Grab Holdings, Southeast Asia’s hail to delivery giant, is considering a secondary listing in its home market of Singapore after closing a Nasdaq listing through a $ 40 billion (S $ 53 billion) SPAC merger.
Listing on the Singapore Exchange would allow Grab to have an investor base close to local business, and potentially give customers, drivers and trading partners easier access to trade their stocks.
Grab, a name well known throughout Southeast Asia, is in the early stages of considering a secondary listing in the city-state, said the sources, who refused to be identified because they were not empowered to speak on the matter.
The potential listing plans for Singapore come after Grab this week agreed a $ 40 billion merger with Altimeter Growth Corp., a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). This is the world’s largest SPAC deal.
Started as a hailstorm business in 2012, Grab now operates in eight countries and more than 400 cities, and has expanded into grocery and grocery deliveries and digital payments. A digital banking license was won in Singapore last year.
It wasn’t clear how much Grab could go for in a secondary listing as the financial terms and schedule are still in the early stages of review, the sources said.
The highest valued company on the Singapore Stock Exchange is DBS Group Ltd, whose capitalization is currently approximately $ 74 billion ($ 55.4 billion).
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Grab and SGX declined to comment on the listing plans.
One of the sources said that while Grab has ample cash and could only collect a small amount of SGX in the end, a listing would mean a big profit for the exchange.
SGX has seen mostly large IPOs in real estate mutual funds. Handicapped by a small base of retail investors in the city-state, it has struggled with poor liquidity and valuations, forced a delisting spate, and also discouraged large ticket entries from regional high-growth companies.
However, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has benefited from diplomatic and political tensions between the United States and China that have led many Chinese companies to apply for secondary listings in Hong Kong. Global fund managers have also swapped Chinese holdings from Wall Street to Hong Kong.
SGX has taken many steps to grow the stock market in recent years, and under Chief Executive Loh Boon Chye appointed six years ago, SGX acquired companies to transform itself into a multi-asset exchange.
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There are currently 28 companies with a secondary listing on the SGX, including the Malaysian company IHH Healthcare Bhd and Top Glove Corp Bhd, as well as the Hong Kong conglomerate Jardine Matheson Holdings.
Last year, AMTD International was the first NYSE-listed company to be listed on the SGX. It was also the first company to use a two-class share structure in Singapore.
Grab is raising $ 4 billion from global investors including BlackRock, Temasek Holdings, Fidelity International, Malaysia’s Permodalan Nasional Bhd and some of Indonesia’s richest family groups as part of the SPAC alliance.
