Grab has just announced its Q4/2023 business report. Accordingly, the Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant recorded a profit of 11 million USD, up from a loss of 391 million USD in the same period in 2022. According to Grab, the results were mainly due to improved EBITDA, reasonable changes in investment and reduced stock-based compensation expenses.

Revenue for the quarter reached $653 million. For the full year 2023, Grab lost $485 million, down 72% from $1.74 billion a year ago.

In addition to ride-hailing, Grab offers financial services such as payments and insurance, as well as food, grocery and parcel delivery.

Grab rides exceeded pre-Covid-19 levels by the end of 2023 and demand was strong, CFO Peter Oey told CNBC , adding that travel services were also growing rapidly.

"If you look at deliveries, we had a record 13% growth year-on-year. At the same time, we have more users on the platform than ever before. So we have really strong momentum," he said on CNBC 's "Squawk Box Asia."

For most of its life, Grab has been unprofitable, and has even lost billions of dollars since its founding in 2012. In their early years, tech startups like Grab tend to prioritize growth over profits, which means burning a lot of money. But with global macroeconomic instability slowing growth, they have been forced to innovate, focus on profits, and spend more cautiously.

In the fourth quarter of 2023, total incentives as a percentage of gross merchandise value sold - including partner and user incentives - fell to 7.3% from 8.2% a year earlier, Grab said in its report. Grab offers incentives to attract drivers and passengers to its platform, but these are waning as the company moves to boost profitability.

On whether Grab has reached a point where it no longer needs to “reward” people to stay on the platform, Mr. Oey believes that incentives will “always be a lever” for the business.

“I don’t think we’ll ever see a world without incentives,” he told CNBC, adding that incentives help them ensure adequate supply of drivers and attract price-sensitive customers.

For 2024, Grab expects revenue to reach between $2.7 billion and $2.75 billion.

(According to CNBC)