Singapore’s Sea Limited, the owner of e-commerce platform Shopee, announced on 17th May, 2022 revenues for the first quarter increased 64.4 percent to USD 2.9 billion, on the back of a surge in e-commerce revenues.
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The company said e-commerce and other services revenue increased by 94.2 percent to USD 1.5 billion in the first quarter ending 31st March, from USD 772.4 million in the first quarter last year. The increase was primarily driven by the growing adoption of products and services across the company’s e-commerce and digital financial services businesses.
Sales of goods revenue increased 26.1 percent to USD 264.8 million in the first quarter from US$209.9 million, on the back of an increase in product offerings. Elsewhere, the company’s digital entertainment revenue increased by 45.3 percent to USD 1.1 billion, “due to recognition of accumulated deferred revenue from previous quarters,” the company added.
“We recorded solid results across our business in the first quarter of 2022, despite challenging comparisons to the same period last year during heightened Covid-related restrictions. As a result, we are well on track to achieve our previously shared projections of profitability in our Asia markets, while continuing to scale our businesses and capture market share globally,” said Forrest Li, Sea’s Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer.
“Shopee and SeaMoney continued to enjoy operating leverage and efficiency gain as they scale and strengthen their market leadership positions. With the significant scale, strong leadership and clear synergies achieved by both businesses in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, our consumer internet ecosystem in the region is naturally approaching a stage of long-term profitable growth.
“While Garena experienced headwinds in its growth post-Covid, we saw some preliminary positive effects from our efforts to improve user engagement in Free Fire. In particular, the monthly user trends for Free Fire began to show some early signs of stabilizing toward the end of the first quarter. While this is encouraging, the longer-term impact of reopening around Free Fire remains to be seen and we will continue to focus on user engagement and user base stabilization,” added Li.
The company said net loss widened to USD 580.1 million, from USD 422.1 million in the first quarter last year.
Given the “elevated macro uncertainties,” Sea said it now sees “a wider dispersion of potential scenarios for Shopee for the full year of 2022 and hence are revising our e-commerce guidance to 4 correspondingly reflect this view.”
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The company said it now expects revenue for e-commerce to be between USD 8.5 billion and USD 9.1 billion, representing 71.8 percent growth from 2021 at the midpoint of the broader guidance, compared to the previous guidance of between USD 8.9 billion and USD 9.1 billion.