re: The "SuperApp" of SE Asia - GRAB

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what would be your goal on position size and cost basis at what point in time? Assuming you’ll use premium proceeds if any to scale into shares. Let’s do an experiment…it’s trading at 3.05 right now.

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I’m long leaps as the main strategy, not short calls.
I did sell four covered calls though on Friday to collect $100.
I bought June $5 strikes with that money.

I may be misunderstanding, but this makes the most sense the way I’m thinking:

Since options provide leverage, cheaper entry with higher upside… let’s say I spent $744 on options this week.
Enough money to buy 244 shares based on 3.05 close.

THREE WAYS to own the target of 500 shares:
1. 20 weeks DCA - buy 25 shares at market close every Wednesday

2. Buy $80 worth of stock at market close every Wednesday.

3. The unrealistic option, but worth tracking: Hypothetically if I had bought 500 shares at $3.05 last week.
$1,525 initial cost.
We’ll call it unrealistic because I only had $744 to spend, and I spent it all on call LEAPS.

That’s the whole point of the experiment.
Option 4:
Can someone take roughly half the money needed for their desired position, and trade their way into a position that’s double the size of what their initial investment would have purchased?
In this case, $744 would have bought 244 shares. Can the options create the capital for 488 (or even 500)?

Should be fun!
Looks like I may be off to a bad start tomorrow, but I’m hoping that this is exactly the kind of company that’s less impacted by AI sentiment.

We will see.

For anyone interested, this is high quality content. The Spotify podcasters got to interview the CFO.

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quote: yall keep in mind that at $3 share you’re paying 1% in ADR fees as well. I didn't see that fee pop up on schwab. Surprised me.

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You also get to look forward to mandatory foreign tax withholding every time you sell or receive a distribution.

2500 shares.
Wish I didn't own them at this current time (bought at $4).
Down 40% YTD
Massive share count.

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Wish I didn't own them at this current time (bought at $4).

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Have you considered adding more? The Toyota sell off of 222 million shares is over, and $3 looks to be holding up decently.

At $1.77 per share in cash, damn if it doesn't look like a good entry.

I'm at 2,485 commons myself now.

It happened!
There's a webcast.
They are very clearly trying to grab financial market share in the underdeveloped digital market that is SE Asia.

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I quit tracking these financial services companies after I got out of SE and SQ but my recollection of both taking on BNPL enterprises is that it didn’t work out very well.

correct me if I’m wrong

bringing on liability for a pile of consumer debt seems not to be a winning strategy

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bringing on liability for a pile of consumer debt seems not to be a winning strategy

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Question: How much in consumer credit loans would GRAB be taking on?

Grab is roughly doubling its total credit exposure over the next two years, going from ~$3B standalone at year-end 2026 to >$6B combined by 2028. That's a massive ramp. The loan book has already nearly quadrupled in just 18 months ($0.6B end of 2024 to $2.3B at Q2 2026), and Atome accelerates that further.

The risk math that matters here:

The deck showed improving NPLs and delinquency rates, and management says ECL as a percentage of the portfolio is improving. But here's the thing — you're looking at credit metrics that have only been tested during a period of rapid portfolio growth. When you're growing disbursals 70%+ per year, your denominator is constantly inflating, which mechanically makes delinquency ratios look better even if absolute losses are rising. Every consumer lender in history has shown great credit metrics during the ramp phase. The real test comes when origination growth slows and the book seasons.

The other piece: customer deposits across Grab's digibanks reached $2.5B. The deck says by 2028, the majority of the loan portfolio will be funded through deposits. That's a classic bank model — borrow short from depositors, lend long to consumers — which works great until it doesn't. They're building a real bank balance sheet inside what the market prices as a tech/ride-hail company.
DealStreetAsia

None of this is disqualifying. It's just worth being clear-eyed that Grab is on track to be holding $6B+ in consumer credit across six SEA markets within two years, funded largely by retail deposits, in a region where only 5% of adults have a credit card and regulatory frameworks for digital lending are still evolving. That's a fundamentally different risk profile than the ride-hailing and food delivery business that most investors originally bought into.


Question: One that excites or repels?


Both, depending on your time horizon and what you think Grab actually is.

The bull case is genuinely compelling. Southeast Asia has 700M+ people, 5% credit card penetration, and 34% of borrowers still relying on family and friends. That's not a gap — that's a vacuum. Grab sits on 138M annual transacting users, 20B+ cumulative transactions, and real behavioral data (where people go, what they eat, how they spend) that no traditional bank in the region can match. Their own data shows their underwriting models outperform credit bureau scores at equivalent approval rates. If you believe that ecosystem data is the moat that makes consumer lending in underbanked markets a structurally better risk than it looks on paper, this is exactly the kind of transformation that creates enormous value. The $500M financial services EBITDA target for 2028 would make this segment alone worth more than Grab's entire current market cap on reasonable fintech multiples.

The bear case is equally real. Consumer lending in emerging markets has a brutal history. The cycle always looks the same: fast origination growth, beautiful early credit metrics, then a macro shock (currency crisis, commodity bust, political instability — pick your SEA flavor) exposes the book. Grab has never managed a $6B loan portfolio through a downturn. Nobody in SEA digital lending has, because the industry barely existed before 2020. The delinquency data in that deck covers a grand total of maybe 2-3 years of cohort history. That's not a credit cycle — that's a fair-weather sample.

And the deposit funding model adds a layer of systemic risk that a pure fintech doesn't carry. If Grab's digibanks fund $4B+ in consumer loans with retail deposits and something goes wrong in the credit book, you've got a confidence problem that can spiral fast in a region where deposit insurance frameworks are still maturing.

My honest read: this is a high-conviction bet by management that they're building the JPMorgan of Southeast Asia, not a ride-hailing company. If they're right, the stock at $3 is absurdly cheap. If consumer credit in SEA hits a wall — whether from regulation, a regional recession, or just the normal pain of scaling lending 10x in three years — this is the kind of thing that takes a stock from $3 to $1.50 before anyone gets a chance to reassess.

Sticking with long-term plays like PLTR and HOOD through the dips takes strong conviction. Adding more to GRAB after 18 months shows serious patience.