Sea’s (SE) revenue more than doubles in September quarter
03:49, 17 November 2021
Singapore-based Sea Limited reported its revenue more than doubled in the September quarter, but surging costs in marketing and e-commerce unit caused its net loss to widen.
Revenue jumped 122% year-on-year to $2.69bn, driven by 168% surge in e-commerce unit ($1.31bn) and a 93% increase in gaming unit Garena ($1.1bn), it said.
Cost of revenue for e-commerce Shopee, however, jumped 140% year-on-year to $1.1bn, dragging down gross profit just slightly over $1bn.
Sea’s sales and marketing expenses jumped to over $1bn from under $471m a year earlier, resulting in an operating loss of $458.6m. Sales and marketing expenses made up around 75% of overall operating costs, rising from roughly two-thirds of operating costs a year earlier.
Net loss widens
Net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders widened to $450.1m against $340.8m a year earlier. That equates to a loss of 84 cents per share compared with 69 cents a year earlier.
The stock price of New York-listed Sea fell 3.8% to $329.91 on Tuesday and further dropping by 1.2% in post-market trade.
What is your sentiment on SE?
Raising guidance on e-commerce
Although the e-commerce segment contributes to most of Sea’s costs, revenue from the unit is expected to rise. Sea has raised its guidance for its e-commerce segment, projecting a full-year revenue in a range of $5bn-$5.2bn against $4.7bn-4.9bn previously.
On its gaming segment, quarterly active users rose 27.4% to 729 million, with paying users amounting to 93.2 million, up 43% year-on-year.
SeaMoney, Sea’s digital financial service saw payment volume on mobile wallet surged 111% to $4.6bn.
Management promotion
Sea also announced the appointment of Chris Feng as group president starting 1 January 2022. He will continue his existing roles as chief executive of Shopee and SeaMoney.
Read more: Grab’s revenue down on Covid restrictions in Southeast Asia
Markets in this article
Related topics