Southeast Asia ride-hailing company Grab will go public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in a $35 billion deal that will list the Singapore-based company on the NASDAQ.
The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that the deal with one of Altimeter Growth’s SPACs is expected to be finalized this week. News of the possible deal was covered by Modern Shipper in early March and first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The latest report said Grab will secure $2.5 billion through what is called a private investment in public equity (PIPE) stock sale in which shares are sold in a separate arrangement to investors. Altimeter will provide $1.2 billion of that total, the Financial Times said.
Grab will merge with Altimeter’s Growth 1 SPAC fund (NASDAQ: AGC). AGC’s stock price is up 17.97% in the last five days and was trading at $12.86 in midmorning trading Wednesday. The growth fund raised $450 million in 2020.
Read: Rideshare company Grab could go public in SPAC with $40B valuation
Grab is backed by SoftBank Group Corp. and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. It has raised $12 billion in funding since its founding in 2012 and is reported to have $5 billion in cash reserves and a current valuation of $16 billion.
Grab offers ride-sharing, food delivery, payments and insurance in Southeast Asia, and it has signed a digital bank license in Singapore to offer banking services. In February, Grab closed a $2 billion term loan facility. JP Morgan served as the lead while Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Mizuho, MUFG and Standard Chartered also were part of the round.
Altimeter has previously invested in UiPath, Modern Treasury and Workato and in January co-led a $520 million funding round in gaming company Roblox, which went public last month.
Grab was most recently valued at $14.3 billion, according to CB Insights. It has raised $12.1 billion in total funding, according to Crunchbase. Softbank has invested at least $1.5 billion. In 2018, Grab acquired Uber’s Southeast Asian business, but Uber acquired a 27.5% stake in Grab through the transaction.
The largest SPAC to date is the Lucid Motors offering earlier this year. Its debut valued the company at $24 billion.
Click for more Modern Shipper articles by Brian Straight.
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