By Yifan Wang

Southeast Asian ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings Ltd. will reduce headcount, dial back investment and trim cloud costs as part of efforts to become profitable sooner than planned, the company’s finance head said.

“We’re looking at every area to make sure that we’re optimized in our business,” Chief Financial Officer Peter Oey told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. “We’ve applied zero-based budgeting on a number of line items across the organization.”
That includes cutting staff levels this year, which he said will drive slower growth of corporate cost in 2023, and trimming investment in some of its newer businesses such as nonbank financial services, including consumer credit and merchant insurance. “On the non-bank business, we are seeing some really good traction in terms of margin improvement, as well as cost structure coming down,” Mr. Oey said.
Mr. Oey was speaking after Singapore-based Grab told investors it expects to reach positive adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the final quarter of 2023, bringing the goal forward from the second half of 2024 previously. In the fourth quarter of 2022, Grab posted adjusted Ebitda loss of $111 million, narrowing from $305 million a year earlier.
The accelerated profitability timeline comes as Southeast Asian internet companies are undergoing strategic shifts to focus on profitability over growth. Last week, rival GoTo Group brought forward its profitability targets by a year, while e-commerce company Sea Ltd. has cut jobs and closed businesses in several markets to trim costs.
Mr. Oey said Grab also plans to curb discretionary spending, including its cloud costs, a major expense item for tech companies. He guided for a 10%-20% drop in cloud spending this year.
One area that will continue to receive significant investment is the company’s digital-bank business–a key growth area closely watched by analysts and expected to offer lucrative returns–as it launches digital banks in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia this year. Mr. Oey called the business a “critically important investment” for Grab.
“We’ll continue to make sure that we invest in the banks,” he said.
Write to Yifan Wang at yifan.wang@wsj.com