GRAB Grab's Stock Fell 27% This Quarter - Its Best-Ever Q1 Says the Business Didn't

A Record Quarter, A Regional Fuel Shock, And A Stock That Didn't Care Which One Won

Grab's seasonally softest quarter of the year turned into its strongest first quarter ever: revenue grew 24% year-over-year (19% constant-currency) to $955 million, On-Demand GMV^» grew 24% YoY (21% constant-currency) to $6.1 billion, and Adjusted EBITDA^» hit a record $154 million, up 46% YoY - Grab's seventeenth-consecutive-quarter streak of sequential improvement, now extended to eighteen. Profit for the period was $120 million, up from just $10 million a year ago. None of that happened in a calm environment: a regional fuel-price spike hit in early March, forcing Grab to deploy driver-partner fuel rebates across multiple markets and absorb elevated incentive costs right as the FY2025 20-F's new three-year outlook started its first year of delivery.

The stock didn't wait to see how the fuel shock nets out. Grab closed the first quarter at $3.66, down 27% from the $4.99 close flagged last quarter and its lowest level in this blog's two-year price-tracking window. Management's own read is that the drop is a "share price dislocation" worth buying into: in March, Grab entered a $400 million accelerated share repurchase and contingent forward purchase agreement - the first real execution of the $500 million buyback authorized alongside the Q4 2025 report, which sat unfunded for a full quarter before this. That's a genuinely different capital-allocation posture than the three-quarter communication gap this blog tracked through most of 2025 (see Beyond the Usual).

Grab also disclosed its first actual operating expansion outside Southeast Asia: a planned acquisition of Delivery Hero's foodpanda delivery business in Taiwan, expected to close in the second half of 2026. That's distinct from the FY2025 20-F's subsequent-events disclosures of a $55 million Vay Technology stake and the pending Stash Financial acquisition - both financial/US-market bets rather than an actual Deliveries market entry - and neither of those two deals got any update this quarter (see Beyond the Usual).

The Prescription

Grab should keep running the playbook that just produced its best Q1 ever under real macro stress: On-Demand GMV growth accelerating to 24% YoY against a seasonally soft quarter and a fuel-cost shock, Deliveries margin expanding for a fifth straight quarter to 2.3% of GMV, and Financial Services narrowing its segment loss 45% YoY to just $17 million while the Gross Loan Portfolio^» more than doubled to $1.44 billion - genuine operating leverage showing up exactly when a weaker company would have used the fuel shock as cover for a soft quarter. The $400 million buyback finally deploying real capital, funded from a balance sheet that still holds $6.9 billion of gross cash liquidity, is the correct response to a stock trading at its lowest level in two years while the underlying numbers keep improving.

What it should stop doing: letting Regional Corporate Costs^» creep up citing "AI infrastructure investment" without giving investors a way to size how much of that spend is genuinely one-time versus a new permanent cost floor. RCC jumped $28 million YoY to $114 million - a 33% increase, outpacing revenue growth for the first time in several quarters - and CFO Peter Oey's only quantification was to say it should "stabilize around current levels for the remainder of 2026." That's a guidance statement about the future, not a disclosure about what changed this quarter: how much of the $28 million increase is the "tokenization stack and cloud capacity" Oey named specifically, versus headcount, versus something else entirely. A company three years into publishing granular non-cash reconciliations for its convertible notes (see Key Financial Metrics below) has the disclosure muscle to do the same for its fastest-growing cost line.

Key Financial Metrics

Q1 2026 vs. Q1 2025 - consolidated, reported in USD

Grab reports natively in US dollars, so no FX conversion is needed here. Q1 is structurally Grab's softest quarter - the Lunar New Year and Ramadan fasting month both fall inside it, depressing Deliveries and Mobility demand and supply in most years - which makes this quarter's 24% GMV growth (an acceleration from Q4 2025's 21%) a genuinely stronger result than the same headline number would be in a seasonally strong quarter.

Metric	Q1 2026	Q1 2025	YoY	Note
On-Demand GMV	$6,131M	$4,932M	✅ +24%	+21% constant-currency; accelerated despite seasonality
Revenue	$955M	$773M	✅ +24%	+19% constant-currency; new all-time high
Total Segment Adjusted EBITDA	$268M	$192M	✅ +40%	Outpaced revenue growth
Adjusted EBITDA	$154M	$106M	✅ +46%	All-time high; eighteenth straight quarter of sequential improvement
Operating profit (IFRS)	$22M	$(21)M	✅ NM	Best Q1 operating result in this blog's coverage
Profit for the period	$120M	$10M	✅ NM	Second-largest YoY dollar improvement tracked here, after Q4 2025's $142M jump
Net cash used in operating activities	$(59)M	$73M	⚠️ NM	$132M worse YoY, mostly higher loan disbursements
Adjusted Free Cash Flow (quarter)	$98M	$(101)M	✅ NM	$199M swing YoY
Adjusted Free Cash Flow (trailing 12 months)	$489M	$162M	✅ +202%	New all-time high, up from $290M last quarter

Profit for the period improved $110 million YoY to $120 million, and unlike Q4 2025's finance-income-driven jump, roughly $43 million of this quarter's improvement came from operating profit itself - a larger operational share than most of the profitable quarters this blog has tracked. Below the operating line, CFO Oey quantified the moving pieces precisely on the call: a $163 million non-cash gain from the convertible notes' embedded-derivative fair-value adjustment (against $21 million of related interest expense), offset by a $62 million non-cash net loss from mark-to-market accounting on Grab's investment portfolio. Regional corporate costs rose to $114 million (from $86 million a year ago and $96 million last quarter) - a jump large enough, and fast enough, to reverse the operating-leverage trend this blog flagged for several quarters running (see The Prescription above).

Balance sheet metric	Mar 2026	Dec 2025	Change
Total Assets	$11,700M	$11,983M	— roughly flat
Total Liabilities	$5,166M	$5,226M	— roughly flat
Total Equity	$6,534M	$6,757M	⚠️ -3%

Gross cash liquidity fell to $6.9 billion from $7.4 billion three months ago, and net cash liquidity - gross cash liquidity less loans and borrowings - fell to $5.0 billion from $5.4 billion, reversing last quarter's rebound as the new buyback consumed cash faster than operations replenished it (see Target Valuation Range below).

Trailing Eight Quarters

Period	Revenue	Adjusted EBITDA	Profit/(Loss) for the Period
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
Q4 2025	$906M	$148M	$153M
Q1 2026	$955M	$154M	$120M

Adjusted EBITDA has now improved sequentially for eighteen straight quarters shown here, still climbing even against the seasonally weakest quarter of the year - a pattern this blog hasn't seen broken once since Q3 2023's first positive Adjusted EBITDA quarter. Profit for the period settled at $120 million after Q4 2025's one-off-looking $153 million spike - still Grab's second-best quarter on this line, confirming Q4's jump was a genuine step up in earnings power rather than a single-quarter anomaly that would revert all the way back to the $10-20 million band.

Segment Results

Q1 2026, four reportable segments

Grab reports four segments - Deliveries, Mobility, Financial Services, and Others - unchanged since Q1 2024's restructuring.

Segment	GMV (Q1'26)	YoY	Revenue (Q1'26)	Segment Adj. EBITDA (Q1'26)	Margin	YoY Margin
Deliveries	$3,908M	✅ +25% (+22% CC)	$510M	$88M	✅ 2.3% (of GMV)	vs 2.0% in Q1'25
Mobility	$2,223M	✅ +23% (+19% CC)	$337M	$198M	— 8.9% (of GMV)	vs 8.8% in Q1'25, roughly flat
Financial Services	n/a (GMV discontinued, see Gross Loan Portfolio)	—	$107M	$(17)M	✅ (15.9)% (of revenue)	vs (40.0)% in Q1'25
Others	n/a	—	$1M	$(1)M	⚠️ NM	roughly flat YoY

Deliveries GMV grew 25% YoY (22% constant-currency) to $3,908 million - an acceleration from Q4 2025's 21% YoY, the fifth straight quarter above 20% and the strongest growth rate this blog has tracked for the segment, achieved against the Lunar New Year/Ramadan seasonal headwind rather than despite an easy comparison. Segment Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 2.3% of GMV from 2.0% a year ago, the fifth consecutive quarter of YoY margin expansion, driven by advertising (average spend per self-serve advertiser up 44% YoY, though quarterly active advertiser count grew a more modest 5% YoY) and continued operating leverage. Priority Deliveries, the higher-value tier, grew to 19% of Deliveries GMV from 15% a year ago, with users spending 1.5x more per basket than the average - the same upsell mix-shift flagged in Q3 2025 continuing to compound. GrabMart is now growing MTUs^» at 2.6x the rate of the core Food business, a new disclosure this quarter pointing at where incremental Deliveries growth is actually coming from.

Mobility GMV grew 23% YoY (19% constant-currency) to $2,223 million, an acceleration from Q4 2025's 20% YoY and the segment's strongest growth rate in this blog's coverage - all while absorbing the fuel-price shock CEO Anthony Tan and COO Alex Hungate both flagged as this quarter's central operational challenge (see Management's Case below). Segment margin held essentially flat at 8.9% of GMV versus 8.8% a year ago - a smaller improvement than recent quarters, consistent with fuel-cost pressure absorbing what would otherwise have been further margin expansion. Mobility transactions grew 28% YoY, continuing to outpace GMV growth for a third straight quarter - average fares staying flat to lower while trip volume climbs, the same "more, cheaper trips" dynamic this blog has tracked since mid-2025, now explicitly reinforced by management's fuel-rebate and per-trip-cashback programs rather than happening organically.

Financial Services revenue grew 43% YoY (38% constant-currency) to $107 million, again the fastest-growing segment, and the segment Adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed 45% YoY to $17 million - the best percentage improvement this blog has tracked for the segment. Total loans disbursed grew 67% YoY to a first-ever $1.05 billion in a single quarter (a $4.2 billion annualized run-rate), and the Gross Loan Portfolio - now the headline lending-scale metric, replacing the net loan portfolio Grab emphasized through 2025 - more than doubled YoY to $1,438 million from $625 million. Management stated expected-credit-loss provisions as a percentage of the Gross Loan Portfolio improved YoY even as the book more than doubled, attributing this to better AI-driven underwriting rather than looser standards; the underlying dollar figures behind that percentage claim aren't broken out (see Beyond the Usual). Customer deposits across GXS Bank (Singapore) and GX Bank (Malaysia) held roughly stable QoQ at $1,630 million. Indonesia's Superbank crossed 6 million customers this quarter with daily transactions exceeding 1 million. Superbank completed an initial public offering on the Indonesia Stock Exchange during 2025, per last quarter's FY2025 20-F - a real capital-markets event that filing itself only disclosed in a "2025 Highlights" bullet, not in the earnings materials proper - and that same 20-F already downgraded Grab's own ownership disclosure from the exact 37.88% given as of Q3 2025 to a vaguer "less than 50% equity interest," almost certainly reflecting dilution from the IPO itself. This quarter's materials add nothing further - no updated percentage, and no mention of the IPO's existence at all - despite a new $105 million "acquisition of associates and joint venture" cash outflow on the balance sheet, roughly 60% larger than the $64 million outflow tied to the Q3 2025 stake increase, that could plausibly represent a post-IPO stake purchase (see Beyond the Usual).

Others posted $1 million of revenue and a $1 million Adjusted EBITDA loss, immaterial to the group total.

The clearest read across the table: every segment either accelerated or held its margin trajectory during a quarter management itself describes as facing a genuine external shock (regional fuel prices) layered on top of the year's structurally softest seasonal window. That combination - accelerating growth against both a hard seasonal comp and a real cost shock - is a stronger demonstration of the "growth and margin together" pattern first flagged in Q3 2024 than any prior quarter in a calm operating environment.

Beyond the Usual

Grab's only Q1 2026 source documents are the earnings press release (also furnished to the SEC as a 6-K exhibit, identical in content), 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 between the FY2025 filing covered last quarter and this one, so none of the legal/governance threads this blog has tracked (the resolved securities settlement, the resolved Malaysia Competition Commission case, the still-undisclosed GrabMart trademark suit, the Toyota agreement, the Singapore tax assessments) have any new company-disclosed developments this quarter - the same limitation flagged for every non-20-F quarter tracked since Q1 2025.

The New $500 Million Buyback Finally Started Executing, Via A Structure That Front-Loads The Cash Outflow

The $500 million buyback authorized alongside the Q4 2025 report sat unfunded through the entire fourth quarter - this blog noted last quarter that it was announced but not yet acted on. In March 2026, Grab entered a $250 million accelerated share repurchase agreement plus a contingent forward purchase agreement for up to $150 million more (a combined $400 million, funded entirely in Q1's cash flow statement as a $400 million "Repurchase of ordinary shares" outflow) - meaning the company paid the full $400 million upfront this quarter rather than spreading purchases over time, a materially different cash-timing profile than the open-market buybacks Grab ran through most of 2024-2025. Management framed this explicitly as opportunistic: CFO Oey called the current share price a "clear opportunity to enhance shareholder value," directly tying the timing to the stock's 27% quarterly decline rather than treating the buyback and the sell-off as unrelated events.

Financial Services' Improving Credit Quality Claim Isn't Broken Out In Dollar Terms

Management stated on the call that expected-credit-loss^» provisions as a percentage of the Gross Loan Portfolio improved year-over-year even as that portfolio more than doubled to $1,438 million - a genuinely reassuring claim if verifiable, since a rapidly scaling loan book improving its provisioning ratio simultaneously is a stronger signal than either fact alone. But neither the press release nor the presentation discloses the actual ECL provision balance or the ratio itself in dollar or percentage terms this quarter, leaving the claim unverifiable against Grab's own disclosed numbers - a reader has to take management's word for the direction of a metric that, if it moved the other way, would be the single most important credit-quality signal in the entire filing.

A Second Consecutive Quarter Of An Unexplained Associate/JV Cash Outflow, Larger Than The Last One, Now Against The Backdrop Of A Superbank IPO Neither Document Mentions

The cash flow statement shows a $105 million "Acquisition of associates and joint venture" outflow this quarter, up from $0 in the comparative Q1 2025 column and about 60% larger than Q3 2025's $64 million outflow, which lined up with Grab's disclosed Superbank stake rising to 37.88% from 30.84%. Since then, the FY2025 20-F has disclosed that Superbank completed its Indonesia Stock Exchange IPO and that Grab's stake is now described only as "less than 50%" - so this quarter's $105 million outflow could just as plausibly be a post-IPO share purchase as a continuation of the pre-IPO stake-building pattern. Neither this quarter's press release nor its presentation names what the $105 million actually bought, or mentions the IPO at all - a further inference gap layered on top of an already-imprecise ownership disclosure.

Regional Corporate Costs Grew Faster Than Revenue For The First Time In Several Quarters, Attributed Specifically To AI Infrastructure

Regional corporate costs rose 33% YoY to $114 million, outpacing 24% revenue growth - a reversal of the operating-leverage trend (costs falling as a share of revenue) this blog has tracked through most of 2025. CFO Oey specifically named "our tokenization stack and cloud capacity that underpins the Grab Intelligence layer" as the driver, framing it as a step-up investment rather than ongoing cost inflation, and guided RCC to "stabilize around current levels for the remainder of 2026" - useful directional guidance, though (see The Prescription above) without a dollar breakdown of how much of the $28 million increase is this AI infrastructure specifically versus other cost growth.

Management's Strategy For A Fuel Shock Quarter, And What It Didn't Address

CEO Anthony Tan opened by framing the quarter around resilience under pressure rather than growth for its own sake - explicitly naming the Southeast Asian fuel-price crisis as the quarter's defining external event and crediting Grab's AI-driven marketplace efficiency (Turbo driving mode, up to a 23% earnings uplift for adopting drivers; the Driver AI Assistant, used by roughly half of active driver-partners) for absorbing the shock without a growth slowdown. Tan used the earnings call to unveil "GrabX 2026," a slate of 13 new AI-powered consumer and merchant features, and gave an unusually direct update on Autonomous Vehicles: the Ai.R robotaxi service with WeRide moved from private trials to full public operation in Singapore in April, becoming - in Tan's words - the first autonomous passenger service deployed within a residential estate in Southeast Asia, having logged over 40,000 kilometers with no material incident disclosed. COO Alex Hungate detailed the specific fuel-crisis response - multi-partner fuel discount programs with Seaoil, Caltex, and Blu Energy in the Philippines, a Shell Fuel Card rebate reaching nearly 20,000 partners, and a shift to per-trip cashback incentive structures - while also flagging Mobility softness specifically in the Philippines as a below-average market this quarter, a level of country-specific granularity this blog hasn't seen in prior quarters' prepared remarks.

Neither Tan's nor Hungate's remarks addressed any of the dormant legal/governance threads (GrabMart trademark, Singapore tax assessments) - consistent with every non-20-F quarter tracked here, since those matters only surface in the annual filing. More notably, management also didn't address the new Regional Corporate Cost jump in the same level of dollar-specific detail CFO Oey brought to the convertible-notes reconciliation (see Beyond the Usual above) - a company capable of that level of disclosure precision chose not to apply it to its fastest-growing cost line this quarter. Hungate also raised Indonesia's new regulatory directive on ojol (on-demand motorcycle ride-hailing) commissions, characterizing Grab as "in active consultations" with regulators and noting the affected business is under 6% of total Mobility GMV - a new regulatory thread worth tracking in coming quarters, introduced this quarter with no resolution yet.

Target Valuation Range

DCF-implied fair value of roughly $2.68-$4.63 per share (bear to bull), against a $3.66 close - the first quarter in this blog's coverage where even the bull case clears the price and the ~$3.62 base case sits almost exactly at it. Grab's stock fell 27% this quarter to a two-year low even as Adjusted EBITDA, profit, and trailing Adjusted Free Cash Flow all hit records, so this convergence happened because the stock fell faster than the model's own inputs moved, not because the model turned more conservative.

Grab's stock closed the first quarter at $3.66, down 27% from $4.99 at the end of Q4 2025 and its lowest close in the roughly two-year window this blog has tracked - a larger single-quarter drop than Q4 2025's own 17% decline. Using the 4,092,677 thousand weighted-average basic shares Grab discloses for the quarter:

Market cap → enterprise value	Q1 2026
Share price (period-end)	$3.66
Shares outstanding	~4.093B
Market capitalization	~$15.0B
Total liabilities	n/a (net cash basis used)
Less: net cash liquidity	$5.0B
Enterprise value	~$10.0B

Market cap is down from ~$20.4B at Q4's close; EV is down from ~$15.0B three months ago. Net cash liquidity is down from $5.4 billion last quarter (see Key Financial Metrics above).

Peer-multiple sanity check	Q4 2025	Q1 2026	Change
Enterprise value	~$15.0B	~$10.0B	✅ down
EV/Revenue (annualized run-rate)	~4.2x	~2.6x	✅ down
EV/Revenue (FY guidance/actual)	~4.5x (FY2025 actual)	~2.5x (FY2026 guidance)	✅ down
EV/On-Demand GMV (annualized run-rate)	~0.62x	~0.41x	✅ down

Every multiple compressed sharply again this quarter - the second straight quarter of compression, but this time driven by a falling stock rather than Q4 2025's mix of a falling stock and rising net cash, since net cash liquidity itself fell this quarter. Updating the DCF built last quarter with the new $489 million trailing Adjusted Free Cash Flow base (versus $290 million three months ago - the single largest quarterly step-up this blog has tracked for this metric, since the weak Q1 2025 comparator rolled out of the trailing-twelve-month window), the same 13% discount rate, and five-year fade paths still anchored to management's 2028 outlook ($1.5 billion Adjusted EBITDA, 80% cash conversion):

Scenario	Year 1-5 Adjusted FCF path	Terminal growth	Implied equity value per share
Current (Q1 2026 close)	— actual market price, for reference	—	$3.66
Bear	$350M → $560M	2%	~$2.68
Base	$450M → $1,050M	3%	~$3.62
Bull	$540M → $1,450M	4%	~$4.63

The bull case now lands roughly 27% above the $3.66 close, versus Q4 2025's bull case sitting 20% below the $4.99 close - the first quarter in this blog's coverage where even the bull scenario clears the actual share price, and the base case (~$3.62) sits almost exactly at the close. That flip happened entirely because the stock fell faster than the underlying cash-flow paths moved - the paths above are meaningfully higher than last quarter's, reflecting record trailing Adjusted Free Cash Flow, not a more conservative model. Read plainly, this is the first quarter where the DCF's own base case and the market's price have converged rather than diverged in either direction - whether that means the market is now pricing something closer to fair value, or whether it's pricing in a fuel-shock-driven earnings risk this model can't see yet, isn't something a backward-looking cash-flow model can resolve on its own. This remains a directional model, not a definitive one, as noted every quarter it's been run here.

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