025, four reportable segments
Grab reports four segments - Deliveries, Mobility, Financial Services, and Others - unchanged since Q1 2024's restructuring.
| Segment | GMV (Q3'25) | YoY | Revenue (Q3'25) | Segment Adj. EBITDA (Q3'25) | Margin | YoY Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deliveries | $3,733M | ✅ +26% (+22% CC) | $465M | $78M | ✅ 2.1% (of GMV) | vs 1.8% in Q3'24 |
| Mobility | $2,041M | ✅ +20% (+17% CC) | $317M | $181M | — 8.9% (of GMV) | vs 8.8% in Q3'24, roughly flat |
| Financial Services | n/a (GMV discontinued) | — | $90M | $(28)M | ⚠️ (31.1)% (of revenue) | vs (40.6)% in Q3'24 |
| Others | n/a | — | $1M | ~$0M | — NM | roughly flat YoY |
Deliveries GMV growth accelerated for a third consecutive quarter to 26% YoY (22% constant-currency), up from 19% in Q2 2025 and 16% a year earlier - a cleaner acceleration streak than any this blog has tracked for the segment. Segment margin expanded to 2.1% of GMV from 1.8% a year ago, the third straight quarter of YoY margin expansion, driven by advertising growth (quarterly active self-serve advertisers up 15% YoY to 228,000) and continued operating leverage. Saver Deliveries brought in almost a third of Deliveries MTUs» this quarter, and Priority Deliveries - the higher-value tier - grew nearly 3x faster than Saver, taking its share of Deliveries GMV to 11% from 9% a year ago, a genuinely healthy mix shift (upselling users toward higher-margin usage rather than just adding cheaper ones).
Mobility GMV grew 20% YoY (17% constant-currency), a step down from Q2 2025's 19% YoY on a lower base but still Grab's strongest Mobility growth outside the last two quarters. Total Mobility transactions grew 30% YoY, outpacing GMV growth for a second straight quarter (average trip fares fell 7% YoY while average driver earnings rose 4% YoY) - the same "more, cheaper trips" dynamic flagged last quarter, now with a wider gap between transaction and GMV growth. Segment margin held essentially flat at 8.9% of GMV versus 8.8% a year ago, extending Q2 2025's reversal of the margin declines that ran through most of 2024, though the YoY improvement itself was marginal this time rather than the clean expansion Q2 showed.
Financial Services revenue grew 39% YoY (35% constant-currency) to $90 million, again the fastest-growing segment, while the segment Adjusted EBITDA loss widened a modest 8% YoY to $28 million on higher expected-credit-loss» provisions tied to loan growth - management notes that excluding ECL provisions, segment Adjusted EBITDA actually improved $17 million YoY and $4 million QoQ. Total loan disbursals grew 56% YoY to $886 million (a $3.5 billion annualized run-rate), and the net loan portfolio» grew 65% YoY to $821 million - management disclosed the gross figure (before ECL provisions) for the first time this quarter at $903 million, up 67% YoY from $540 million. Customer deposits across GXS Bank (Singapore) and GX Bank (Malaysia) fell 15% QoQ to $1,311 million from $1,543 million, even as total deposit customers reached a new all-time high - management attributes the decline to "proactively managing funding costs" by trimming deposit rates as the interest-rate environment shifted, the first sequential deposit-balance decline this blog has tracked for the segment (see Beyond the Usual). Indonesia's Superbank grew deposit customers over 20% QoQ to a new all-time high, and GX Bank Malaysia launched a small-business banking product, GX Business Banking, in September. Grab's disclosed effective equity interest in Superbank rose to 37.88% from 30.84% last quarter - see Beyond the Usual for what likely funded the increase. Management reiterated exiting 2025 with a loan book over $1 billion and a second-half-2026 breakeven target for the segment, both unchanged.
Others posted $1 million of revenue and roughly flat Adjusted EBITDA, immaterial to the group total.
Read across the table, this is the cleanest quarter of the "growth accelerating while margin holds or improves" pattern this blog has tracked across both On-Demand segments simultaneously - Deliveries margin expanded for a third straight quarter even as its growth rate kept climbing, and Mobility held margin flat while transaction growth outpaced GMV for a second straight quarter. Financial Services remains the outlier on profitability (still segment-loss-making) but is compounding its loan book at an accelerating rate against an unchanged 2026 target, so a widening dollar loss against a 65%-growing loan book reads as scale investment rather than deterioration, consistent with last quarter's read.
Beyond the Usual
Grab's only Q3 2025 source documents are the earnings press release (also furnished to the SEC as a 6-K exhibit), the supplemental investor presentation, and CEO/COO/CFO prepared remarks - no quarterly filing with real footnotes exists this quarter, and no annual 20-F was filed, so none of the three legal/governance threads tracked through the FY2024 20-F (the securities class-action settlement, the Malaysia Competition Commission appeal, and the Toyota related-party agreement) have any new company-disclosed developments - the same limitation flagged for Q1 and Q2 2025.
The $500 Million Buyback Went Unmentioned Entirely, With No Successor Program Announced
Grab repurchased zero shares in the third quarter, per the cash flow statement's "Repurchase and retirement of ordinary shares" line, which shows $0 this quarter against $58 million in the prior-year quarter and $274 million last quarter. Unlike Q1 2025's zero-repurchase quarter, which was later explained by the CFO as timing tied to the convertible-note raise, this quarter's silence has no explanation offered anywhere - the press release, presentation, and prepared remarks don't mention the buyback, its $500 million authorization, its status, or any successor program at all. Since the program was essentially fully utilized last quarter ($499.6 million of $500 million), a reasonable reading is that it simply ran out and nothing has replaced it, but that's an inference, not something Grab has stated. This is now the third straight quarter this blog has had to flag a gap in how Grab communicates about this specific capital-allocation program.
Net Cash Liquidity Fell For A Third Straight Quarter Even As Trailing Cash Flow Hit A Record
Net cash liquidity - gross cash liquidity less loans and borrowings - fell to $5.3 billion from $5.7 billion last quarter and $5.9 billion the quarter before that, even as trailing-twelve-month Adjusted Free Cash Flow climbed to a record $283 million. The decline isn't from new borrowing (loans and borrowings actually grew only modestly, to $2,137 million from $1,913 million) but from a $200 million drop in gross cash liquidity itself, driven partly by the customer-deposit decline noted in Segment Results above and partly by $407 million of net cash used in investing activities this quarter (mostly $365 million of net purchases of other investments). None of this is alarming on its own - Grab explicitly discloses a separate measure, net cash liquidity excluding digital-bank deposits and adding back the loan portfolio, at $4.8 billion - but it's the third straight quarter the headline net-cash-liquidity figure has moved the opposite direction from the operating cash-flow story management is telling, worth watching if the trend continues into Q4.
Oey's prepared remarks quantified, for the first time in this blog's coverage, the two large offsetting non-cash items running through the convertible notes and Grab's investment book: a $158 million non-cash loss from the fair-value re-measurement of the notes' embedded derivative (plus $21 million of cash interest expense), against $148 million of non-cash gains from mark-to-market accounting on investments. The two nearly offset, which is presumably why profit for the period moved only modestly this quarter despite both figures being individually large - but disclosing them separately, rather than folding them into an unexplained "net finance income" swing the way Q4 2024's press release did, is a genuine improvement in explaining a source of quarter-to-quarter profit volatility this blog has repeatedly had to reconstruct from the numbers alone.
Grab also disclosed its Financial Services loan portfolio on a gross basis for the first time this quarter - $903 million before expected-credit-loss provisions, versus the $821 million net figure that's always been the headline number - a genuinely useful new data point for tracking provisioning intensity as the loan book scales, since the gap between gross and net (currently about $82 million, or roughly 9% of gross) is itself a number worth watching in future quarters.
Grab's disclosed effective equity interest in PT Super Bank Indonesia rose to 37.88% from 30.84% last quarter, a jump large enough to be a real stake increase rather than rounding. The cash flow statement shows a $64 million "Acquisition of associates and joint venture" outflow this quarter, versus $0 in the comparative Q3 2024 column - which lines up as the likely funding source for the increased stake, though neither document explicitly states the two are connected.
Management's Case For A Second Guidance Raise, Still Without Addressing The Legal Threads
CEO Anthony Tan opened by naming the quarter's fifteenth straight quarter of Adjusted EBITDA growth and leaned into Autonomous Vehicles as the next growth frontier - Grab's first consumer-facing AV service, "Ai.R," launched in Singapore in partnership with WeRide in September, alongside an autonomous shuttle pilot with A2Z from July and a sixth AV partnership (May Mobility) announced in October. President and COO Alex Hungate framed the quarter around affordability driving engagement - GrabUnlimited subscriptions up 14% YoY to over 20% of Deliveries MTUs, average On-Demand spend per MTU up 7% YoY - directly tying that engagement thesis to On-Demand GMV's third straight quarter of accelerating growth. CFO Oey's remarks were the most granular yet on the non-cash items washing through IFRS profit (see Beyond the Usual above), but - as that section also notes - the same remarks say nothing about the buyback, and none of the prepared remarks addressed the securities class-action settlement, the Malaysia Competition Commission appeal, or the Toyota agreement, extending the streak of prepared-remarks-only materials with no disclosed analyst Q&A to a fifth straight quarter on this blog's coverage.
Target Valuation Range
DCF-implied fair value of roughly $1.89-$3.29 per share (bear to bull), against a $6.02 close - still overvalued, and the gap to even the bull case widened further this quarter. Grab's stock is up roughly 20% QoQ and nearly double its level two years ago, while the DCF's anchor (net cash liquidity) actually fell for a third straight quarter, so the reprice keeps outrunning what the underlying model can support.
Grab's stock closed the third quarter at $6.02, up 20% from $5.03 at the end of Q2 2025 and a new high for the roughly two-year window this blog has tracked, clearing the prior $5.03 peak by a wide margin - a large enough move to call out directly rather than fold silently into the multiples below. Using the 4,080,408 thousand weighted-average basic shares Grab discloses for the quarter:
| Market cap → enterprise value | Q3 2025 |
|---|---|
| Share price (period-end) | $6.02 |
| Shares outstanding | ~4.080B |
| Market capitalization | ~$24.6B |
| Total liabilities | n/a (net cash basis used) |
| Less: net cash liquidity | $5.3B |
| Enterprise value | ~$19.3B |
Market cap is up from ~$20.7B at Q2's close; EV is up from ~$15.0B three months ago. Net cash liquidity is down from $5.7 billion last quarter (see Beyond the Usual).
| Peer-multiple sanity check | Q2 2025 | Q3 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise value | ~$15.0B | ~$19.3B | ⚠️ up sharply |
| EV/Revenue (annualized run-rate) | ~4.6x | ~5.5x | ⚠️ up |
| EV/Revenue (FY guidance midpoint) | ~4.5x | ~5.7x | ⚠️ up |
| EV/On-Demand GMV (annualized run-rate) | ~0.70x | ~0.83x | ⚠️ up |
Every multiple re-rated up again, a larger single-quarter jump than Q2 2025's already-sharp move. Updating the DCF built last quarter with the new $283 million trailing Adjusted Free Cash Flow base (versus $229 million three months ago), the same 13% discount rate and net-cash-plus-discounted-cash-flow approach, and five-year fade paths reflecting the newly-raised FY2025 guidance:
| Scenario | Year 1-5 Adjusted FCF path | Terminal growth | Implied equity value per share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current (Q3 2025 close) | — actual market price, for reference | — | $6.02 |
| Bear | $190M → $310M | 2% | ~$1.89 |
| Base | $280M → $680M | 3% | ~$2.62 |
| Bull | $360M → $950M | 4% | ~$3.29 |
The bull case now lands roughly 45% below the $6.02 close, versus a 36% gap against Q2 2025's $5.03 close using the same methodology - a wider gap for a second straight quarter, this time driven entirely by the stock's move rather than the model deteriorating (the underlying paths above are all modestly higher than last quarter's, in line with trailing Adjusted Free Cash Flow growing 24%). Net cash liquidity, which anchors a meaningful share of this model's equity value, moved in the wrong direction for a third straight quarter even as the business's cash generation kept improving - the same disconnect flagged last quarter between what the model rewards (cash actually retained on the balance sheet) and what a re-rating market is pricing in (evidently something closer to the multi-year AV/Financial-Services optionality management keeps pointing to, which a straightforward DCF still can't capture). This remains a directional model, not a definitive one, as noted every quarter it's been run here.
Grab Holdings Limited's Q3 2025 earnings press release, supplemental investor presentation, and CEO/COO/CFO prepared remarks (all dated November 4, 2025).