Pacific Money | Economy | Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia’s Grab Finally Turns a Profit

Under mounting pressure from shareholders, the app finally broke into the black for the first time last year.

Southeast Asian super-app Grab achieved a significant milestone in 2025: for the first time since going public, it recorded a net profit. While audited financial results have yet to be released, the ride-hailing and delivery giant released preliminary earnings for 2025, showing it turned a full-year profit of $200 million.

Grab has been on a path toward profitability for some time, with losses narrowing from over $1.7 billion in 2022 to just $158 million in 2024. Last year, the firm, which is headquartered in Singapore but listed on the Nasdaq, finally pushed into the black.

How did they do it? Massive market share across Southeast Asia. The total value of delivery and ride-hailing transactions conducted through the app increased 21 percent year over year, from $18 billion in 2024 to $22 billion in 2025. Monthly users increased as well, from 41 million to 47 million.

This led to an increase in revenue of around 20 percent. In total, the company brought in nearly $3.4 billion in 2025. With operating expenses remaining tightly controlled, Grab finally joined its regional competitor Sea (parent company of Shopee) in the profit column.

Interestingly, while the company turned a profit, its cash from operations actually decreased. In 2024, operating cash flow was $852 million. Last year, it shrank to just $79 million. According to Grab, this is because they stepped up digital financing activities, with their loan portfolio jumping 120 percent to nearly $1.2 billion by the end of 2025.

This evidently strained their operating cash flow as money was paid out to new borrowers. Of course, as with many tech unicorns, cash is not really a problem for Grab. Despite accumulated losses of $17.5 billion on their balance sheet, Grab ended the year with almost $3.5 billion in cash on hand.

Grab’s path toward profitability reflects broader trends in Southeast Asia’s consumer-facing tech ecosystem. Go-Jek, Grab, and Sea all burst onto the scene about a decade ago, sucking up huge flows of venture capital while expanding their market share and losing enormous amounts of money. In short order, each of these companies went public: Grab and Sea in the United States and Go-Jek in Indonesia.

But being publicly listed exposed them to ever greater scrutiny. Under pressure from shareholders, they started cutting expenses in an effort to convert their dominant market position into a profitable business model. Sea reached profitability first, mainly because losses in e-commerce have........

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