Grab Holdings wants investors to look at one number: US$235 million in profit for the second quarter of 2026, a dramatic jump from just US$20 million a year ago. Splashed across the press release, that figure is meant to signal a Southeast Asian super-app finally turning the corner into sustainable profitability.
Peel back the accounting, however, and the story looks considerably less triumphant. Most of that profit swing had nothing to do with rides booked, food delivered, or loans disbursed. It came from a one-off US$307 million gain booked when Grab consolidated Indonesia’s Superbank onto its balance sheet, plus a US$66 million favourable tax movement from recognising deferred tax assets.
Also Read: Superbank under Grab: what the takeover means for Indonesia’s crowded digital banking scene
Strip those non-operating items out, and Grab’s actual operating profit (the money made from running its core deliveries, mobility and financial services businesses) was just US$19 million on revenue of US$997 million. That is an operating margin of under 2 per cent, even as the company touts “record” results and “durable, profitable growth.”
The Superbank gain is a one-time accounting trick, not a turnaround
Grab itself concedes as much in the fine print: “The Superbank remeasurement gain was one-time in nature. We expect our profit for the period in the second half to continue to reflect a degree of variability tied to fair value measurements and other non-operating items.” That is corporate-speak for: don’t expect this profit number again next quarter.
Worse, the US$307 million gain was partially offset by a US$183 million fair value loss on financial assets and liabilities, largely a function of the US$1.5 billion convertible notes Grab issued, whose embedded conversion feature must be revalued every quarter under IFRS rules. Grab even dedicates an entire section of its filing to explaining that this volatility “does not impact Grab’s underlying cash flows or adjusted EBITDA“, a defensive disclosure that suggests the company is bracing for scrutiny over how erratic its bottom line has become, swinging on derivative accounting rather than operational execution.
Buying growth is getting more expensive, not less
CEO Anthony Tan credited an “AI-led strategy” for accelerating on-demand GMV growth to 22 per cent year-on-year on a constant currency basis. But the underlying mechanics tell a more familiar story: Grab is still buying growth with incentives. Total incentives hit US$706 million for the quarter, and on-demand incentives as a proportion of on-demand GMV actually rose 72 basis points year-on-year to 10.9 per cent.
That is not a company weaning itself off subsidies; it is a company spending more per dollar of bookings to keep drivers on the road and users tapping the app, partly because of what it openly calls an “ongoing fuel crisis” hitting driver-partners across the region.
Mobility tells the same tale in miniature. Segment Adjusted EBITDA margin on GMV actually fell 9 basis points year-on-year, because Grab “recalibrated incentive spend towards driver-partners to strengthen supply.” Transactions grew 28 per cent, comfortably outpacing GMV growth of 18 per cent, meaning Grab is discounting harder to keep volumes up, precisely the behaviour investors were told the company had moved past years ago.
Financial services: still losing money, and credit quality is a growing question mark
Grab’s fintech arm remains the weak link. The financial services segment’s adjusted EBITDA improved but stayed firmly negative at -US$15 million for the quarter. More striking is the admission buried in the operating profit commentary: overall operating profit growth was “partially offset by… higher net impairment losses on financial assets mainly driven by Digibank expected credit losses.” In plain English, more borrowers at GXS Bank, GXBank, or the newly consolidated Superbank are failing to repay loans than before.
Also Read: Grab invests in EBOOST as Vietnam’s EV charging race shifts into higher gear
That would be a manageable footnote if the loan book were growing modestly. It isn’t. Gross loan portfolio scaled 197 per cent year-on-year to US$2.3 billion, and even stripping out Superbank’s contribution, it still doubled. Loans disbursed hit an all-time high of US$1.2 billion in the quarter, up 72 per cent year-on-year. Rapid loan growth paired with rising impairments is a textbook early-warning pattern in digital lending, one regulators and credit analysts watch closely, even if it barely rates a mention in Grab’s own release.
Cash generation is actually going backwards
Here is the number that should worry shareholders more than any headline profit figure: Operating cash flow fell US$8 million year-on-year to US$56 million, and adjusted free cash flow dropped a sharper US$39 million year-on-year to just US$73 million for the quarter “due to higher capital expenditures and lower net cash from operating activities.”
A company claiming record profitability should not simultaneously be generating less actual cash than it did twelve months ago. The trailing-twelve-month adjusted free cash flow figure of US$450 million looks respectable on its own, but the quarterly deterioration suggests momentum is stalling just as the profit narrative is meant to be accelerating.
A US$750M buyback, funded by whose cash exactly?
Against this backdrop, CFO Peter Oey announced the Board has authorised a further US$750 million in share repurchases, taking cumulative buyback authorisation to US$1.75 billion since 2024. Grab does sit on US$7.4 billion in gross cash liquidity and US$5.4 billion net, so it can technically afford it.
But the timing invites an obvious question: is returning cash to shareholders the best use of capital for a business whose financial services arm is still losing money, whose free cash flow just shrank, and whose loan book is expanding fast enough to raise credit-quality concerns? Buybacks flatter earnings-per-share and signal confidence to the market; they also happen to be a convenient way to support the share price while the underlying operating margin remains close to zero.
The bottom line
None of this means Grab is in trouble. Revenue growing 22 per cent to US$997 million, 54 million monthly transacting users, and an adjusted EBITDA margin expanding to 16.9 per cent from 13.3 per cent a year ago are genuine signs of a maturing platform. Eighteen straight quarters of Adjusted EBITDA growth is not nothing.
Also Read: Grab posts rare profit, but cash burn and incentive dependence tell a deeper story
But the US$235 million profit figure being pushed to the top of every headline is largely an accounting artefact of the Superbank deal, not evidence of a business that has cracked sustainable, organic profitability. Incentive intensity is rising, mobility margins are slipping, financial services is still in the red with deteriorating credit quality, and actual cash generation fell year-on-year. Investors reading past the press release’s framing will find a company still very much mid-transition, one dressing up an accounting windfall as a profitability milestone while quietly asking shareholders to fund a bigger buyback than ever before.
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