Grab's $7B Mega Move Could Flip Southeast Asia's Tech Empire--But Indonesia Might Block It
Grab (NASDAQ:GRAB) is quietly pushing forward on what could be one of Southeast Asia's biggest tech shakeupsa $7 billion move to acquire rival GoTo. After years of circling each other, the two ride-hailing and food delivery giants are now refining a two-step deal: GoTo could first absorb Grab's Indonesia unit, then Grab would swoop in for control of the merged business. But it's not just about market strategy. The deal faces serious political and regulatory headwinds, especially in Indonesia, where a merger would concentrate 6070% of the on-demand market in one player's hands.
Warning! GuruFocus has detected 5 Warning Sign with GRAB.
Enter DanantaraIndonesia's sovereign wealth fundwhich has kicked off early-stage talks to buy a minority stake in the new entity. That move could help ease nationalist fears over foreign dominance, job losses, and rising consumer costs. For President Prabowo's government, which has been flexing its populist muscles with wage hikes, subsidy boosts, and demands for driver bonuses, having a local backer in the mix might be a political win. For Grab, it's a potential green light. But the clock is ticking. Any deal still hinges on clearance from Indonesia's antitrust watchdog, and regulatory nerves remain high.
Meanwhile, the market dynamics are shifting fast. Grab's revenue in Indonesia rose just 6.3% in 2024its slowest in Southeast Asiawhile GoTo has already exited Vietnam and Thailand. A tie-up would give Grab more firepower in Indonesia's 275-million-strong market, just as newer players like InDrive and Maxim try to muscle in. The stakes? If Danantara comes onboard, the merger could reshape Southeast Asia's tech landscape. If not, Grab might have to find another way into the driver's seat.
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Video shows Tesla robotaxi on the streets of Austin without a human driver
A Tesla robotaxi driving without a human behind the wheel has been spotted on the streets of Austin, Texas, according to a video posted on X on Tuesday and reshared by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, as the company prepares to launch a highly anticipated robotaxi service as soon as this week. The 10-second video showed the Tesla slowly turning left off an avenue in the state capital, as two pedestrians walk in a crosswalk just ahead. No one appeared to be in the driver's seat, but someone appeared to be in the front passenger's seat, while the rear windows were tinted. On the vehicle's side was a logo with the word 'Robotaxi.' The video appeared to be the first confirmation of Musk's statement last month that Tesla had begun testing cars on Austin public streets with no one in the driver's seat. Musk reshared the video Tuesday on X, writing: 'Beautifully simple design.' Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the video. The account that posted the video did not immediately respond to a request for more information. Tesla is scheduled to launch its service as soon as Thursday, according to Bloomberg News. Tesla is trying to compete with Google spinoff Waymo, which has been steadily growing its robotaxi service in four cities so far: Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco. The service is similar to ride-hailing apps such as Uber or Lyft but without a human behind the wheel. A year ago, Waymo made its service available to anyone in San Francisco who has its app. Three other tech startups are testing autonomous vehicles in Austin, according to a city government website: Zoox, a subsidiary of Amazon; Volkswagen ADMT; and AVRide, a spinoff of Yandex. Tesla's service will be tiny at first, starting with possibly 10 vehicles in its first week, Musk told CNBC in an interview last month. Musk predicted Tuesday, though, that autonomous cars would soon become very common. 'The streets will change very rapidly,' he posted on X. Musk is relying on the planned robotaxi service to try to turn Tesla around. The electric automaker's sales have faltered over the past year as Musk veered into politics and supported President Donald Trump's return to the White House, angering many Tesla owners. Tesla said its profits fell 71% during the first three months of the year. Responding to a question from a user on X, Musk said that the software in the robotaxi test vehicles is new and not the same as the software in regular Tesla vehicles. He said the software 'still requires a lot of polishing.' This article was originally published on
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Is QL Resources Berhad (KLSE:QL) Expensive For A Reason? A Look At Its Intrinsic Value
The projected fair value for QL Resources Berhad is RM3.41 based on 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity Current share price of RM4.55 suggests QL Resources Berhad is potentially 34% overvalued The RM4.80 analyst price target for QL is 41% more than our estimate of fair value Does the June share price for QL Resources Berhad (KLSE:QL) reflect what it's really worth? Today, we will estimate the stock's intrinsic value by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. One way to achieve this is by employing the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Believe it or not, it's not too difficult to follow, as you'll see from our example! We would caution that there are many ways of valuing a company and, like the DCF, each technique has advantages and disadvantages in certain scenarios. If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the rationale behind this calculation can be read in detail in the Simply Wall St analysis model. AI is about to change healthcare. These 20 stocks are working on everything from early diagnostics to drug discovery. The best part - they are all under $10bn in marketcap - there is still time to get in early. We use what is known as a 2-stage model, which simply means we have two different periods of growth rates for the company's cash flows. Generally the first stage is higher growth, and the second stage is a lower growth phase. In the first stage we need to estimate the cash flows to the business over the next ten years. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years. Generally we assume that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar in the future, so we need to discount the sum of these future cash flows to arrive at a present value estimate: 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 2034 Levered FCF (MYR, Millions) RM273.1m RM305.7m RM430.6m RM666.7m RM703.6m RM738.6m RM772.4m RM805.6m RM838.6m RM871.8m Growth Rate Estimate Source Analyst x1 Analyst x2 Analyst x2 Analyst x2 Est @ 5.55% Est @ 4.97% Est @ 4.57% Est @ 4.29% Est @ 4.10% Est @ 3.96% Present Value (MYR, Millions) Discounted @ 8.4% RM252 RM260 RM338 RM483 RM470 RM456 RM440 RM423 RM406 RM390 ("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St)Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = RM3.9b The second stage is also known as Terminal Value, this is the business's cash flow after the first stage. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a country's GDP growth. In this case we have used the 5-year average of the 10-year government bond yield (3.6%) to estimate future growth. In the same way as with the 10-year 'growth' period, we discount future cash flows to today's value, using a cost of equity of 8.4%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF2034 × (1 + g) ÷ (r – g) = RM872m× (1 + 3.6%) ÷ (8.4%– 3.6%) = RM19b Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= RM19b÷ ( 1 + 8.4%)10= RM8.5b The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next ten years plus the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is RM12b. In the final step we divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Relative to the current share price of RM4.6, the company appears reasonably expensive at the time of writing. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope - move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind. We would point out that the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate and of course the actual cash flows. If you don't agree with these result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at QL Resources Berhad as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 8.4%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.800. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business. See our latest analysis for QL Resources Berhad Strength Debt is not viewed as a risk. Weakness Earnings growth over the past year underperformed the Food industry. Dividend is low compared to the top 25% of dividend payers in the Food market. Expensive based on P/E ratio and estimated fair value. Opportunity Annual revenue is forecast to grow faster than the Malaysian market. Threat Annual earnings are forecast to grow slower than the Malaysian market. Although the valuation of a company is important, it shouldn't be the only metric you look at when researching a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" For example, changes in the company's cost of equity or the risk free rate can significantly impact the valuation. Can we work out why the company is trading at a premium to intrinsic value? For QL Resources Berhad, we've put together three essential items you should further research: Financial Health: Does QL have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk. Future Earnings: How does QL's growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with our free analyst growth expectation chart. Other High Quality Alternatives: Do you like a good all-rounder? Explore our interactive list of high quality stocks to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing! PS. Simply Wall St updates its DCF calculation for every Malaysian stock every day, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock just search here. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Returns On Capital Signal Tricky Times Ahead For Homeritz Corporation Berhad (KLSE:HOMERIZ)
What trends should we look for it we want to identify stocks that can multiply in value over the long term? In a perfect world, we'd like to see a company investing more capital into its business and ideally the returns earned from that capital are also increasing. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. In light of that, when we looked at Homeritz Corporation Berhad (KLSE:HOMERIZ) and its ROCE trend, we weren't exactly thrilled. AI is about to change healthcare. These 20 stocks are working on everything from early diagnostics to drug discovery. The best part - they are all under $10bn in marketcap - there is still time to get in early. For those that aren't sure what ROCE is, it measures the amount of pre-tax profits a company can generate from the capital employed in its business. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Homeritz Corporation Berhad: Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities) 0.12 = RM36m ÷ (RM331m - RM29m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to February 2025). Therefore, Homeritz Corporation Berhad has an ROCE of 12%. In absolute terms, that's a satisfactory return, but compared to the Consumer Durables industry average of 4.4% it's much better. Check out our latest analysis for Homeritz Corporation Berhad Above you can see how the current ROCE for Homeritz Corporation Berhad compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free analyst report for Homeritz Corporation Berhad . In terms of Homeritz Corporation Berhad's historical ROCE movements, the trend isn't fantastic. Around five years ago the returns on capital were 17%, but since then they've fallen to 12%. However, given capital employed and revenue have both increased it appears that the business is currently pursuing growth, at the consequence of short term returns. And if the increased capital generates additional returns, the business, and thus shareholders, will benefit in the long run. In summary, despite lower returns in the short term, we're encouraged to see that Homeritz Corporation Berhad is reinvesting for growth and has higher sales as a result. And the stock has followed suit returning a meaningful 56% to shareholders over the last five years. So should these growth trends continue, we'd be optimistic on the stock going forward. If you want to continue researching Homeritz Corporation Berhad, you might be interested to know about the 2 warning signs that our analysis has discovered. While Homeritz Corporation Berhad isn't earning the highest return, check out this free list of companies that are earning high returns on equity with solid balance sheets. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
