Grab to sell US$1.25 bln in convertible bonds to fund purchases as GoTo takeover stalls
Grab Holdings is planning a US$1.25 billion sale of bonds convertible into stock, partly to bulk up its war chest for acquisitions amid signs that talks to take over rival delivery-and-transport provider GoTo Group have stalled.
Singapore-based Grab, whose app is ubiquitous in Southeast Asia for ride hailing and food delivery, will issue convertible bonds that mature on June 15, 2030, it said in a statement on Monday. The securities will carry a coupon of as much as 0.5 per cent a year, payable semiannually, according to terms of the deal seen by Bloomberg News.
Grab joins the flurry of sales of bonds that can be swapped into stock by Asian companies this year. That is particularly been the case with Chinese firms as issuers from Baidu to Ping An Insurance Group of China announced sizeable deals in recent months.
Aside from possible acquisitions, Grab said it plans some share buy-backs – the company has US$274 million remaining under its share-repurchase programme as of the end of March. The bonds will be redeemable, under certain conditions, from mid-2028.
As for the GoTo acquisition, Grab on Monday signalled that it was halting or at least pausing a planned US$7 billion acquisition. The pair of ride-hailing and food-delivery companies have held on-and-off talks for years, but a combination never materialised, partly because of antitrust concerns likely to arise from combining the two dominant players in Southeast Asia.
Grab's offering is the largest Asian convertible-bond deal denominated in US dollars since Ping An's US$3.5 billion deal in July 2024, and the biggest by a non-Chinese company since Korean chipmaker SK Hynix's US$1.7 billion issuance in 2023. Ping An last week also issued convertible bonds worth US$1.5 billion, denominated in Hong Kong dollars.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
4 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong needs route for taxis, ride-hailing firms to co-exist: lawmakers
Hong Kong should find a way to allow the taxi trade and ride-hailing services to compete and complement each other, even though cab owners blame competition from unregulated platforms for lowering the value of their licences, lawmakers have said. Debate on the way forward for the trade followed calls from some industry leaders for the government to buy back their taxi licences for HK$5 million (US$637,100) each, an idea Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu ruled out on Tuesday Owners argue that their licences have consistently depreciated because of the rise of online ride-hailing platforms such as Uber. The number of taxi licences has remained constant at 18,138 since the government stopped issuing them in 1994. However, licences can be transferred and traded, leading some drivers and investors to use them as a form of speculative asset. The price of a licence and a taxi dropped from a record high of HK$7.66 million in 2009 to HK$2.02 million this month, resulting in significant potential financial losses for owners. The value also fell sharply in 2019 as social unrest rocked the city, dropping from HK$6.02 million to HK$4.96 million.
South China Morning Post
7 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
China's film distributors pledge more imports to diversify market
China's film distributors have called for diversifying the country's cinematic offerings with more and better titles from overseas, at a time when domestic productions have seized the lion's share of the market from their imported competitors. At a work conference held by the state-owned China Film Group Corporation, as well as Huaxia Film Distribution, companies vowed to bring in 'good titles from multiple countries' to improve the number, quality and market share of foreign films, state media outlet China Film News reported on Monday. Distributors at the meeting also committed to 'leveraging imported films' positive effect of diversifying and expanding the market.' Foreign films in China have been in a 'harsh' situation this year, with box office returns lagging behind their domestic rivals, distributors said at the Friday meeting. '[We] should encourage more good international films to enter the Chinese film market,' said Mao Yu, an associate director of the Communist Party's publicity department, which oversees regulation of the film industry. China has enjoyed a strong rebound in box office revenue this year, after a brief retreat in 2024. But the growth has mostly been driven by domestic titles such as Ne Zha 2, an animated feature that has become the highest-grossing Chinese release of all time. By mid-May, 26.6 billion yuan (US$3.7 billion) in box office revenue had been recorded for 2025, more than 60 per cent of the returns for all of 2024, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Almost 96 per cent of the take was attributed to domestic titles.
The Standard
7 hours ago
- The Standard
Labubu human-sized figure sells for over 1 million yuan at Beijing auction
An auctioneer takes bids from buyers for a Labubu figurine, during an auction by Yongle International Auction in Beijing, China June 10, 2025. REUTERS
