Grab Holdings Ltd.’s shares rose 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 opened at $13.06 Thursday, giving Grab a market capitalization of roughly $51.6 billion. The stock was up 19% from Wednesday, when it was trading as the SPAC Altimeter Growth Corp. The stock lost some steam after the open and recently traded up 3.1%.

The...

Grab Holdings Ltd. ’s shares rose 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 opened at $13.06 Thursday, giving Grab a market capitalization of roughly $51.6 billion. The stock was up 19% from Wednesday, when it was trading as the SPAC Altimeter Growth Corp. The stock lost some steam after the open and recently traded up 3.1%.

The company’s public debut is the latest sign of increasing investor appetite for Asian tech companies outside of China, where wide-ranging regulatory crackdowns have spooked global investors and raised questions about the country’s attractiveness.

The Singapore-headquartered firm in April agreed to combine with Altimeter in a deal that valued Grab 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.

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 become a superapp across 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.

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

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)