Grab Holdings Ltd.’s shares turned red after initially opening higher on their first day of trading in New York, after the Southeast Asian ride-hailing and delivery giant completed a record-breaking merger with a special-purpose acquisition company.

Shares recently fell 9.6% to $9.95, giving Grab a market capitalization of roughly $37.9 billion. The Singapore-based firm in April agreed to combine with the SPAC Altimeter Growth Corp. in a deal that valued it at close to $40 billion, setting a high-water mark for transactions...

Grab Holdings Ltd. ’s shares turned red after initially opening higher on their first day of trading in New York, after the Southeast Asian ride-hailing and delivery giant completed a record-breaking merger with a special-purpose acquisition company.

Shares recently fell 9.6% to $9.95, giving Grab a market capitalization of roughly $37.9 billion. The Singapore-based firm in April agreed to combine with the SPAC Altimeter Growth Corp. in a deal that valued it at close to $40 billion, setting a high-water mark for transactions involving blank-check companies, which raise money with the purpose of seeking a target to merge with and take public.

Shares opened at $13.06 Thursday. The stock was up 19% from Wednesday, when it was trading as Altimeter Growth Corp.

The transaction also included a $4.5 billion fundraising for Grab, a nine-year-old company that has operations in eight countries, including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The company is trading under the ticker GRAB on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Its backers include SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund, Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Global Inc. and Toyota Motor Corp.

Grab has yet to turn a profit. Its revenue for the third quarter fell 9% to $157 million as the coronavirus pandemic’s resurgence in Southeast Asia and lockdowns in Vietnam pressured its ride-hailing operations, while food-delivery volumes picked up. Its gross merchandise value, a metric that reflects the dollar value of transactions from Grab’s services, rose 32% to $4.04 billion from the same period last year. Grab said gains in gross merchandise value from the company’s deliveries segment offset declines from its mobility segment, which took a hit from pandemic-related restrictions amid the spread of the Delta variant.

SPAC fundraisings and mergers enjoyed a hot streak earlier this year, though investor enthusiasm for the vehicles cooled off after regulators stepped up scrutiny over the transactions’ accounting methods and companies’ growth projections. Grab had earlier aimed to complete its merger with Altimeter in July, but ended up delaying the deal’s closing date. SPACs’ popularity has been gaining steam again of late.

“‘Regardless of the stock price, our focus is on the superapp [business model] and that is resilient in spite of Covid.’”

— Anthony Tan, Grab Holdings co-founder and chief executive

Other Asian tech startups have struggled on their debuts. Last month, shares of the parent of Indian mobile-payments giant Paytm plunged in their trading debut, after the company raised $2.5 billion in India’s largest-ever initial public offering. Investors and analysts blamed the stock’s aggressive IPO valuation, given that Paytm has no clear path to profitability and is facing stiff competition from deep-pocketed rivals.

Grab executives, together with Robert McCooey, Nasdaq’s chairman of Asia-Pacific, held a remote bell-ringing ceremony in Singapore on Thursday. Mr. McCooey said the opening-bell ceremony is the first Nasdaq has hosted in Southeast Asia.

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“Regardless of the stock price, our focus is on the superapp [business model] and that is resilient in spite of Covid,” said Anthony Tan,

Grab’s co-founder and chief executive.

Grab’s ambition is to build on its leading positions in Southeast Asia, providing users a wide range of digital services such as grocery delivery, mobile payments and online insurance. The company reported having around 24.5 million monthly transacting users in 2020, a number that has been little changed this year, and it has projected a total of 43 million such users in 2023.

Some analysts said Grab enjoys a strong competitive edge in its eight markets, whose combined population of roughly 660 million and fast economic growth promise lucrative returns.

The company’s “market leadership in Southeast Asia is unquestionable,” especially its ride-hailing operations, said Rolf Bulk, a New Street Research analyst. His firm expects Grab’s market capitalization to top $70 billion by 2024.

Grab earlier outlasted Uber Technologies Inc. in the region following a costly price war, and took over the latter’s Southeast Asia business in 2018. Uber holds a 14.3% stake in Grab, and Uber CEO

Dara Khosrowshahi currently sits on Grab’s board of directors.

Grab now faces competition from regional competitors including GoTo Group, which was formed from the combination of Indonesian ride-hailing and delivery company Gojek and e-commerce platform Tokopedia. GoTo is working towards a dual listing in New York and Jakarta with a target valuation of between $35 billion and $40 billion.

“This journey of becoming a superapp itself is not an easy task,” said Bernstein analyst Venugopal Garre, who points to potential heavy investment needs and competitive pressure in its relatively new grocery-delivery and fintech businesses. But ultimately, Grab has “a right to win,” he added.

Global investors have poured money into internet-platform companies across Asia over the past year, in part because many of China’s giant internet companies have had a rough ride. Aggressive and sometimes unexpected regulatory actions from Beijing have led global investors to re-evaluate risks in the world’s second-largest economy, and to search for opportunities elsewhere. American depositary receipts of New York-listed Sea Ltd., which is a market leader in e-commerce and video gaming in Southeast Asia, have climbed about 30% so far this year.

“I think Sea actually did a really great job educating the global markets on how valuable the Southeast Asian market is,” said Chris Conforti, partner at Altimeter Capital. “And that piqued a lot of interest, which is now benefiting Grab and GoTo and other private companies that will go public in the future.”

Corrections & Amplifications
Grab Holdings shares began trading Thursday and had previously been trading as Altimeter Growth Corp. on Wednesday. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Altimeter’s last trading day was Tuesday. (Corrected on Dec. 2)

Write to Dave Sebastian at dave.sebastian@wsj.com