Sea doubles profit to US$375 million for Q3
Revenue for the group is up 38.3% at US$6 billion
[SINGAPORE] Sea reported on Tuesday (Nov 11) a 144.6 per cent increase in its third-quarter earnings to US$375 million, from US$153.3 million for the year-ago period.
The group’s revenue grew to US$6 billion, up 38.3 per cent from US$4.3 billion in the corresponding period the year before.
Garena, Sea’s digital entertainment arm, had its best quarter for bookings since 2021. They grew 51.1 per cent to US$840.7 million in Q3 2025.
Digital entertainment revenue grew 31.2 per cent year on year to US$653 million, following two “high-impact” campaigns by its mobile game Free Fire. They were collaborations with Netflix show Squid Game and Japanese animated series Naruto Shippuden.
Garena remains on track to achieving more than 30 per cent year-on-year growth in bookings for 2025, said Sea.
The group’s e-commerce segment had a “record-setting quarter”, with revenue from Shopee growing 34.9 per cent year on year to a high of US$4.3 billion, on the back of improved profitability across Asia and Brazil.
Gross orders for this segment increased by 28.4 per cent year on year to 3.6 billion while gross merchandise value (GMV) was up 28.4 per cent at US$32.2 billion.
Shopee’s full-year GMV growth has been revised upward to more than 25 per cent.
Shopee’s logistics arm SPX Express has been an area which Forrest Li, Sea’s chairman and chief executive officer, believes is critical for long-term success. This has allowed Shopee to roll out services to monetise demand in different markets.
For instance, online shoppers in Indonesia’s urban areas were willing to pay a premium for fast delivery so SPX Express rolled out same day and instant delivery. This resulted in a 35 per cent growth in Q3 for these options.
In rural regions, economical delivery options were preferred; and when Shopee had options for free delivery with lower minimum spend, orders outside Java increased by 45 per cent.
Shopee has also started offering warehouse fulfilment solutions in some of its markets as a way to better optimise end-to-end logistics to serve more buyers and sellers. Sea will lease rather than buy property as part of building this capability in a capital efficient manner.
“The most intense investment comes not in the form of money but in time and effort, it will be very difficult to build a fulfilment capacity without a deep understanding of logistics needs in our markets and the tightly integrated delivery network to pair it with,” said Li.
Shopee’s VIP membership programme is also seeing continued success as VIP members across Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam crossed the 3.5 million mark, up more than 75 per cent quarter on quarter. These members spent about 40 per cent more after subscribing to the programme, and accounted for 10 per cent of total GMV in Indonesia.
“In our early market, we see our retention improve almost double from the last quarter to this quartern– which is a big breakthrough for us, given that credit cards are not a common payment method in many markets,” said Chris Wong, president, Sea.
Revenue from digital financial services arm Monee, meanwhile, rose 60.8 per cent to US$989.9 million driven by user growth and product expansion across multiple markets. SPayLater, a buy-now-pay-later service, is where Li sees opportunity to grow offline spending off Shopee’s platform.
Non-performing loans for Monee stood at 1.1 per cent, remaining relatively stable quarter on quarter.
“Off Shopee SPayLater showed strong traction this quarter, growing 300 per cent year on year and over 40 per cent quarter on quarter; and only accounts for less than 10 per cent of our loan books,” said Li.
Regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI), Li said that Sea will not be doing what other big tech firms are doing – such as developing its own large language model. Instead, the company will focus on the application and usage of AI to impact its customers’ lives.
For instance, the majority of Sea’s customer service is now handled by AI with a high satisfaction rate.
“Our focus remains the same: continuing to deliver high and profitable growth across all three of our businesses. With e-commerce and digital finance penetration in our markets still low but increasing, strong growth lays the best foundation to maximise our long-term profitability,” explained Li.
Shares of Sea closed 3.4 per cent or US$5.11 higher at US$155.05 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.
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