Grab Holdings reported 17% year-on-year (YoY) revenue growth to $664 million in the second quarter of 2024 (Q2 2024), along with improved operating loss and adjusted EBITDA.
Anthony Tan, group CEO and co-founder of Grab said: "We continued to harness the strength of the Grab ecosystem, and improved the usage frequency and reliability of our products and services. During the quarter, we achieved a new milestone, serving more users than ever at a record high of 41 million MTUs while delivering continued profitable growth at scale."
Tan added: "Looking ahead, we are seeing continued strength in the Southeast Asian economy and will continue to leverage our key product initiatives to serve more users in the region, while also driving cost discipline across our business."
Peter Oey, chief financial officer of Grab, said: “We delivered robust top-line growth across all of our segments, with on-demand GMV growing 18% YoY on a constant currency basis to reach another all-time high. This was driven by strong demand growth as we increased on-demand transactions by 22% YoY and drove cross usage of our products.”
Oey added: “We also achieved our 10th consecutive quarter of adjusted EBITDA growth and our second quarter of positive adjusted free cash flow. We now expect to achieve positive adjusted free cash flow for the full year 2024.”
● Revenue grew 17% YoY to $664 million in the second quarter of 2024, or 23% on a constant currency basis, driven by revenue growth across all segments.
● On-demand GMV grew 13% YoY, or 18% YoY on a constant currency basis, underpinned by growth in average user frequency and total transactions, with on-demand MTUs growing by 19% YoY.
● Total incentives were $452 million in the second quarter of 2024, with incentives primarily attributable to the on-demand segments. On-demand incentives as a proportion of on-demand GMV declined to 10.1% in the second quarter, compared to 10.5% in the same period in 2023, reflecting our focus on reducing our cost to serve while improving the health of our marketplace.
● Operating loss in the second quarter was $56 million, an improvement of $121 million YoY, primarily attributable to improvements in revenue and lower restructuring expenses.
● Loss for the quarter was $68 million, an improvement of $79 million YoY, primarily due to an improvement in group-adjusted EBITDA, partially offset by an increase in income tax expense. Our loss for the quarter included $82 million in non-cash share-based compensation expenses.
● Group adjusted EBITDA was $64 million for the quarter, an improvement of $81 million YoY compared to negative $17 million for the same period in 2023, as we continued to grow on-demand GMV and revenue while improving profitability on a segment adjusted EBITDA basis and lowering regional corporate costs.
● Regional corporate costs for the quarter were $84 million, compared to $98 million in the same period in 2023 and $91 million in the prior quarter. We are focused on driving cost efficiencies across our organisation, with staff costs within regional corporate costs declining 14% YoY.
● Cash liquidity totaled $5.6 billion at the end of the second quarter, compared to $5.3 billion at the end of the prior quarter, with a substantial part of the cash inflow attributed to the growth in deposits from customers in the banking business, which increased to $730 million from $479 million from the prior quarter. Our net cash liquidity was $5.3 billion at the end of the second quarter, compared to $5.0 billion at the end of the prior quarter.
● During the second quarter, pursuant to our $500 million share repurchase programme, we repurchased an additional 9.6 million shares with an aggregate principal amount of $34.6 million. Cumulatively, we have repurchased 40 million shares with the aggregate principal amount of $131 million.
● Net cash from operating activities was $272 million in the second quarter of 2024, an improvement of $323 million YoY, mainly driven by an increase in deposits from customers in the banking business and a reduction in loss before income tax. Correspondingly, adjusted free cash flow was positive at $36 million in the second quarter of 2024, improving by $56 million YoY on improving profitability levels.
● In June 2024, we published our 2023 ESG report where we shared more about the progress we have made on our commitment to our environmental, social, and governance priorities. Our key ESG highlights in 2023 include recording 99.99% of all rides occurring without any safety incidents, and reducing or recycling over 7,365 tons of single-use plastics.
Our FY 2024 revenue outlook assumes an approximate 3.5 percentage point currency headwind to total YoY growth. The above outlook represents our expectations as of the date of this press release, and may be subject to change.
Deliveries revenue grew 11% YoY, or 17% YoY on a constant currency basis, to $356 million in the second quarter from $320 million in the same period in 2023. The strong growth was primarily attributed to growing demand from our food deliveries business, and increasing contributions from our Jaya and advertising businesses.
● Deliveries GMV grew 9% YoY, or 14% YoY on a constant currency basis, to an all-time high of $2,850 million in the second quarter of 2024, driven by an increase in total transactions and deliveries MTUs.
● Deliveries segment adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of GMV was 1.5% in the second quarter of 2024, compared to 0.4% in the second quarter of 2023, primarily driven by lowered overhead expenses, greater optimisation of our incentive spend as a percentage of deliveries GMV and increased contributions from advertising.
● During the second quarter, the total number of monthly active advertisers who joined our self-serve platform increased 56% YoY to 168,000 while average spend by monthly active advertisers on our self-serve platform increased 26% YoY, as we continued to deepen advertising penetration among our merchant-partners.
● Adoption of saver deliveries, which offers users a lower delivery fee in exchange for a longer delivery time and improved batch rates, has seen adoption growing to 28% of deliveries transactions in the second quarter of 2024, from 10% in the same period last year.
● Mobility revenues continued to grow strongly, rising 19% YoY, or 23% YoY on a constant currency basis, in the second quarter of 2024. Growth was underpinned by strong growth in mobility MTUs and transactions. Notably, mobility MTUs grew 26% YoY, while average transactions per mobility MTU also improved by 9% YoY.
● Mobility GMV increased 20% YoY, or 25% YoY on a constant currency basis to $1,584 million during the quarter.
● Mobility segment adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of mobility GMV was 8.2% in the second quarter of 2024, declining from 8.6% in the same period last year, consistent with our efforts to invest in rolling out new product initiatives to drive sustainable growth in the long-term.
● Saver transport rides, which are now available in five of our markets, have been instrumental in adding more users onto our platform and yielding positive loyalty and engagement uplifts:
○ 14% of new group MTUs joined the Grab platform via saver transport rides.
○ Saver transport users recorded transaction frequency levels that were 1.9x higher than non-saver transport users in Indonesia.
○ 8% of MTUs who joined the Grab platform through saver transport rides were cross-sold to food deliveries in the same month.
● As we continued to increase the adoption of saver transport rides, we also rolled out several high-value offerings. Our advance booking ride-hailing product, which was relaunched earlier this year, drives over 3x higher earnings per ride for our driver-partners as compared to our conventional mobility products.
● We continued to increase active driver supply while optimising our existing driver supply to meet the growing demand for our services. During the quarter, total monthly active drivers increased 13% YoY and 5% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), while driver retention rates remained stable at 90%. Our efforts to improve driver supply resulted in an 11 percentage points reduction YoY in the proportion of surged mobility rides.
Financial services
● Revenue for financial services grew 54% YoY, or 61% YoY on a constant currency basis, to $60 million in the second quarter of 2024. The YoY growth was driven by increased contributions mainly from lending across GrabFin and Digibank, and further optimisation of payments incentive spend.
● Segment adjusted EBITDA for the quarter improved by 44% YoY to negative $24 million, attributed to the improved growth and monetisation of our lending products that drove higher revenues and margins, along with reductions in overhead expenses as we continue to optimise costs.
● We continued to focus on lending to our ecosystem partners through GrabFin and our Digibanks, with total loans disbursed growing by 43% YoY and 4% QoQ to $500 million during the quarter. Our total loan portfolio outstanding at the end of the second quarter grew 71% YoY to $397 million from $233 million in the prior year period.
● Customer deposits in our digital bank business grew strongly to $730 million in the second quarter from $33 million in the same period last year and from $479 million in the prior quarter. The strong growth was mainly driven by an increased number of deposit customers in both GXS Bank and GXBank, our digital bank in Malaysia. In less than a year since its public launch, GXBank has over 750,000 deposit customers which include more than 500,000 GXBank debit cardholders as of July 2024.
● Revenue for Others grew 97% YoY, to $1 million in the second quarter of 2024, with segment adjusted EBITDA at $1 million in the same period.
Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker