Grab lost $1B. What this tells us abt the future of Super Apps? 🤔; Walmart is a FinTech (& Super App in the making) 🏦; One of the world’s biggest asset managers is prepping its 1st crypto product 🤯
Good Morning FinTech, March 7
Good day Everyone,
And happy Monday! I hope you got some time off during the weekend after all the craziness in the world. To make the most of the new week, I invite you to explore 3 super hot FinTech stories I’ve prepared for you today:
Grab lost $1B in 4Q21. What does this tell us about the future of Super Apps? 🤔
First earnings 📞 In its first quarterly earnings report as a public company, Southeast Asian Super App Grab has finally posted its first quarterly earnings report as a public company.
The FinTech firm reported a decline in revenue as spending increased to offer higher commissions to attract drivers and greater incentives to users and partners. There were also additional expenses relating to the company’s December 2021 initial public offering (IPO).
More on that 👉 Here are the key numbers from Grab’s first earnings call:
Gross merchandise volume (GMV) went up by 29% year over year to hit $16.1B, with the fourth quarter up 26% to reach $4.5B, the fourth consecutive record quarter.
Revenue — net of consumer, merchant, and driver-partner incentives — went up 44% YoY to $675M. Fourth-quarter revenue was $122M, down 44% YoY.
Average monthly transacting users (MTUs) for 2021 were 24.1M, down 2% YoY, mostly because of third-quarter lockdowns due to the delta and omicron variants of COVID-19. Grab closed out 2021 with 27.7M MTUs in December 2021, more than any other month last year.
56% of Grab’s users are now using two or more Grab services and the average user spending on the platform in 2021 grew 31% year over year.
Loss for 2021 was $3.6B and for the fourth quarter, $1.1B. Both figures include one-time non-cash interest expenses related to Grab’s shares.
Reflecting the above, Grab shares plummeted by as much as 37% after Q4 2021 financial results announcement.
The USP 🥊 As a refresh, we can remember that founded in 2012 as a regional ride-hailing app in Malaysia, Grab has since added food and grocery delivery, mobile banking, and payments and now operates a Super App across Southeast Asia.
Grab did the largest SPAC deal ever back in December 2021. Shares of $GRAB opened the trading day of the debut at $13.06 apiece which valued the company at nearly $40B.
Since then the company lost more than 70% of its value. That’s brutal…
What’s even crazier is that Grab is now worth close to the amount it has raised before going public. Let that sink in…
So, what does this tell us about the future of Super Apps? Here’s the takeaway: