Sea CEO rallies staff as Shopee’s competitors close in

THE chief executive of Internet company Sea has called for employees to gear up for a fight as e-commerce competitors challenge its platform Shopee’s market share.

In a memo sent on Friday (Sep 15) and seen by The Business Times, Forrest Li warned of the increasingly competitive landscape, and reminded staff that a “hard contest” is where the company has always thrived.

His appeal to his staff follows the record fall in the shares of the group on Aug 15. Sea had reported revenue that missed analysts’ estimates, despite the group having turned in yet another profitable quarter. The shares of South-east Asia’s largest Internet firm fell 29 per cent following the results, marking their biggest single-day fall.

Investors were partly rattled by the company’s decision to start investing in its e-commerce business again, which is likely to hurt profits.

Shopee is under threat from TikTok Shop, which aims to more than quadruple the size of its global e-commerce business to US$20 billion in merchandise sales this year.

Li said in his memo: “I look at this increasingly competitive landscape with, frankly, a sense of anticipation.

“Being in a hard contest is where we have always thrived best. We started out as underdogs, pushing against bigger, better-resourced, more well-established players. It has always been in our blood to dig in, commit, and fight until we prevail.”

He said that the company will be taking on the competition from a strong position, having achieved financial independence without a need for external capital.

Sea may incur losses in some quarters, Li wrote, but that is part of a longer strategic plan. The company will have sufficient funds, he added.

“Those of you who joined us more recently may not have had the chance to experience our full fighting mode yet,” he told staff, in a reference to Shopee’s early days, when it was a late entrant battling the likes of Lazada and Tokopedia.

“I encourage the newer joiners to ask our veterans for their war stories: exciting and energising times when teams came together and did whatever it took to meet huge, seemingly impossible challenges.”