On Thursday, following its $40 billion merger with special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Altimeter Growth Corp (AGC.O), firm Grab listed on Nasdaq, Southeast Asia’s biggest ride-hailing and food delivery company.

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This marks the world’s biggest deal ever by a blank-check company and the biggest U.S. listing by a Southeast Asian firm.  

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The Nasdaq backdoor listing denotes a high point for the nine-year-old firm that began as a ride-hailing app in Singapore and now operates across 465 cities in eight countries.  

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Grab, founded in 2012, now calls itself a “super-app” after expanding into food, grocery, and parcel delivery and to digital payments, lending, and other financial services, valued last year at just over $16 billion.

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The company’s mission is to drive Southeast Asia forward by creating economic empowerment, and since its inception, millions of consumers have downloaded the mobile app.  S&P Global Ratings said that Grab’s flotation will provide a bigger “cash buffer” to its “cash burn”.

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But, it added that the company’s credit quality continues to be constrained by its loss-making operations, and free operating cash flows could be negative over the next 12 months.

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FINANCIAL

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Grab cut full-year adjusted net sales forecasts in September, citing renewed uncertainty amidst pandemic curbs on movement.

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Revenue for its third quarter fell 9% year-over-year, and its adjusted loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) widened 66% to $212 million.  

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On an EBITA basis, the company aims to be profitable by 2023.

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CLOSING

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Grab and Nasdaq will hold a bell-ringing in a luxury hotel in Singapore in the middle of the Asian night to mark the New York listing.

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Approximately 250 people, including executives from the exchange, Grab’s investor, and other partners are expected to attend.

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“Longer term, we’re excited about Grab Financial Group,” a unit of the company, said Chris Conforti, partner at Altimeter Capital. “I think the bell curve on that is much wider in terms of what the outcome could be, but it could be extremely large.”

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