Grab Holdings’ outlook remains broadly constructive despite increasing competitive risks in Southeast Asia’s food-delivery market, with strong growth in its mobility business and continued improvement in deliveries margins providing support to the group’s earnings, according to Maybank Investment Bank said on Monday.
Maybank maintained its buy recommendation on Grab with a target price of $5.40, saying the company’s improving profitability and resilient on-demand business continue to underpin its investment case.
However, it cautioned that the eventual ownership of Foodpanda’s Southeast Asian operations could influence the competitive landscape and create downside risks to Grab’s Deliveries growth and margins.
Foodpanda remains a significant player in the region despite losing market share in recent years. Its gross merchandise value (GMV) was about $2.6 billion in 2025, equivalent to roughly 11 percent of Southeast Asia’s food-delivery market.
The broader regional food-delivery market expanded 18 percent year-on-year to $22.7 billion in 2025, highlighting the structural growth opportunity available to major platforms.
Grab remains the dominant player in the region, but Maybank believes Foodpanda’s next owner could determine whether competitive pressure increases or remains manageable.
Foodpanda is currently the No. 2 food-delivery platform in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, with each market representing roughly $3 billion in annual gross merchandise value (GMV).
In Singapore, Foodpanda held a 24 percent market share compared with Grab’s 69 percent, while in Malaysia Foodpanda had a 22 percent share, ahead of ShopeeFood’s 11 percent.
The competitive landscape has already undergone significant changes. Deliveroo exited Singapore in March 2026 after holding around 7 percent of the market, leaving Grab and Foodpanda as the two largest operators. Foodpanda also exited Thailand, where it had only around 5 percent market share.
Maybank said the closure of Foodpanda’s remaining Southeast Asian operations would eliminate its losses but would also hand over its consumer base, merchant relationships, rider network and demand to competitors without any corresponding consideration.
This makes a strategic sale or continued operation more economically rational than simply shutting the business, in Maybank’s view.
Foodpanda ownership key to competitive outlook
The research house identified two broad options for Uber, Foodpanda’s parent company, if it decides to change the business’s ownership structure: retain and improve Foodpanda, or sell it to a strategic buyer.
Among potential buyers, Maybank sees ShopeeFood as having the strongest strategic fit.
A combination with Sea’s broader ecosystem could allow Foodpanda’s delivery network to be integrated with Shopee’s e-commerce platform, payments, advertising, logistics and membership businesses.
ShopeeVIP had more than seven million subscribers at the end of 2025, while membership benefits in Malaysia already include ShopeeFood-related offerings. This creates the potential for Foodpanda to become part of a broader consumer ecosystem rather than operating solely as a standalone food-delivery platform.
Such a combination could strengthen ShopeeFood’s ability to acquire and retain customers, increase cross-selling opportunities and potentially improve the economics of food delivery through greater customer engagement across multiple services.
For Grab, however, a stronger ShopeeFood would represent a more formidable competitor.
Food delivery is particularly sensitive to scale because platforms compete for consumers, restaurants and delivery riders at the same time. A larger customer ecosystem could allow a competitor to sustain promotional spending for longer or use other businesses to subsidise customer acquisition.
Maybank said Meituan’s Keeta business is another potential buyer, although it considers this scenario less likely.
Meituan has already demonstrated that it is willing to invest heavily in overseas expansion. Its Keeta business has also made progress on unit economics, with Hong Kong reaching positive economics in October 2025 and Saudi Arabia becoming profitable in July 2026.
A Meituan-backed Foodpanda could therefore introduce a competitor with substantial experience in food delivery and instant retail.
Maybank noted that Bloomberg had reported in November 2023 that Meituan had held discussions with Delivery Hero over Foodpanda’s Southeast Asian operations, although no transaction subsequently materialised.
Deliveries remains important to Grab
While Foodpanda-related competition represents a key risk, Maybank stressed that Grab’s overall investment case is broader than Deliveries.
Grab’s Deliveries business continues to grow at a healthy pace. Second-quarter 2026 Deliveries GMV increased 24 percent year-on-year on a constant-currency basis, while its EBITDA margin improved by 45 basis points year-on-year to 2.3 percent of GMV.
The improvement is important because Grab has been moving its food-delivery business away from its previous focus on growth at any cost towards sustainable profitability.
Maybank’s base case assumes Deliveries GMV will increase from $17.4 billion in 2026 to $29.5 billion in 2030, implying a compound annual growth rate of about 14 percent.
Over the same period, Deliveries’ EBITDA-to-GMV margin is expected to improve to 3.7 percent, compared with 2.3 percent in the second quarter of 2026.
This combination of GMV expansion and margin improvement would allow Deliveries EBITDA to increase substantially, supporting Grab’s overall earnings growth.
However, the research house warned that greater competition could slow both components.
Under a moderate competitive scenario, Maybank estimates Deliveries GMV growth could slow to around 11 percent annually through 2030, while the EBITDA margin could reach only 3.2 percent.
This would reduce 2030 Deliveries EBITDA to about $845 million, compared with $1.09 billion under the base case, representing a 23 percent shortfall.
Under a more aggressive competitive scenario, GMV growth could slow to around 8 percent annually and the EBITDA margin could reach only 2.7 percent.
Deliveries EBITDA would then be around $640 million in 2030, or 41 percent below Maybank’s base-case forecast.
The valuation impact would also be meaningful. Maybank estimates its sum-of-the-parts valuation would decline by around 8 percent under the moderate scenario and 16% under the aggressive scenario.
Nevertheless, the research house does not view these scenarios as sufficient to undermine Grab’s broader earnings trajectory.
Mobility provides important earnings support
A key reason is Grab’s Mobility business, which has become an increasingly important contributor to group profitability.
Mobility generated $191 million in EBITDA in the second quarter of 2026, nearly twice the US$96 million generated by Deliveries.
Its EBITDA-to-GMV margin was also substantially higher at 8.6 percent, compared with 2.3 percent for Deliveries.
Mobility GMV increased 18 percent year-on-year, indicating that the business continues to benefit from healthy demand despite the competitive pressures affecting other parts of the platform.
This higher-margin business gives Grab some protection against a slowdown in food delivery.
Even if competition causes Deliveries margins to expand more slowly than expected, stronger Mobility earnings could partly offset the impact at the group level.
The difference in profitability between the two businesses is also important when assessing the potential impact of Foodpanda.
A stronger Foodpanda or ShopeeFood would primarily challenge Grab in food delivery rather than directly affecting its ride-hailing operations. As a result, the competitive threat is concentrated in a business that currently generates a lower EBITDA margin than mobility.
This provides some diversification within Grab’s overall business model.
Uber stake remains an overhang
Another factor investors will continue to monitor is Uber’s 13.5 percent stake in Grab.
Maybank sees the potential disposal of Uber’s Grab holding as a separate issue from the future ownership of Foodpanda.
Uber could potentially monetise its Grab investment to fund other investments, acquisitions or share buybacks. A large secondary placement could create a technical overhang for Grab’s share price even if there is no deterioration in the company’s underlying operating performance.
Grab’s expanded share-buyback programme could provide some capacity to absorb potential secondary supply, although the timing and size of any disposal would remain difficult to predict.
The Uber stake therefore represents an additional source of uncertainty for investors, alongside Foodpanda competition.
Currency could weigh on reported growth
Foreign-exchange movements are another near-term consideration.
Maybank expects weakness in several ASEAN currencies to reduce Grab’s reported third-quarter 2026 GMV growth by around 3-4 percentage points year-on-year, particularly because of currency effects in Indonesia and the Philippines.
The sequential impact is estimated at around 1.3 percentage points.
The distinction is important because the foreign-exchange drag does not necessarily indicate a corresponding deterioration in underlying consumer demand.
Grab operates across several major Southeast Asian markets, so changes in local currencies can affect the translation of GMV and financial results into US dollars even when local-currency activity remains relatively healthy.
Investors will therefore need to distinguish between underlying operating growth and reported US-dollar growth when assessing Grab’s quarterly performance.
Outlook remains positive, but competition bears watching
The future ownership of Foodpanda remains the biggest variable for Grab’s deliveries outlook.
A sale to ShopeeFood could create a stronger regional competitor by combining Foodpanda’s established delivery network with Sea’s wider digital ecosystem. A Meituan-backed acquisition could potentially bring greater operational expertise and financial resources to the regional food-delivery market.
At the same time, simply closing Foodpanda would remove a competitor but could also transfer its customers, merchants and riders to Grab and other platforms.
For Grab, the most important issue is therefore not whether Foodpanda survives, but who ultimately controls the business and how aggressively the new owner competes.
Maybank’s base case remains that Grab can continue to grow its overall earnings despite these risks. Deliveries is expected to remain a meaningful growth contributor, while Mobility’s higher margins provide an important earnings cushion.
For the research house, Grab’s ability to convert rising transaction volumes into sustainable margins will remain the central driver of its longer-term earnings, while the competitive response from Foodpanda’s eventual owner will determine how much of that upside the company can capture.
Malaysia remains Grab’s biggest revenue source with $622M in H1/2026