Grab Raises Its Forecast as Fuel Costs Test Ride and Delivery Growth

Grab raised its 2026 revenue and earnings forecasts after quarterly sales reached $997 million, despite fuel costs pressuring its drivers across Southeast Asia. The company spent more on incentives to protect supply while rides, deliveries, and financial services continued expanding.

That combination matters more than a routine earnings beat. Grab is showing that it can defend demand and improve adjusted earnings while absorbing a sudden cost shock. However, the protection was not free, and part of the reported profit came from a one-time accounting gain.

The central contest is between Grab’s operating scale and the rising cost of keeping drivers, merchants, and consumers active. Rivals such as GoTo’s Gojek also continue investing in their own on-demand networks. Grab’s results suggest scale is winning for now, but they do not settle how durable that advantage will be.

Grab Raised Guidance After a Record Quarter

Grab’s forecast increase rests on broad transaction growth, not a single unusually strong business line.

Grab reported second-quarter revenue of $997 million, up 22% from the same period in 2025. Revenue grew 21% after adjusting for currency movements, according to its quarterly results.

On-demand gross merchandise value, or GMV, reached $6.46 billion. GMV measures the value of transactions completed through Grab’s mobility and delivery services before the company recognizes its own revenue.

That total increased 21% year over year and 22% on a constant-currency basis. It provides a clearer picture of activity across Grab’s marketplace than revenue alone.

Monthly transacting users reached 53.9 million, compared with 46.2 million one year earlier. The 17% increase pushed Grab to a new quarterly user record.

Spending per monthly transacting user also increased. On-demand GMV per user rose from $127 to $131, showing that growth did not depend entirely on adding occasional customers.

Grab responded by raising its full-year revenue outlook to between $4.10 billion and $4.15 billion. The previous range was $4.04 billion to $4.10 billion.

The new forecast implies annual revenue growth of 22% to 23%. The previous outlook called for growth between 20% and 22%.

Management also raised its adjusted EBITDA forecast to between $720 million and $740 million. The earlier range was $700 million to $720 million.

Adjusted EBITDA excludes financing effects, taxes, depreciation, stock compensation, acquisition costs, and several other items. It is useful for comparing operating progress, but it is not the same as IFRS profit.

Grab produced $168 million of adjusted EBITDA during the quarter. That was 54% higher than the $109 million reported a year earlier.

The adjusted EBITDA margin reached 16.9% of revenue, up from 13.3%. Grab said this was its eighteenth consecutive quarter of adjusted EBITDA growth.

Those figures explain the guidance increase, but acquisitions also influenced the outlook. Grab began consolidating Indonesia’s Superbank in June and completed its acquisition of Stash in July.

Stash will enter Grab’s financial services results during the third quarter. Consequently, the raised forecast combines growth from existing operations with contributions from newly consolidated businesses.

Grab also authorized another $750 million share repurchase program. That brought cumulative repurchase authorization since 2024 to $1.75 billion, although authorization does not require the company to buy every share permitted.

The board’s decision signals confidence in Grab’s liquidity position. Gross cash liquidity stood at $7.4 billion, while net cash liquidity reached $5.4 billion at quarter-end.

Still, cash generation weakened inside the quarter. Operating cash flow declined from $64 million to $56 million, while adjusted free cash flow fell from $112 million to $73 million.

The trailing twelve-month adjusted free cash flow figure remained much stronger at $450 million. Investors must therefore distinguish a healthy longer trend from a softer three-month result.

Fuel Prices Turned Driver Supply Into the Real Test

Grab’s strongest signal was its ability to expand transactions while spending more to keep drivers earning and available.

Higher fuel costs place immediate pressure on ride-hailing economics. Drivers pay for fuel before completing trips, while platforms risk losing demand if they pass the entire increase to passengers.

A platform can respond by raising fares, lowering its commission, or adding incentives. Each option shifts the burden, but none removes the underlying cost.

Grab chose to direct more support toward drivers. The company committed over $7 million during the quarter to protect on-demand driver earnings amid what it called an ongoing fuel crisis.

Total incentives reached $706 million. This included $317 million for partners and $389 million for consumers, compared with $239 million and $307 million one year earlier.

Partner incentives rose 32%, while consumer incentives increased 27%. Both outpaced the company’s reported revenue growth.

On-demand incentives represented 10.9% of GMV. That share increased by 72 basis points from the comparable quarter.

Grab attributed the increase to fuel-related driver support and targeted spending on affordable consumer products. It also used incentives to encourage customers to transact more frequently.

This spending helped expand supply. The average number of active driver-partners increased 19% and reached a new high, according to Grab’s earnings presentation.

More drivers can reduce waiting times and prevent prices from rising too sharply during busy periods. Greater availability can then support more transactions, creating a useful marketplace cycle.

Mobility transactions increased 28%, considerably faster than mobility GMV growth of 18%. That difference indicates that customers completed more trips while average transaction values grew more slowly.

Grab said its affordable product tiers helped produce that pattern. Lower-cost rides can widen demand, but their economics depend on efficient matching and sufficient driver density.

Mobility revenue reached $331 million, up 12%. Mobility GMV rose to $2.21 billion, while segment adjusted EBITDA increased 16% to $191 million.

The margin picture was less straightforward. Mobility segment adjusted EBITDA equaled 8.6% of mobility GMV, nine basis points below the prior-year level.

That modest decline supports Grab’s explanation that it redirected spending toward drivers. It also demonstrates the tradeoff created by higher fuel expenses.

The company protected marketplace availability at the cost of some mobility margin. Rising transaction volume then helped preserve overall segment earnings growth.

Grab’s scale makes that strategy easier to sustain. A larger pool of passengers gives drivers more opportunities, while broader driver coverage can make the service more useful to passengers.

The same network can also support food, grocery, and parcel delivery. Drivers may move among categories as demand changes during the day.

However, scale does not make fuel inflation harmless. Incentives can become difficult to reduce if drivers begin treating them as part of normal earnings.

Consumers may also resist higher prices once support ends. Grab must eventually show whether its affordable products remain attractive without elevated promotional spending.

Electric vehicles offer one longer-term response to fuel volatility. Grab and GAC announced plans in January to introduce an initial 20,000 electric vehicles across six Southeast Asian markets.

The electric vehicle program targets Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand. It will not remove short-term fuel pressure, but it shows how Grab intends to reduce exposure over time.

For now, incentives remain the faster tool. The next few quarters will reveal whether Grab can withdraw some support without weakening driver supply or transaction growth.

Delivery Demand Became the Main Growth Engine

Deliveries supplied Grab’s largest revenue contribution while advertising helped convert transaction growth into higher margins.

Delivery GMV reached $4.25 billion, rising 22% on a reported basis and 24% at constant currency. That made deliveries nearly twice as large as mobility by quarterly GMV.

Delivery revenue climbed 21% to $531 million. The business contributed more than half of Grab’s total quarterly revenue.

Grab linked the increase to more transactions, more active users, and higher GMV per user. This combination suggests consumers were not merely placing smaller promotional orders.

Merchant participation also expanded. Average monthly active delivery merchants increased 8%, while their average earnings rose 14%.

Those numbers matter because delivery marketplaces can suffer when restaurants or stores see insufficient demand. Rising merchant earnings give businesses a reason to remain available and maintain selection.

Grab’s delivery segment produced $96 million of adjusted EBITDA, up 53% from $63 million. Its adjusted EBITDA margin reached 2.3% of GMV, compared with 1.8% one year earlier.

Advertising helped produce that improvement. Grab sells placements to merchants that want greater visibility inside its app, adding revenue without requiring another physical delivery.

Quarterly active advertisers using Grab’s self-service platform increased 21%. Their average spending rose 24%.

This advertising layer is important because delivery margins are structurally constrained by labor, incentives, and order fulfillment. Advertising can extract more revenue from activity that already exists.

A restaurant, for example, can pay to appear higher when a nearby customer searches for lunch. Grab receives advertising revenue while the existing delivery network completes the resulting order.

That model also gives Grab an informational advantage. It can connect advertising performance with purchases, locations, delivery times, and repeat behavior across its marketplace.

Management says its internal intelligence layer applies these signals across the platform. Grab describes that layer as a shared system for personalization, matching, and operating decisions.

The claim deserves careful framing. Grab has disclosed strong marketplace outcomes, but its public results do not isolate how much growth came from artificial intelligence.

Other factors also influenced the quarter. These included consumer incentives, affordable products, regional demand, advertising adoption, and currency movements.

Grab’s prepared remarks describe AI as part of a wider operating strategy. They do not provide a controlled comparison between AI-driven and conventional processes.

The more defensible conclusion is narrower. Grab’s marketplace generated enough activity to grow transactions, merchant earnings, advertising, and segment profit together.

That outcome supports the company’s scale thesis. It does not establish that technology alone caused the performance.

Delivery growth also exposes Grab to another form of cost pressure. Higher fuel prices affect couriers, while consumers remain sensitive to delivery fees and menu markups.

Grab can offset some pressure through denser routes and better matching. Yet delivery still requires a person to move each order across a city.

Advertising therefore carries unusual strategic weight. It gives Grab a revenue stream that can grow without increasing the physical cost of every transaction.

The next test is whether advertisers continue increasing spending when incentives normalize. If merchant returns remain attractive, advertising can keep lifting delivery economics.

If merchant spending slows, Grab will rely more heavily on commissions and consumer fees. That would make affordability and driver compensation harder to balance.

GoTo Keeps the Pressure on Grab’s Scale Strategy

Grab’s results raise the competitive bar, but GoTo’s improving profitability prevents Southeast Asia’s on-demand market from becoming a one-company story.

GoTo operates Gojek, a major rival in ride-hailing and delivery, particularly in Indonesia. Both companies combine consumer services with merchant tools and financial products.

GoTo reported its first quarterly net profit in the first quarter of 2026. Its on-demand adjusted EBITDA increased 40% to 439 billion Indonesian rupiah.

The company said premium products helped improve its on-demand performance. Its first-quarter results show that Grab is not the only regional platform turning scale into earnings.

The two companies do not compete with identical footprints. Grab operates across eight Southeast Asian countries, while GoTo’s strongest position remains in Indonesia.

Indonesia’s size makes that concentration meaningful. Competition there can affect driver incentives, commissions, delivery fees, and consumer promotions across the region.

Grab’s quarterly performance pressures GoTo in three ways. First, Grab added users while increasing spending per user.

Second, Grab expanded driver supply during a fuel shock. That can improve pickup times and service reliability in contested cities.

Third, Grab used advertising and financial services to supplement the economics of rides and deliveries. This creates revenue sources beyond transaction commissions.

GoTo is pursuing a related strategy. Its ecosystem connects Gojek services with payments and other consumer activities, giving it several ways to monetize customer relationships.

The competitive question is therefore not simply which application books more rides. It is which platform can support low consumer prices, acceptable driver earnings, and rising profit at the same time.

Grab’s latest quarter provides evidence for its model. Total segment adjusted EBITDA increased 35% to $272 million, even as total incentives increased substantially.

However, the result does not show that Grab can relax spending without losing momentum. Platforms often face a difficult transition after promotions and subsidies train marketplace behavior.

GoTo’s improving results increase that risk. A competitor with better cash generation can defend important markets without relying on the spending patterns of earlier growth phases.

Local competitors also matter. Different countries contain taxi operators, delivery specialists, and ride platforms that can compete on price or local relationships.

Grab’s broad geographic footprint can spread investment and technology costs across more users. It can also make regulation, driver conditions, and consumer behavior more complicated.

A policy that works in Singapore may not transfer directly to Indonesia or Vietnam. Fuel prices, vehicle types, income levels, and payment habits vary widely.

Grab’s response depends on localized pricing and incentives. That flexibility is an advantage only if the company can avoid creating excessive operational complexity.

Its rising corporate costs show part of this burden. Regional corporate expenses increased by $12 million to $104 million, driven mainly by cloud and software costs.

Those costs narrowed by $10 million from the first quarter because staff and professional expenses fell. The comparison suggests technology investment remains material, even as other overhead improves.

Grab’s strategy also reaches beyond its existing markets. Its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero’s foodpanda business in Taiwan would create a ninth market and its first outside Southeast Asia.

The transaction still requires regulatory approval and is expected to close during the second half of 2026. Grab has said it expects the business to contribute at least $60 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2028.

Expansion introduces new execution demands while the company is managing fuel pressure at home. It also makes clean comparisons between organic growth and acquired revenue more important.

The competitive advantage Grab wants to demonstrate is disciplined scale. Its rival is not merely GoTo, but the possibility that growth becomes dependent on incentives, acquisitions, or favorable accounting effects.

What the Headline Profit Does Not Show

Grab’s $235 million quarterly profit overstates the contribution from recurring operations because a one-time Superbank gain played a major role.

Profit for the period increased from $20 million to $235 million. That change appears dramatic beside revenue growth of 22%.

Yet the largest driver was not ride or delivery earnings. Grab recognized a $307 million gain after consolidating Superbank in June.

The gain resulted from remeasuring Grab’s existing interest when it gained control of the Indonesian digital bank. Grab explicitly described the gain as one-time.

A $66 million favorable movement in income-tax expense also supported profit. These benefits were partly offset by a $183 million increase in fair-value losses on financial assets and liabilities.

Operating profit provides a more restrained view. It increased from $7 million to $19 million, a $12 million improvement.

That result still shows progress, but it is far smaller than the $215 million increase in total quarterly profit. Readers should not treat every dollar of reported profit as recurring marketplace earnings.

Adjusted EBITDA removes many non-operating effects and rose substantially. However, it also excludes stock compensation, acquisition costs, and other genuine expenses.

No single measure captures the entire business. Revenue and GMV describe scale, operating profit reflects recognized operating costs, and cash flow tracks actual cash movement.

Those measures pointed in different directions during the quarter. Revenue, GMV, operating profit, and adjusted EBITDA increased, while quarterly operating and adjusted free cash flow declined.

Higher working-capital requirements reduced operating cash flow. Increased capital expenditures also contributed to lower adjusted free cash flow.

Financial services create another layer of uncertainty. Segment revenue climbed 59% to $134 million, helped by lending and Superbank consolidation.

Grab’s gross loan portfolio reached $2.32 billion, up 197% from $781 million. Excluding Superbank, the portfolio still doubled year over year.

Loans disbursed during the quarter rose 72% to $1.2 billion. Customer deposits across GXS Bank, GXBank, and Superbank totaled $2.5 billion.

Faster lending can support revenue, but it also increases exposure to credit losses. Grab reported higher impairment losses on financial assets, mainly from expected credit losses at its digital banks.

Financial services adjusted EBITDA remained negative at $15 million. That was an improvement from a $26 million loss one year earlier.

The business is approaching a meaningful transition. Management has targeted financial services segment break-even during the second half of 2026.

Superbank and Stash can accelerate revenue and diversify Grab’s earnings. They also make the group harder to evaluate using ride and delivery indicators alone.

Stash adds a United States investing business, while Superbank deepens Grab’s exposure to Indonesian lending and deposits. Each operation carries different regulatory and financial risks.

Management’s new forecast includes both underlying growth and acquisition effects. Investors should therefore track organic performance separately from consolidation benefits.

The forecast also remains vulnerable to fuel prices. Grab has shown that incentives can protect driver supply, but continued support would consume more marketplace economics.

An easing fuel shock would strengthen the company’s operating argument. Grab could reduce support while retaining the additional drivers and customers attracted during the quarter.

A prolonged shock would create a harder choice. Grab might accept lower margins, raise consumer prices, or ask drivers to absorb more expense.

Competition restricts every option. Higher fares can send customers to Gojek or local alternatives, while lower driver support can weaken availability.

The quarter proves that Grab navigated the initial pressure effectively. It does not prove that the cost can remain elevated indefinitely.

Three Signals Will Test Grab’s Raised Forecast

Driver incentives, financial services losses, and organic revenue growth will determine whether Grab’s stronger outlook survives beyond one favorable quarter.

The first signal is on-demand incentives as a share of GMV. That measure increased to 10.9% as Grab supported drivers and promoted affordable services.

A decline alongside continued transaction growth would strengthen the earnings story. It would show that Grab retained marketplace activity without maintaining the same level of support.

A further increase would weaken the case for operating leverage. Growth would remain real, but more of its economics would flow back to consumers and partners.

Driver supply should be read alongside that ratio. Grab’s active driver base increased 19% during the quarter, helping support 28% mobility transaction growth.

If supply remains high after fuel support eases, the program will look like a successful temporary intervention. If drivers leave quickly, incentives will resemble a continuing operating requirement.

The second signal is financial services adjusted EBITDA. The segment reduced its quarterly loss to $15 million and has targeted break-even in the second half.

Reaching that point without a sharp deterioration in credit quality would add a new earnings contributor. It would also validate part of Grab’s super-app strategy.

Missing the target would raise questions about the cost of the loan portfolio’s rapid expansion. Rising expected credit losses would be particularly important.

Investors should separate accounting gains from operating progress. The Superbank remeasurement benefit will not repeat, while lending performance will develop over many quarters.

The third signal is organic revenue growth after Superbank and Stash enter the comparison. Grab’s raised guidance incorporates contributions from both businesses.

The company should continue disclosing enough segment detail to show what existing operations produced. Otherwise, acquisition revenue can obscure changes in the original marketplace.

Delivery GMV, mobility transactions, advertising activity, and revenue per user provide useful supporting indicators. Together, they show whether the core platform is deepening engagement.

GoTo’s next results will offer a competitive reference. Continued profit growth at Gojek’s parent would signal that both companies have entered a more disciplined phase.

That outcome would be healthier than a return to unchecked subsidies. It would still keep pressure on Grab to offer consumers value and drivers reliable earnings.

Grab’s second quarter deserves attention because several difficult goals moved together. Users, transactions, revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and driver supply all increased during a fuel shock.

The caveats are equally concrete. Incentives grew faster than revenue, quarterly cash flow weakened, and one-time items inflated reported profit.

Grab now needs to prove that the quarter created durable activity rather than expensive activity. The raised forecast is management’s clear answer, but the next results must supply the evidence.

Readers following the story should focus less on a single profit figure and more on the operating chain beneath it. Are drivers staying, are users returning, and are incentives becoming more efficient?

Those questions will decide whether Grab’s forecast marks a lasting improvement or a costly defense against fuel and competition. The next earnings update should make that distinction much clearer.