Initial public offerings or IPOs are known as a great way for investors to make a big profit in a relatively short time. On average, they can bring investors 40% returns in the first 3 months. Once the initial funding stages are out of the way, IPOs can be a great way for companies to gain exposure to the open market. Maybe you’ve heard about the new super-app that’s been taking a variety of markets by storm all around Southeast Asia, you may have wondered, “is Grab publicly traded?” Read on to find out about Grab stock IPO and all the important information about Grab IPO 2021.
Grab History
Grab Holdings Inc. is a South East Asian tech company with headquarters in Singapore. Originally a ride-hailing company, Grab was founded as MyTeksi in 2012 in Kuala Lumpur, Indonesia by two Harvard Business School Graduates, Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling. MyTeksi grew quickly, expanding its services and starting operations in new countries in the region. In 2013, the company was renamed as GrabTaxi and expanded to the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, and the following year to Vietnam and Indonesia. It also moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2014.
At the beginning of 2016, GrabTaxi became known as Grab — a brand that would become the face of all of the company’s services, such as personal cars (GrabCar), motorcycle taxis (GrabBike), carpooling (GrabHitch), and others. In October, the company added instant messaging in the app called GrabChat to simplify communication between drivers and riders with in-built message translation. In December, Grab added GrabRewards, a rewards programme and GrabShare, a service for sharing cars and taxis.
In 2017, Grab entered the fintech market after acquiring Kudo, an Indonesian online payments service, and launched GrabPay the same year, allowing users to make payments and purchases. The following year Grab bought the Indian fintech company iKaaz, which further strengthened Grab’s payment services in the region.
In 2018, they acquired Uber’s assets and operations in Southeast Asia and Uber got a 28% stake in Grab. A food delivery service was launched in the same year.
The company’s fast growth and expansion into different regions and services prompted the question, “when is Grab going public?”
Read on to find out about Grab IPO date and price and other key info.
Grab Public Listing Key Data and IPO Date
Grab IPO Date: December 2, 2021
Ticker: GRAB
Exchange: Nasdaq
IPO stock price: $10 ($11.89)
Valuation at IPO: $40 billion
Market cap (4/20/22): $11.71 billion
CEO: Anthony Tan
Category: Technology
Listing method: SPAC
Grab went public on December 2, 2021, launching its IPO on Nasdaq with the stock symbol GRAB.
The company’s management opted to go public by a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). This is a public black-check company created solely for the purpose of merging with a promising startup. This means that rather than launching a traditional IPO, when a company registers everything from scratch, they merge with an existing public company, which makes the IPO process much cheaper and quicker for them.
SPACs have been around since the 90s, but in 2020-21 they became a super popular alternative for launching a company into the market.
Grab announced its deal with Altimeter Growth in April 2021 for $39.6, the largest SPAC deal to date, and raised $4.5 billion in the launch, which became the largest market debut by a Southeast Asian company.
However, Grab IPO was not to be a success everyone had hoped for. GRAB opened 20% up from its predecessor AGC on their IPO date, but the stock soon reversed and closed at $8.75. This made Grab founder and CEO Anthony Tan, who owned 2.2% a stake, a billionaire for less than a day. After that the stock price went downhill, and so did Tan’s net worth.
So What About Investing Now?
Grab is a great example of an IPO that looked amazing on paper but only before the IPO itself. The biggest SPAC deal and the biggest launch by a Southeast Asian company turned out to be a complete flop.
If you look at the stock graph, it’s easy to get confused by the two peaks before the price went down considerably, because that makes this stock look better than it actually is. That’s a very common pattern for IPOs, they are hyped up at launch, many early investors cash out to get their quick returns within the first 3 months or so, and then the stock goes down and may go into a period of stagnation until the company justifies the hype with tangible results.
The problem with Grab is that those peaks happened to the SPAC, not Grab itself, as investors flocked to the opportunity to make a quick buck before the IPO and cashed out shortly after. So it looks like the only good time to invest in Grab was before the actual IPO.
The company’s reports following the IPO exposed big issues with profitability. They spent billions on incentives for drivers and customers to join their platform, and their user base in payments is shrinking. Even if profitability is not a big issue for a company that’s growing, losing market share is very hard to justify for a startup.
This doesn’t mean that Grab can’t do well over time, in fact if you believe the company can do well over the long-term, now may be the best time to invest at a stock price of $3, considering the Grab IPO price of $13 on the first day of trading.
Check out our IPO section to look at other scheduled IPOs. If you want to find companies that match your interests, investment goals and portfolio, try Gainy for some great IPO investment ideas, as well as established blue-chip companies and a variety of other assets.
FAQ
When is the Grab IPO date?
The Grab stock IPO date was December 2, 2021. That’s when the Southeast Asian technology company was listed on the US stock exchange Nasdaq.
Is Grab a public company?
Yes, when a company launches an IPO (or initial public offering) this means they become a public company whose shares are traded openly on one or more stock exchanges.
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