SE used to be in the porfolio of several board members. The share price used to reach as high as $340 in 2021 before it plunged to as low as $30 per share at end of year 2023. The shared price has recovered strongly since the all time low, and so has the business.
What does the SE do?
SE is Singapore company, which operates in three major businesses:
- E-commerce (similar to Amazon), currently 74% of total revenue, growing 45% YoY.
- Digital Financial Services (Payments, Loans, etc), currently 14% of total revenue, growing 38% YoY.
- Digital Entertainment (Gaming), currently 11% of total revenue, growing (-16%) YoY.
The E-commerce business
The revenue growth has been consistently accelerating for 4 quarters since the lowest point in Q3 2023. This has also become the dominant revenue stream for SE, being 74% of the total revenue.
The revenue take rate (revenue / GMV) has also been steadily trending up.
The profitability is also on the good trend.
So overall, it’s a rapidly improving business.
Digital Financial Services
Overall, this part of the business is still solidly growing, though not as fast as it used to be. The revenue growth also re-accelerated in 24Q3, same as e-commerce.
What happened to the gaming business
This is the quarterly revenue chart
After the COVID surge, the following factors brought the revenue down to the current level:
- On 02/14/2022, India banned SE’s major game, Free Fire, country wide, citing “national security concerns”.
- SE used to hold the publishing right of League of Legends (one of the most popular games in the world) in Southeast Asia, but they lost it in January 2023.
- The surge of gaming activities caused by pandemic has settled back to a normal level.
Although revenue growth is still negative YoY, the booking has shown some positive trends.
Sea recognizes bookings when its gamers purchase in-game items or subscriptions, and it recognizes revenue over time as these purchases are consumed. So booking is kind of forward-looking metric and the current trends indicate that the revenue will stabilize or turn back to positive growth in the near future.
In the earning call, SE seems to be optimistic about the growth driven by its top game, Free Fire.
Finally, turning to our digital entertainment business. Garena’s strong growth has continued into the third quarter. Total bookings grew over 24%, and adjusted EBITDA grew over 34% year-on-year. This good performance is driven by the strength of Free Fire, which continues to be one of the largest mobile games in the world. Free Fire consistently had over 100 million daily active users in the third quarter, representing an impressive 25% year-on-year growth. In addition to Asia and the Americas, we were happy to see meaningful growth in other regions, such as North Africa over the past year. We view this region as a sizable untapped opportunity and has been ramping up both in-game campaigns and all top game events in this market.
When being asked about the life cycle of Free Fire, the CEO replied:
Sure. Like for Free Fire, we are very excited to see that the growth is like, especially after like the challenge we face, some headwinds in terms of the like post-COVID situation. I think like we have been trying very, very hard in the past 2 years to continually improve the product through the very user-centric approach, and we start to see the payoff. We start to see the great results like the beginning of this year and has been extending the trend for the – pretty much for the whole year. And the Free Fire, in terms of the life cycle. I mean, as we always believe, Free Fire is more like a service and it’s more like a platform instead of like a product. So from that perspective, we do have the ambition and the conviction to build up Free Fire as a evergreen game and as an evergreen platform. And this is – we see a very encouraged sign. And if you think about Free Fire has been a 7 years, old game, and it’s still like growing. And the new users coming into the game, the new user growth is even accelerated. So – and from all those, we see the better engagement and we see the better retention. So from all those metrics, and it’s a very, very strong sign that Free Fire is still at a very, very early stage. I think it give us the confidence to continually grow the game and through the engagement, through the better intention and through making the game, it’s a more friendly experience for the new users. At the same time, to keep – always keep the content fresh, local and to have a better engagement with the existing gamers as well.
The risks
I think the biggest risk of investing into this company is still the uncertainty in the gaming business. Free Fire appears to be the only popular game owned by the company. With more than 1B downloads and more than 100 million daily active users, how much growth potential is left and how long these users will stay active are questionable.
That being said, gaming is now only ~10% of the company, compared to ~50% of the revenue in 2021, so I think the company as a whole is definitely more predictable right now. If they can continue the success in E-commerce, the overall growth story will continue to hold.
Currently, I have a small 4% position in SE. I’ll appreciate any thoughts on this company. Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Cheers,
Luffy